The French are sometimes ridiculed for their "unrealistic" worker demands but as a Dutch person, I greatly admire their unity.

Here in the Netherlands, we pride ourselves on our "polder model", a trinity of government, employers and unions that come to a consensus, hence no need to strike. That system worked well for some decades hence society runs on auto pilot.

Trouble is, due to globalization and ever more temp contracts (fire at will), the power of unions have been decimated and the combination government/employers are calling the shots, slowly eating away at worker rights.

Our "holy" retirement age used to be 65, unchanged for a huge amount of time. It was declared as unsustainable to keep it that way, instead it should become a rolling number, coupled with life expectancy. My pension fund predicts my retirement age at about 70.5.

This change was pushed through because keeping it at 65 would cost 5B per year for the foreseeable future. Absolutely unaffordable for our tiny country.

40B in support to keep businesses open during COVID though...just pulled from a hat. 25B in energy compensation so that households don't freeze to death...arranged in mere weeks.

Just saying...unaffordable means no political will.

Anyway, regardless of the money mechanics, retiring at 70+ is absurd. It effectively means no retirement at all. I know a huge amount of boomers, many were able to retire at 58-62, especially blue collar. Most by then already were in poor health but managed to pull off a decent decade of rest and joy with still some activity like going on holidays.

By 70 it's over. Some dead, the others depleted. Their partner may have died. They have severe health issues. No energy or will power left to truly have one more adventurous run. Hobbies abandoned. Health and quality of life declines exponentially. 60-70 and 70-80 are not the same thing.

Further, nobody actually wants these old people at work. Blue collar people are broken by then and white collar is either obsolete and outdated or strongly discriminated. I'm in my 40s and struggling to stay relevant.

The point of my rant is that there's always an economic reason to make workers' lives shittier. Always. Every time there's a rational reason to do so that seems to make sense. And that's how you end up working as a couple for 50 years straight. It's never going to be enough.

Only with unity as seen in France can you call out their bluff.

The age should actually be 60 and we should be having ever shorter worker weeks. A concept I call "time for wealth". In the future we probably have to do with less stuff. But it's not a vision for the future to say to people that their wealth is under pressure whilst still needing to work themselves to death.

Hence, we trade that wealth for time. You learn to live with less material goods which increases your appreciation of them. More durable/reparable products. Higher prices because externalities are included. Doesn't have to be bad at all, restoring some sanity here. In return for this material "poverty", you get more economic security, more free time, retire earlier. Also fits in well with our AI future that will disrupt work.

I think that's a vision people can get behind, and we'll still leave the door open for the super achievers that want more stuff.