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The open-ended walkout by the country’s unions represents the biggest challenge to Macron since the yellow vest movement against economic inequality erupted a year ago.
Opponents fear the changes to how and when workers can retire will threaten the hard-fought French way of life. Macron himself remained “calm and determined” to push it through, according to a top presidential official.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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If Chicago public sector pensions, Chicago public sector retiree healthcare, Social Security, or Medicare get cut, perhaps there will be Paris style protests in Chicago, or a protest such as what caused the cancellation of the planned Trump rally at UIC in 2016.
That was an antifa protest. it may have gotten the rally cancelled but it got Trump elected.
I think the reason you get these mass protests in European countries is because too much power is concentrated in a single individual like a prime minister or president. If one individual can unilaterally push through massively unpopular changes that he did not campaign on, then the only recourse people have is to engage in protests and strikes. Thankfully, here in the U.S., we have checks and balances on executive power in the form of legislative opposition and judicial review. As one example, when Reagan tried to push through Social Security changes in 1982 that are likely similar to what… Read more »
That’s a great addition to the list of reasons potentially sparking these mass protests. Much has been written about the causes and opinions vary, but something deeply troubling is going on.
I think you’re over-analyzing this too much. Europeans have a 600 year history of bloody uprisings against the ruling class starting with the peasant revolts. Civil disobedience is their ‘go to’ instead of good-faith and honest negotiation. The degenerate CTU is of a similar vein. It’s the tyranny of the minority, really. The CTU had few sympathetic fans this most recent strike. Here in America, civil disobedience (in most circumstances) is frowned upon to bring change. One million women+ wearing pink hats in DC did nothing but get the pink hats banned for not being gender inclusive, because not all… Read more »
“…hard-fought French way of life.” What exactly does that entail? Not bathing? Surrendering? Lecturing other countries on how they should run things?
Just like today’s Democrats, they’re famous for the Resistance…which accomplished absolutely nothing during WWII, except that after we liberated them, the French (just like Today’s Democrats) engaged in their own witch hunt against the Vichy, and ate a bunch of their own.
This is the best indication that macron is on the right track!
If Illinois public union workers stop working, would anybody notice?
Shoot to maim all protestors, shoot to kill anyone wearing a mask.