I’ve passed the magic 65, as have many of us here in the US contingent.

If I were to retire, and take my Social Security now, I would bring home $X dollars, which is about 1/4 of what I currently earn: we live someplace expensive, but *nothing* like a real city (NY, LA, SF, blah blah). My wife could keep her job until *she* retires, but we’d be on the streets in a few months anyway, unless I keep going. My 401k went the way of the dodo when I was trying not to lose our home. Lost it anyway: should have left the keys in the mailbox and walked away two decades ago. Oh, well…

In a couple more years, I’ll be 70, and my SS will be $1.2X. Whoopee, because prices will be $1.5X.

So I have to figure out when to take it. Sooner, so that I don’t die and miss out? Or later, when I’ll supposedly get more (but not nearly enough), and die anyway? Or get vaporized? How do I judge when to “retire”, to most efficiently starve while trying to maximize what fraction of my contributions I get back? This is what the Owners are counting on- people will just give up, and leave all their contributions to *ahem* “someone else.”

Right. There’s that- that’s me in a nutshell. So, I’m among the “oh, fuck it” brigade. And I’ll die at my desk, because I can never afford to retire. There is no rest for the wicked. Only MBAs get to retire, and I don’t wanna be anywhere near any of them anyway.

Social Security? I missed that boat. Sad, but not really a factor any more. Unless I put our last dimes into a camper, or we expat to someplace Wicked Cheap, we will always be just a paycheck or two from hard sleeping.

And maybe even then. We didn’t pick our parents well enough, it seems, and we weren’t smart enough to avoid economic downturns and house fires. Such is life.

But it seems that everybody in the US is somehow comfortable with this- mostly because they just won’t think about it. And ultimately, bad fortune is the result of bad decisions, right? Someone else’s problem.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls…

the pension issues...

They are mostly doomed to fail - likely by getting inflated out of meaningful existence. Mine would be perfectly adequate if I could just live on nothing at all for ten months of the year or so. Fortunately, I took semi-retirement many decades ago so have little to complain about.

But about France in particular, 62 does seem low, but I don't get the impression that the change itself is necessarily what is stoking the anger. Covid policy, immigration and the fact that Macron imposed the retirement policy change without the approval of the legislature all seem to be issues.

And there is police violence and the broader issue of French institutions being under the control of a relatively tiny pool of connected elites...

Was watching some coverage of the demonstrations there just this morning and many of the signs were along the lines of 'Down with the Police State' - something more than a few non-French should be able to relate to.

Ranging from about 50 (Cameroon) to 68 or so (Finland, Netherlands). Wikipedia has a table here.

It doesn’t matter what the rules are in some other country; the important thing for most people is what they expect to happen for themselves. The retirement age for your country is part of the basic rules for your society. Many people carefully plan their finances based on when they can/will retire, and what their circumstances are likely to be after that point. So when the government suddenly says "No, you have to wait 3 more years (or whatever)…”, people can get very upset, because it seems like a kind of a betrayal of the basic rules of the game.

When the retirement age in the US was raised, the government gave everybody years to prepare for it. I don’t know if France is doing that or if the change is sudden.