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A comment on Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year will be invested in EU. Parent comment

Re:Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year... by seszett on Thursday January 22, 2026 @01:32PM (#46723286)
There's no "enforced savings" that I know of in Europe.

3.50% in the US sounds extremely low to me. It has fallen a bit recently but the savings rate was about 25% in France in 2020. Common knowledge says to strive to save at the very least 10% of one's revenue around here.

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Re:Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year... by Epa095 on Thursday January 22, 2026 @01:55PM (#46723589)
It seems like savings include pension ([1], but it is a bit unclear to me) , and that is a kind of forced saving (as in many places in Europe you can't choose to not get pension and get it as cash to spend instead).

1: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

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Re:Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year... by seszett on Thursday January 22, 2026 @02:18PM (#46723865)
It's not clear to me either, but as I understand it it doesn't include pensions because social contributions are not part of "disposable income".

I think that "the net adjustment for change in pension entitlements" is there to take into account the expected reduced future income from pension entitlements dwindling over time (edit: in effect, making pensions count as negative savings) somehow, but it's unclear.

I looked for another perspective but the French national bank doesn't mention pensions in its explanations[0].

[0] https://www.banque-france.fr/system/files/2024-08/epargne-de...

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Re:Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year... by victorbjorklund on Thursday January 22, 2026 @02:12PM (#46723793)
Sounds like they don’t count that. They seem to only count disposable income and payments the company does to your retirement aren’t really disposable
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Re:Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year... by mkjs on Thursday January 22, 2026 @02:01PM (#46723655)
The UK has "enforced savings" in the form of auto-enrollment pensions for over 10 years. Looks like Ireland is just starting to do it too.
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Re:Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year... by swarnie on Thursday January 22, 2026 @02:04PM (#46723697)
That's mostly to prepare teenagers at the time for having no state pension in 50 years.

I have about seven of the buggers and I'm only in my mid 30s.....

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Re:Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year... by frameset on Thursday January 22, 2026 @02:55PM (#46724360)
Pensions or teenagers?
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Re:Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year... by thatguy0900 on Thursday January 22, 2026 @01:47PM (#46723489)
There is a very large and growing portion of the US that maintains no savings at all. In fact it's the opposite and many are slowly spending their way into perpetual credit card debt.
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Re:Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year... by direwolf20 on Thursday January 22, 2026 @01:53PM (#46723563)
It's essential to the way the system works. One person's money is another person's debt. Normally the government would take on enough debt to ensure everyone had money, but the USA is a weird case.
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Re:Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year... by lotsofpulp on Thursday January 22, 2026 @09:48PM (#46727745)
Money and debt are just mechanisms to allocate resources. The government can print infinite money like Zimbabwe and it wouldn’t matter if there aren’t enough resources to allocate.
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Re:Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year... by Hamuko on Thursday January 22, 2026 @01:40PM (#46723413)
According to some sources, 1 in 4 Americans don't/can't save at all.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/13/economy/job-prices-debt-e...

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