Walk this way...

I woke up this morning with one objective in mind. Go to the market and get some delightful nourishment for this weekend's meals. Before heading out, I made myself some pancakes and gnerally just took my time leaving the apartment. Finally I was ready, so I headed out onto the streets to make the cross-town walk to the market. Now sure, Saturdays are pretty busy days around town because no one has to work and today the weather is beautiful, but as I was walking, I noticed there seemed to be an awful lot of people walking with me, and in the same direction. About 3 blocks in I decided that something must be going on today in the main square. When I reached one of the big squares in town I did indeed run into a large mass of people. It didn't take me long to figure out what this rally/march/social gathering/leisurely walk in the middle of the streets was about.
For quite a while now there have been many strikes and marches going on about the proposed action of the French government to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62. Now, the whole point behind the age increase is to help the government be able to continue paying into the pension system. With the growing life expectancy, some people end up living off the government pension system for 15 to 20 years! Essentially that means if you start working when you are 20, work til 60, live til 80, you'll live off the government half of the time you actually worked. Sounds like a sweet deal to me, no wonder everyone is so upset by the fact they'd have to work another 2 years to help the pension system keep running so the country doesn't run out of money and then people would have to go back to work when they are 70.
An interesting point was raised by John Stewart this week on the Daily Show. In Europe people are striking because the government wants to cut funding to public programs and in the US people are all in a tizzy because the government wants to increase funding to public programs. The pure fact that I told you I watch John Stewart, and live in France so have a slightly more "European" mindset probably indicates to you which way I think might work best. I ask myself often what makes the mindset of Europeans and Americans so different. This is just one more subject in which the differences can be pondered.