I just told you why that wasn't such illegitimate policy.
I just told you the reason to go on strike was the fact of doing away with a privilege, as a principle. When it became clear that the new principle is equality, and no privilege without counterparty, the talk actually started on the pragmatic issues.
Often, less often, illegal means, stealing... Oh well. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
I wonder if you even read the explanation of the way a pay-as-you-go system compares to a privatised accounts system? Because you don't seem to have given any reason for why the employer can take the employee's money when he has borrowed it, but not when he has deposited it with a third party.
Does depositing money with a third party automatically launder the money and make it safe from the employer taking it? Does the employer have the right to refuse to repay money that he has borrowed just because he borrowed it from his employees?
When it became clear that the new principle is equality, and no privilege without counterparty, the talk actually started on the pragmatic issues.
There are two distinct issues at play here. The first issue is whether or not it is legitimate to strike on account of announced benefit cuts. And if you don't have tenure, it clearly is. If you don't have tenure, you can strike for whatever damn reason you want, and it's the employer's problem if he doesn't have enough tenured employees to cover his ass when that happens.
The other issue is whether an employer can renege on benefit payments from a pay-as-you-go benefit scheme. I can see no reason - even in principle - that he should be allowed to do that. In a pay-as-you-go scheme, the employer has been borrowing his employees' pension funds - funds that he would otherwise have had to pay out to third parties, who would then hold them in trust for his employees. As long as the employer doesn't default on the pension, that's a great idea, because it dispenses with a middleman who would otherwise have to be given a cut. But why does it allow the employer to suddenly renege on his debt?
You never answered that. You never even attempted to answer that. And the fact that other parts of the French labour force was robbed of their pensions is a complete red herring - that my neighbour robs a bank does not automatically permit me to rob a bank as well.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
