It’s extremely hard to get good information about the present massive labor unrest in France.  US media coverage of the month of rolling strikes is full of half-truths and distortions.  Many progressives feel this relates to the specific focus of the strikes – the efforts by the French government to increase the retirement age – and efforts by Wall Street, the Obama administration and the mainstream media to soften up the American public for an increase in the age at which Americans qualify for Social Security.

The first critical point that the US media fails to make clear is that French President Nicholas Sarcozy is a conservative. The mainstream media likes to call his party, l’Union pour le Mouvement Populaire,  a “center-right party.” However the only French party to the right of Sarcozy is the National Front fascists. Sarcozy, a dyed in the wool neoliberal like Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and the Bush family, has always supported tax cuts for the wealthy (both the super rich and the 20% of the population who live very comfortably propping up France’s increasingly neoliberal political system) and social service cuts for everyone else.

Below are other fallacies and false assumptions by the US media on the reason French workers are in the street:

Fallacy 1: The French unions are wasting their time because the law increasing the minimum pension age has already been passed by the French legislature.

Fact:  The law has passed the National Assembly, and the French senate has approved both key planks. However the final senate vote doesn’t occur till October 20^th.

Fallacy 2: The minimum age at which French workers can receive government retirement benefits must be increased because the program operates at a deficit and French debt levels must be reduced. If the French fail to reduce their national debt, they will lose their AAA credit rating. Which means Goldman Sachs and other global financial institutions will charge them a higher rate of interest on the money they borrow to run the government. (In other words, to quote neoliberal queen Margaret Thatcher:  “There is no alternative.”)

Fact: France actually has a number of alternatives to increasing the retirement age – the simplest, in the short term, would be to raise taxes to cover the deficit (duh!). Another, long term, alternative would be to withdraw from the Euro.

• Raising tax rates:

At present France’s graduate income tax rates end at 40% on annual income of 70,000 Euros. Historically the US has dealt with economic crises by increasing the marginal tax rate – in other words, extending the tax rate incrementally on earners above a comfortable. For example, during World War I, the marginal tax rate on the wealthy increased incrementally (by 1-2% every $10,000-$25,000) to the point that people making over $1 million paid 77% income tax. In World War II, the upper tax rate was 75% on people earning over $5 million and in 1954 (under a Republican president just after the Korean War), the upper tax rate was 91% on people earning over $700,000.

The US enacted these higher marginal tax rates on the assumption that rich people felt as strongly as poor people about meeting domestic needs during war time  – the need for a strong, robust economy with quality education (in France there is also strong public support for government guaranteed universal health care), good infrastructure maintenance and vibrant, safe communities – not only for themselves, but for their children and grandchildren.

Now all western democracies operate under the neoliberal assumption that all rich people are selfish, greedy bastards that don’t give a damn about their communities or their children and grandchildren. I frankly don’t believe this is true.

• Withdrawing from the Euro:

The whole assumption that the only way to finance government operations is to borrow money from private financial institutions is a neoliberal scam. The creation of the Euro (removing the ability of European central banks to issue money or set their own interest rates – and forcing governments to cut debt and social services) is also a neoliberal scam. Moreover there is increasing evidence that the move – beginning in the 1980s – to shift control of national currencies and monetary supply away from democratic government control to private financial institutions was one of the major causes of the global financial collapse.

Fallacy 3: People are living longer, and French workers who object to increasing the retirement age from age 60-62 are just slackers.

Fact:  The proposed law would increase the age, from 60 to 62, at which workers can retire early and receive a reduced (lifetime) benefit. It also sets a minimum of 41 years of full time employment before French workers can retire with a full pension. Which means students who don’t begin full time work till they complete university and tradesmen required to do an apprenticeship – who often start full time work in their mid to late twenties – may be working until 68 or 69 before they qualify for a pension.

Fact:  Working past age 60 may be okay for an office worker who sits at a computer all day. The reality is that as many as 1/3 of workers age 55 and over (the percent is estimated to be somewhat higher in France) perform physically demanding jobs, involving lifting, stooping, kneeling, crouching, extended standing and close to 50% of them suffer from arthritis, with nearly. Nearly thirty percent of workers between 55-60 have chronic pain on job. The New York Times recently reviewed an important study of the medical problems of workers over 55 who perform manual labor (see http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/us/13aging.html?_r=1)

Ironically manual workers typically pay more into social security (starting at age 18, rather than age 25-30, like their more educa

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