> « the results of this report do not validate the idea that pension spendings are growing uncontrolled »

It's an organisation which contains unions, and it's not their place to discuss the public budget.

> That's funny because the report is really not as pessimistic as you say

Which is asinine. Their "pessimistic" vision is for 2% year on year growth, which is wildly optimistic in my view; their "it's not too bad, only 15% of GDP" is among the worst in the OECD (along other countries with budget issues like Spain and Italy); their "for pensioners to have 75% of the median quality of life of working people" sounds far from great, and a massive downgrade from today. So they're saying it's going to cost a crapton of money which the country doesn't have, for worse quality of life, but that's fine?

> Well of course they did just that. We need to work less, not more

We need to, and should, ideally. But who will pay for it?

> (taking from housing aids APL the same month they remove ISF tax on the rich)

As I said elsewhere, removing the ISF resulted in a net tax benefit (https://www.selexium.com/actualites/bilan-suppression-isf-gr... as a source that highly wealthy people are coming back to France, Insee have the stats on tax income per wealth).

> This is a non-argument. The "amenities of modern life" are provided by slave labor, mostly from Africa and Asia. Half of people who work in Europe are producing nothing of value to anyone. And those who try to find meaning in their work are prevented by the bureaucrats. I recommend reading David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs, and watching his talk from CCC called Managerial feudalism and the revolt of the caring classes.

Amenities of modern life is electronics (most of which comes from Asia indeed) but also cars, entertainment (movies, books, series, food, music, amusement parks), everything digital, etc. Not saying all of it has value in itself, but modern people consume a lot of things that didn't even exist a century ago. A lot of the surplus productivity has went there.

> To quote a friend of mine, who's only middle class, « we should pay more taxes ».

That's commendable attitude, but the problem is, many people don't see it like this. And when you raise taxes too much for those, they'll simply move to Belgium or Switzerland or Luxembourg, and then you lose.

> Most multinationals do not pay any taxes, while well-known fortunes pay a very small amount due to various montages (see LuxLeaks/BahamasLeaks & others).

Yes, and this is things France is actively working on fixing. They require multinational cooperation so it's not easy, but France is one of the most active countries on that front, consistently pushing the OECD and the EU.

> If not, why defend a fascist government who's only concerned about the rich

Oh please, there's nothing fascist about that government. Even the pretty far to the right Darmanin isn't fascist, let alone them as a whole. And I'm going to disagree they're only concerned about the rich; their focus is on the economy and budget as a whole, which translates into serious focus on the wealthy capitalist class, yes; but I've also seen big improvements making it easier for people to start their own business or get to work. Some of them are highly misguided like reducing unemployment benefits to push people to get back earlier, but still.

To make it more personal: it stings a bit when I see how much of my salary goes to taxes, but I'm well off and I could be taxed a bit more without it impacting my life in the slightest; but I'm not one of those people who see money earned as the ultimate objective in life, so I'm not going to run away if my taxes get too high. That being said, my partner worked in the public sector for a few years, and it really pained me to hear the amount of incompetent fools stealing a living and the amount of layers of waste; that hasn't changed my view on taxes though, and I still happily pay them because I know the majority of it goes to good places for good reasons, and I can stomach some waste.