Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
What Elizabeth Warren could learn from Emmanuel Macron
What Elizabeth Warren could learn from Emmanuel Macron
Apr 20, 2025 12:25 PM

A cartoon published just after the fall of the Berlin Wall showed two travelers moving in different directions, one personifying former Eastern Bloc nations and the other the NATO allies: The two met as the former Warsaw Pact countries rushed away from socialism and the West hurried toward it.

Soon, those characters could symbolize France and the United States.

Indeed, today, our two nations could be represented by two specific people: Emmanuel Macron and Elizabeth Warren. James C. Capretta of the American Enterprise Institute contrasts their proposed reforms to pensions/Social Security in a new article for RealClearPolicy.

There is, no doubt, a pension problem looming in both nations. The French think tank Fondation IFRAP notes that even today’s pension numbers gloss over the depths of the problem. “If today our system is considered balanced, that is thanks to the €32 billion that the pension system receives from other schemes,” the organization states. “[T]hese figures do not take into account the deficit of the civil servants pension scheme that can be estimated between 6 and 10 billion euros financed directly from the state budget.” And U.S. politicians long ago raided the Social Security trust fund to finance other spending programs.

Macron would streamline France’s 42 separate retirement accounts into one, unified national system. The government also initially suggested raising the retirement age to 64, from 62. “Among the thirty-six countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), only men in Luxembourg retire earlier (age 59.7, on average),” Capretta notes.

However, the nation has seen numerous strikes – including a rail strike last April – demanding the right of, e.g., rail employees to retire with full benefits at age 52. Thus, Macron shifted to proposing that people must contribute into the system longer before retiring. The “points-based” system, which would be closer to the U.S. Social Security model, may encourage people to enter the workforce at a younger age. (The unemployment rate in France is 10 percentage points higher than in Germany.)

Senator Warren, on the other hand, has proposed increasing Social Security payments by $200 a month, lifting the “max tax” on wealthy individuals and, for the first time, taxing investment e to pay into the fund. The move would shift Social Security from a quasi-pension system based on workers’ contributions to a more explicitly welfare state program aimed at redistributing wealth.

Capretta lists other issues with the proposal before noting:

Macron and Warren have differing objectives. He wants a reform that promotes economic growth while protecting the elderly and social cohesion. She wants to redistribute e (and appeal to voters in the Democratic primaries).

Macron, for all his faults, campaigned on the hope of reinvigorating the French economy by opening it to greater investment and introducing flexibility into its famously rigid labor market. Warren is capitalizing on young people’s positive view of socialism and government centralization to offer tax-and-spend proposals as a panacea.

Christians must go beyond campaign promises to learn the painful, paralyzing role the welfare state has played in transatlantic history. Then, when we consider our future, we can exercise “the mother of all virtues”: prudence. Otherwise, our nation may cross paths with France en route to economic stagnation.

Legrand – COMEO/. Editorial use only.)

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Do We Want Prices to Fool Us?
J.C. Penney recently gave up on last year’s strategy to abandon sales and coupons in favor of “everyday low pricing.” As an article in the New York Times points out, “simplifying pricing, it turns out, is not that simple”: “It may be a decent deal to buy that item for $5,” said Ms. Fobes, who runs Penny Pinchin’ Mom, a blog about couponing strategies. “But for someone like me, who’s always looking for a sale or a coupon — seeing...
Hostility Against Religion: It’s a Rising Tide
The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has been studying the steady rise of hostility towards religious expression and religious liberty worldwide. In fact, they found that restrictions on religion rose in every major area of the world, including the United States, since the study began in 2009. Citing what the Pew Forum calls “social hostilities” (as opposed to government hostilities), the study found that Pakistan, India and Iraq were the most hostile countries to religious freedom. The Social...
Samuel Gregg: ‘Veritatis Splendor – The Encyclical That Mattered’
Samuel Gregg, Director of Research at Acton, discusses Blessed John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth) in a new article in Crisis Magazine. Entitled, ‘Veritatis Splendor: The Encyclical That Mattered’, Gregg makes the claim that this encyclical may e one of the greatest in history. Why? For one thing, Veritatis Splendor was the first encyclical to spell out the Catholic Church’s fundamental moral teaching. Catholicism had of course always articulated the moral dimension of Christ’s message....
Hipsters and Elitists versus Chain Stores
New York City’s hipster and elitist class seem to believe that they should have some role in determining what business owners do with their property. Like hipsters and elitists around the country, New York’s cohort are banding together to panies that do not present the utopian vision for the neighbors where these elites dwell (most of whom are renters, by the way). There is much buzz in New York City right now because more and more national chains are setting...
Acton University’s Featured Speakers Announced
Acton University is just two months away and we’ve just confirmed our featured lecturers for the big event. Check out their bios below. The four featured speakers are: Rev. Robert Sirico He is president and co-founder of the Acton Institute. Fr. Sirico serves on the staff of Sacred Heart of Jesus parish in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His writings on religious, political, economic, and social matters are published in a variety of journals, including: theNew York Times, theWall Street Journal,Forbes, theLondon...
A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence on School Choice
A new report by Greg Forster of the Friedman Foundation finds that of all the “gold standard” research on children who utilize school vouchers, 11 of 12 studies conclude all or some of those students achieve better educational es. No study found choice participants were worse off than those remaining in traditional public schools: The evidence points clearly in one direction. Opponents frequently claim school choice does not benefit participants, hurts public schools, costs taxpayers, facilitates segregation, and even undermines...
Review: Fr. McCloskey on ‘Becoming Europe’
Fr C. John McCloskey, a Church historian and research fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington, recently reviewed Samuel Gregg’s ing Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future. He says: Samuel Gregg, director of research at the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Mich., has written a very timely book, given the concerning state of our economy and, more importantly, our ever-declining moral life. … ing Europe opens with an account of the human...
Bitcoin as ‘Super Fiat’ Currency
Joe has done us all a real service in putting together his three part (1, 2, 3) primer on Bitcoin (full PDF here). I am curious, though, what the justification is for referring to Bitcoin as a modity” currency. Consider this from Izabella Kaminska at the FT Alphaville blog: For those who insist that the term “fiat” refers exclusively to government-issued fiat currency, it’s perhaps better to interpret our use in the evolutionary sense. Meaning that Bitcoin (and other virtual...
What Christians Should Know About Bitcoin (Part 3 of 3)
[Note: This is the third entry in a three part series. You can read the introductory posthereand part two here.] The Disadvantages of Bitcoin For people who are not obsessed with anonymity and are not waiting for the U.S. to return to the gold standard, the reasons for avoiding entering the Bitcoin market are numerous: 1. Convertibility – Whereas other currencies are convertible into other financial instruments (dollars to checks to certificates of deposit, etc.) and through numerous third-party services...
A Night At The Movies: Higher Costs, Less Hours For Employees
If your next date night costs you more, you can thank Obamacare. Regal Entertainment Group, the country’s largest movie theater chain, has announced that it is cutting employee hours due to Obamacare related costs. One Regal theater manager told the move has sparked a wave of resignations from full-time managers who have seen their hours cut by 25 percent or more. “In the last couple weeks, managers have been quitting on a daily basis from various locations to try and...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved