Blocking the Louvre Won't Defuse Pensions Bomb
Demographic denial is the new climate denial.
The uncollected trash in Paris still runs high, along with tensions over pension reform.
Photographer: NurPhoto/NurPhotoThe French word of the month is “chienlit,” a centuries-old term literally meaning to soil the bed; it’s used today to describe the havoc in the streets. Famously deployed in the days of Charles de Gaulle during the 1968 student riots, it’s back in fashion after 10 days of strikes triggered by Emmanuel Macron’s hike in the minimum retirement age to 64 from 62.
The expression is French, as are the recent images of uncollected garbage being set on fire and clashes against riot police, but the root problem goes beyond France. We are in the grip of what Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan in 2020 dubbed “The Great Demographic Reversal”: An end to several decades of benign economic trends in inflation, interest rates and inequality. Worryingly, while climate denialism is being rolled back, demographic denialism is on the rise.