In France a general strike has been underway now for days (all but ignored by the US press and media). The demands of the strikers are to prevent France’s president, Macron, from imposing what is in essence the ‘American Retirement System model’ on France’s workers. That ‘American Model’ itself has been a gross failure in the US–as more than half of all US workers now have no savings whatsoever; as 401k private pensions have replaced traditional defined benefit pension plans; as 401ks now provide barely $50k in total retirement resources for those at retirement age; and as Social Security monthly benefits barely average $1,200.
More cuts of pensions and social security benefits are forthcoming in 2021, moreover, as US budget deficits now exceed more than $1 trillion per year and as the US National Debt exceeds $23 trillion, projected to grow further by more than $1 trillion throughout the next decade.
As tens of millions of US retirees now face a growing crisis of incomes insufficient in retirement, more of them 65 and older are re-entering the labor force to try to make ends meet, making the 65 and over age group the fastest growing in the US labor force. The ‘American Model’ itself has failed terribly and continues to unravel still further next decade–as savings collapse and disappear, more defined benefit pension plans disappear, and as attacks on social security intensify after the 2020 election to pay for US deficits and debt.
LISTEN TO MY December 20, 2019 Alternative Visions radio show on the evolution and collapse of the US retirement system from 1980 to the present, and how France’s elites are trying to impose a similar failing American Model retirement system–and why French workers are protesting in the streets across the country in an epic struggle that may topple France’s president Macron.
GO TO: http://alternativevisions.podbean.com
SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT:
For the past week a general strike has been happening in France, the focus of which is to protest and prevent President Macron from introducing an ‘American Model’ of retirement system that would raise retirement age and reduce pension retirement benefits. What’s the ‘American Model’? Dr. Rasmus provides a historical overview of that model, created in the late 1940s based on the so-called ‘triple stool’ of retirement: social security, defined benefit pension plans (DBPs), and personal savings. Each was supposed to provide one-third of income of a reasonable retirement. Rasmus explains the evolution of social security, DBPs, and savings since Reagan and how all three have been steadily undermined, reduced, or destroyed since the 1980s—replaced by 401ks, cash balance plans, raised retirement years, and privatization of pensions. Today more than half of workers have no savings whatsoever, 401ks provide less than $50k on average for the rest of lifetimes, and social security averages less than $1,200 a month. Retirees are forced to work until they drop now, the fastest growing segment of the US labor force as they return to part time employment. Tens of millions are now facing a retirement crisis of unimaginable dimensions. (Next week: a guest, Alan Benjamin, an eyewitness to the strike in progress, will describe what’s actually going on in the French strike to prevent the ‘Americanization’ of the retirement system in France).
Dr. Jack Rasmus @drjackrasmus
Jack Rasmus 
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