Lhe fact that debt is becoming a normal and lasting method of financing pensions is no longer a cause for concern. Although this financing resembles a Ponzi scheme and impoverishes us a little more each year, some persist in denying the need for reform.
The report of the Pensions Orientation Council (COR) showed that the current system leads to an inevitable erosion of pensions. Even though the COR underestimates the deficit by ignoring the balancing subsidies paid by the State and local authorities to finance the pensions of their agents, it writes without ambiguity that the financial situation will deteriorate from 2022 to 2032 (and , in certain scenarios, until… 2070) with a deficit of –0.5% to –0.8% of GDP.
This is all very logical. In a pay-as-you-go system, working people pay pensions for retirees. The system was viable in 1960, when there were 4 workers for 1 retiree. But, in 2022, with 1.4 contributors for 1 retiree in the private sector and 0.9 contributors for 1 retiree in the public sector, salaries would have to be taxed at 28% in the private sector and 89% in the public sector to achieve the balance. A pension reform is therefore essential. But which ?
We are being asked to raise the retirement age. Why not ? But that will only push back the deadlines. As long as the aging of the population worsens, we condemn ourselves to having to regularly postpone retirement, in perpetuity. Others propose that the State compensates. With a debt of 129% of GDP, this will obviously not happen.
Pharmacists did
Others want to end special diets. Yes, some are expensive. But the abolition of the RATP scheme, for example, will only bring in the first year from 7 to 10 million euros, and that of the SNCF, from 23 to 35 million. Should we spoil our reforming energy for such small stakes? Let’s not be fooled: focusing communication on the end of special regimes makes it possible to designate scapegoats and divert attention from the real issues. Incidentally, some special regimes have a surplus and the State also has the unacknowledged idea of taking control of their reserves…
A useful first step would be to require the State to fund the pensions of civil servants. Today it does not, and their pensions are not guaranteed. A category C employee born after 1980 will receive a retirement pension below the poverty line.
But the real reform would consist of supplementing the pay-as-you-go system, made insufficient by demographics, with compulsory savings. Pharmacists have done it: in 2009 they introduced a collective capitalization model which now finances 50% of their pensions. The same goes for the Senate and the Banque de France, which, protected by their independence, have developed their collective capitalizations for more than a century. Even if this is largely ignored, civil servants also have such a fund, effective although too modest, because not topped up, the Additional Public Service Pension Establishment, which pays them 2 billion each year in addition to their distribution .
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