In the coverage of French retirement protests, you often hear U.S.reporters state the debate is over raising the retirement age from 60 to 62. As Dean Baker has pointed out (as did Amitabh Pal from the Progressive, when he appeared on CounterSpin) this is incorrect; the retirement age for most French workers is 65; they are pushing toraise it to 67.Early retirement for some workers would shift from 60 to 62.
Lastnight (10/19/10)the PBS NewsHour had two discussions on this topic, and both made the same error. A live reportby Channel 4 reporter Jonathan Rugman included thisJohn Stosselesque exchange:
RUGMAN: In England, I have to work until 65.
WOMAN: Yes?
RUGMAN: Why shouldn’t you in France work until 62?
WOMAN: It’s not because Europe has a system, that we have to have the same system. We are not OK with that.RUGMAN: The French are the French.
WOMAN: France is France.
In adiscussion segment,GlobalPost journalistMildrade Cherfils said, “But the majority of French people do understand that the retirement age has to change. It has to go from 60 to 62.” With polls showing that the French public overwhelmingly back the protests,one might conclude that the public isn’t exactly embracing this “change.”
Peter, when you do something once, maybe it’s an error.
When you make it your modus operandi, it’s deliberate obfuscation.
Or, in plain terms, it’s just flat out lying, wouldn’t you say?
While it’s not news to any of us who follow FAIR or similarly oriented media criticism, it bears repeating at every juncture: the mainstream media in the US is a commercial enterprise and maintains an inherent, structural bias towards traditional, conservative, for-profit points of view. Yes, they will infrequently touch on other economic viewpoints in a cursory fashion to fill their time/space and give the illusion of even-handedness, but they are seldom presented in a positive or even neutral manner. While there may be a short era or two (ie; 1930s, 1970s) when the mainstream media becomes moderately liberal/progressive (because the public mood has become almost radical), even then it’s STILL a profit-making entity and we should NEVER truly expect it to be otherwise. You don’t go onto a used-car lot looking for truth about automobiles; similarly you shouldn’t expect the MSM to supply truth about the economic system that it’s owners are trying to prevail within.
The current recession actually demands that the retirement age be lowered. Only criminal banker interests are forcing this reprehensible thief from the french workers.
I received a petition from FreePress today asking me to protest the call in Congress to de-fund NPR, and I suspect this could grow quickly into including PBS, though maybe not since they’ve already been so well infiltrated by Big Corp. But then again, that is my beef with FreePress. Instead of protesting Congress’ move towards de-funding, shouldn’t we instead protest Congress’ legislative apathy towards the ensuing corporate takeover of all public media?
We seem to always attack our problems as though we’re doing “triage”, rather than remedial medicine. Or as an example. The fish are dying in the lake, but instead of fixing the water, we re-stock the fish…
Can anyone explain this better, please?
When the corporate-backed congressmen cut loose “public” broadcasting, they sell off the public sphere just as surely as they have done with schools, prisons, parks, and military. The results are predictable: new markets for the corporate “sponsors”; advertising for corporations; and the selling of a public “brand” that the gullible will think is good old public broadcasting when it is really corporations and their employees. National and local public broadcasting when de-funded will be more vulnerable to becoming a propaganda arm of the right wing.
I have no affiliation with Free Press. I agree with James Stone’s point, but I also think that we need to protect space for “public” broadcasting, in principle, even if it lets us down in practice. Not protesting and fighting cuts to public broadcasting is like not fighting cuts to the police when private security is on the rise. We need to defend the principle of public broadcasting and demand it rise to its potential.
I am glad to see someone finally correcting this continuing error. The New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, on October 14, blasted the French people for being irresponsible (“cradle-to-grave welfare systems”). His sole source of information was the Economy Minister (whom he had interviewed in very sumptuous surroundings. )
Only in several of the readers’ comments – mostly from France – was the other side told. There are severe restrictions on who can now take retirement below approximately age 65. For example, the retiree must have paid into the system for 41.5 years – being raised to 42 – with no credit for time spent in school, out of work, on maternity leave, etc. In Germany, by contrast, the pay-in time is 38 years.
Many students are waiting for their elders to retire and make jobs available. And many workers in their 50’s, subject to being laid off, fear that they now face two extra years of being unable to find a job. It isn’t that different from what threatens young and aging people in this country. The French are ahead of us in taking to the streets.
And as an American citizen and legal French resident living in France, I learned some time ago that France is not a “cradle-to-grave welfare system”. We do have the Bourse. American-style capitalism started infecting France some time ago. / At least there was an attempt to show the “solidarité” and “fraternié”. But as Americans can see (if they pay attention), once you get mired in the greed-is-good system, it’s difficult to turn the sliding mess around. // Jean Clelland-Morin
This is new to me. FAIR says one thing and everyone else–except here–says something else. I’m going to have to check to see what the normal retirement age is in France. If you turn out to be right, thanks for the information
nyt:
After nearly three weeks of debate and a series of national strikes, the French Senate voted Friday evening to pass President Nicolas Sarkozy’s bill to raise the minimum retirement age to 62 from 60 and the age for a FULL PENSION to 67 from 65
or as dean baker explains : “Age 60 is an early retirement age at which it is possible to retire with reduced benefits. It is comparable to the age 62 early retirement age in the U.S. system.”