Not going to support the “stupid” claim, I suspect the French public do have alternative solutions to their predicament in mind, some better than others no doubt, but ill take a stab at the answer: Context: The French government is underfunded, their debt burden is not healthy and if nothing changes they’re headed towards Greek-style economic problems (ie cost of debt gets too high, nobody trusts them enough to lend them the money they need, default could mean nobody will lend them money in future, so high risk, but avoiding default could mean enforced austerity as conditions of bailouts, which would be far more painful than just a retirement age change). Answer: Increasing the retirement age increases the working population (ie taxable population) and decreases the pension burden, so it’s one of the most effective levers to ease the costs to the government. The downside of course is it’s reneging on a contract with their own population, people working their whole lives with the promise of retirement are understandably not impressed when the goalposts are moved.

Pensions outspend every other social expense in France

The retirees have greater disposable income than the young people (read, most people in the labour market)

And of course the number of retirees is going up every day

Retirning early costs money. A lot. Every year you retire earlier is one year of income to pay extra, and one year of capitalisation less.

To give an idea of the orders of magnitude. France is 70M inhabitants. If 20 million people receive a pension of 24K€ one year longer, that's 480B€. The French yearly budget is 843B€. In total, France has spent between 8B€ - 27B$ on supporting Ukraine since 2022 (one of the other talking points)

France has just managed to increase retirement age to 64 years, and there are voices to re-instate it to 62. For reference:

• Germany: 65 to 67 years (depending on birth year; 67 for those born from 1964)

• United Kingdom: 66 years (rising to 67)

• Spain: 65 to 66.5 years (depending on career length)

• Netherlands: 67 years

The retirement age was moved from 65 to 60 in 1982, by the socialist Mitterand government. Life expectency has increased 9 years since then, and they have been trying (desperately) to move it back up since then.

Not retiring early means that money can be spent on other things. Such as the better schooling that the French kids were asking for.

It will also help in getting the French budget balanced. Something which it has not been since 1974. The EU rules require a national debt of max 60% of GNP. France is currently at 120%. For reference, Germany is at 63%, the Netherlands are at 44%. Spain is at 100%, and slowly falling.

Every western country with a pension system is slowly getting crushed under the weight of an ever-growing share of pensioners relative to the working age population. People live to 85 now, supporting 20 years of pension and healthcare while they vote against property tax increases, building housing, retirement age increases or any cut at all to their benefits is going to wreck the finances of any country. They were using immigration to backstop the system but that's slowing down now and is anyways not a sustainable solution.