The events in Iran have sucked all the oxygen out of other stories and dominates news coverage.  But it is still a big world out there with all sort of things happening.

Take France, for instance.  A short while ago, French president Emmanuel Macron proposed much needed reforms to France's pension system, which the government is mainly responsible for maintaining.  The pension system is said to be generous and is now facing a $19-billion deficit.

The reforms that Macron proposed were modest.  It was basically to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 and to standardize pensions across the country.  Well, the roof caved in.  As the New York Times reports, massive strikes, marches, and demonstrations across the country ensued, convulsing the economy.

YouTube screen grab (cropped).

This forced "Macron's government to carve out a series of concessions to individual professions in recent days — the police, dancers at the Paris opera, airline flight attendants, pilots— moving back towards precisely the same type tailored retirement structure his reform sought to end."

This past Saturday, things turned violent, with anti-government protesters, mostly union people, clashing with police.  The Times reports that a bank branch was sacked, bus shelters burned, and other fires set.  This prompted government into another hasty retreat, saying it would withdraw the proposed age limit change and "postpone major decisions on how to keep the system solvent until it can better assess the situation between now and the end of April." 

In response, Marine Le Pen criticized Macron, saying: "You introduce something that's unacceptable, and then you withdraw it.  Nothing justifies this reform."  Nothing?  The pension fund running out of money is nothing?

In a competitive world, the French seem to believe they can still have what they want without paying for it.  There is a suggestion of how to solve the pension dilemma, however.  It comes from one Philippe Martinez, leader of the hard-line General Confederation of Workers union.  He says the government has to permanently scrap the entire reform effort.  His solution to the pension deficit?  Simple.  Just raise salaries.

Based on the attitude of unionists like Martinez and the right-wing politician Le Pen, the answer to the question of whether reform is possible in France appears to be no, at least not any time soon.

Before becoming too smug about the French predicament, ask yourself if America is very different.  When faced with the problem of wanting to spend what it can't afford, our political class doesn't say "just raise salaries."  Instead, it simply borrows or creates the money necessary.  This is why our national debt is over $21 trillion, with a trillion dollars projected to be added each year.  To that amount can be added the unfunded liabilities of programs like Social Security and Medicare and the pension shortfalls of many states.

Not satisfied, leftist economic professors and some high-level Democrats are pushing the snake oil of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).  In a nutshell, MMT would take the brakes off any semblance of fiscal restraint and responsibility and be used to fund every dream the progressives ever had. 

This addiction to government debt has seemingly worked out only because the bill hasn't yet come due.  But someday, the reckoning will come.  It will take a true crisis of a Fourth Turning magnitude to bring fiscal responsible behavior back into vogue.  This will be a time of pain and suffering as the system readjusts itself to a new norm.  It may be that most of us will not be around when that happens.  However, our children or grandchildren will be, which is what happens when you borrow from the future.