A QUICK search on French news in recent weeks will reveal that the country is having problems with their pension system.
The summary for the situation is that France’s pension is facing sustainability issues, and Emmanuel Macron decided that the best course of action is to extend the retirement age, sparking the protests.
France’s problem is not unique, however. It’s very likely that all countries with pension systems will face it sometime in the future.
Before the modern world, people worked until they died or were unable to do so. The idea of retirement did not exist. All this changed in 19th century Germany when they introduced the first pension program in the form of the Old Age and Disability Insurance Bill, which is basically the prototype for the modern pension system.
That system worked because Germany’s population at that time was expanding. The succeeding generation was larger than its predecessor, and as such could sustain the pensioners, who at that time, were smaller than their successor.
But now, things have changed. Developed countries are aging, and there are fears that, in the future, each working age adult will need to sustain two to four penshioners. This is why the French are protesting, but they are hardly the only ones facing this problem.
Most of the developed world and some developing ones have demographic problems. Japanese firms, for example, have raised the retirement age for workers to 80. Think on that. The reason is that the Japanese are facing the same problem as the French: Demographic Implosion.
The good news is that the Philippines is far away from this problem. The average age of the typical working Filipino is still quite young, but I think we will hit some kind of population limit eventually. When we do, we will face the same pension problem./PN
