| I can talk about France specifically, the working age population feels squeezed currently because a big portion of their wages goes to pay pensions, let's be specific: for a 100k paid by your employer, 46k goes to you after all taxes, 45k goes to social contribution, of those 20k specifically to paying current pensioners[1]. It doesn't look so bad, unless you take into account the inversion of the demographic pyramid, the workers will get progressively more squeezed as older folks enter retirement, and are unlikely to get themselves good retirement given that there isn't enough kids to support them when they will be old. And so, the rational move is to save more to fund your retirement while already getting pressured by relatively low wages and low saving potential due to the taxes, and France doesn't really have a growth lever to pull to get us out of this situation as we're already at a very high debt-to-GDP ratio. So that's why some workers are unhappy with what they call "fat pensions", what also doesn't help in France is that the country is very centralized around Paris and rent is now another channel where money flows from workers to (often) pensioners. As 2027 elections approaches, it seems we have the options of being even more fiscally irresponsible (the extremes), and the center seems to lean for austerity measures (Edouard Philippe) and none of these are making me optimistic about the future. [1]: https://code.travail.gouv.fr/outils/simulateur-embauche |