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Thomas Piketty: Several universal retirement schemes are possible

Could we possibly have a reasoned debate about the several alternative retirement schemes? To judge from the government’s attitude, one might well doubt it.

21. januar 2020

The current government is endeavouring to restrict the discussion to the following schema: either you support my project (which remains extremely vague) or you are an old-time defender of the privileges of the past and refuse any change.

The problem with this binary approach is that in reality there are many ways of constructing a universal retirement scheme, depending on whether the focus is on social justice and the reduction of inequalities ranging from the « common pension system » (« maison commune des régimes de retraite ») long defended by the CGT (General Confederation of Labout) to the project presented in the Delevoye Report. In 2008, Antoine Bozio and I published a short book outlining possible paths for unification of the schemes. This publication had a number of limits and the discussions which ensued enabled me to clarify several basic points.