Macron was Right to Compare French Protestors of his Pension Reform to the Trump Supporters who Stormed the Capitol
Too Generous Social Security is the Threat to Democracy, not Attempts to Reform it
The pension battle in France has not gotten a lot of headlines proportionate to its significance, and in the journalism I’ve read, Macron is recognized not as a hero for his pension reform, but a ruthless pragmatist. So I think people are underestimating how serious Macron’s reform, and the strikes and protests they incited, are. For the world.
Let me go over this again briefly. Macron wanted to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. 15% of France’s GDP goes to funding pensions, compared to the US’s 7%, and the US can’t afford social security anymore either, as we all know. With growing numbers of retirees and declining fertility rates, public pensions, which depend on the next generation for funding, have become purely as an economic matter, infeasible. Unless you want to raise taxes like crazy, crippling economic growth and social mobility, one would need to cut spending on social security. Either cut it or at least raise the age at which people retire (perhaps the most modest reform you can make). So more working people have to pay into it for longer, and you have slightly fewer old people you have to fund with the rest working. A sixth grader would understand why pension reform in France is absolutely necessary and also very reasonable. Thus a sixth grader might also find the insane strikes and protests—riots to be frank— irrational and even insurrectionary.
Indeed, incapable or unwilling to do the math, the French are hellbent on capturing the future, and the government budget, entirely for themselves, in an attempt to hoard government resources, without an iota of consideration for the consequences. I read an editorial by a Frenchman in the Washington Post last night, who described the reform as “antidemocratic,” as Macron forced the reform through without any support in parliament, after weeks of strikes and protests on behalf of the majority of French, many of whom violently disagree with it. But this guy is wrong. First because what Macron did was perfectly legal because he used a constitutional provision to pass the reform, designed for overriding a lack of coalitional support. Second, Macron is only saving the budget for future generations. What’s actually antidemocratic are the protests and strikes waged against perfectly legal constitutional mechanisms, the sensible reforms, and democratic procedures.
Rokhaya Diallo, a French journalist wrote in the Washington Post that Macron was undermining a “way of life.” Please. You call your right to drop out of the workforce as soon as possible a way of life? The French way of life anyway is to protest anything that inconveniences them when not sitting around eating baguettes. You already have your way of life letting putrid trash pile up and shutting down trains and schools, and shutting down everything to make your complaints heard, over your right to sit on your ass as soon as possible and get paid for it. This is what Diallo says,
“For me and so many others, this is not just a matter of policy, about the particular age a worker can retire — 64 instead of 62. This is far deeper and more fundamental than that. It amounts to nothing less than the dismantling of our entire social model, first because it worsens the lives of the poorest among us without any apparent sympathy from our leaders and also because our president somehow feels entitled to force through a deeply controversial policy without parliamentary support. What kind of democracy are we?”
“Social model.” Oh my God!
You are not living in a democracy while you use the outsize power of your unions and fight with police, because your elected leader is passing a reform perfectly legally that you in particular do not like. This guy also says that, in attempting to reform the welfare state, Macron is betraying French national “ideals.” But if your exorbitant welfare state should not be reformed, and the budget and future generations just don’t matter, that’s not democracy you want to protect. That’s just socialism! To try and violently stop Macron’s reform with the coercive pressure of strikes and threats moreover, is what is truly antidemocratic.
So I was very impressed and grateful even as an American, living in New York across the Atlantic, that Macron stuck to his guns and pushed that reform through. And that he even had the courage to compare the protests to the January 6 insurrection in the US. I made that same comparison in an earlier post detailing why Macron needed to win this battle.
Similar to the way a bunch of old people and racists did not like an election result, they felt entitled to betray democracy and assault the rule of law and storm the Capitol to keep Trump in power indefinitely—Trump who famously promised his constituents by the way that he would never reform social security as long as he was in office. What happened in America on that day and what has happened in France with these protests, fits into a pattern of people around the world who delude themselves that their nation or their government owes them something. Such people think they are entitled to special exclusive protection by their government, the nation, no matter at what expense economically, and no matter to the rule of law.
People who are against social security reform are invariably against immigration; they favor universal healthcare coverage; they’re against defense spending or military intervention or overseas “entanglements” in regions like the Middle East or Ukraine. They don’t believe in free trade. They think the government should shield industries deemed essential from competition. Because they’re so obsessed with themselves and their particularistic identity, they cannot recognize international obligations to defend the free world from dictators and terrorism, and just as well they don’t give a damn about the economic opportunities of future generations. These people don’t care about individual rights whatsoever, economic growth or technological innovation, and all the modern progress and rights and liberties that come with open market economies and limited government.
Jose Luis Magana/ AP photo
Stephanie Mahe Reuters
I am at pains to illustrate, as I will be and I have been hopefully all the time on this blog—THE GOVERNMENT OWES YOU NOTHING. You rather owe your citizens more competition, more free trade, less government spending, prudent budgets, lower taxes, higher quality goods for cheaper prices in a world where the standard of living rises as an economy grows and all benefit. Your government does not owe you tariffs to protect American steel or “Buy American” quotas, public pensions, public healthcare, immigration restrictions, Tik Tok bans, Muslim bans, or abortion bans for that matter.
This guy in the WAPO op-ed criticized Macron as aloof and indifferent to the concerns of ordinary people, as Macron is often criticized. Good. I would like it more if our leaders cared about us less. That’s leadership. Populists are falling all over each other caring about us to smother us with the false luxury of unhinged government paternalism. What makes Macron a real virtuous republican leader is that he didn’t kowtow to public pressure. France hates him. He speaks for no one. Now if he were more a function of the demands of French people and in touch with that idealized ordinary person, then he would be a slave to his constituents. He wouldn’t be a leader. He would be a follower or a tyrant. You know what happens when a leader is in touch with and directly represents the common man?
You get Donald Trump. You get Marjorie Taylor Green. You get Ron Desantis signaling to his disciples that Florida is where “woke comes to die.” You get Joe Biden yelling at congress about “jobs” and “pride” and “dignity” and infrastructure. You get Trump bloviating about “carnage” and how you “can’t take your country back” with “weakness.” And you get the worst part of Biden’s SOTU where both parties suddenly came together and agreed to protect social security, exactly the way it is. Biden grinned and said “we have unanimity!” No. You just temporarily have old people’s votes, you self-dealing, crony, career politician bastard.
What makes Macron a proper leader is because he knows the nationalists and socialists the world over are all wrong and insane. A proper leader ignores the majority of stupid people to do what one knows is right without regard for his own self-image. That Macron was “entitled” to pass his reform as Dahllio says in the Post— then good for him. The threat to French democracy is not Emanuel Macron. The threat to democracy is unconstrained entitlement spending, obsequious left and right wing populists, and the tyranny of factional rentseeking.
With the coming changes in demography, social security, if not the notion of the collective welfare in general, is the real threat to democracy.
— Jay