Let's retire to France

Quick, somebody send Jerry Lewis to cheer up these grouches:

PARIS — Hundreds of flights were canceled, frantic drivers lined up for fuel and hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, took to the streets of Paris and other cities on Tuesday as protests over President Nicolas Sarkozy's plans to change France's pension system mounted in advance of a final parliamentary vote this week.

[. . .]

But Mr. Sarkozy has shown no sign of abandoning his plan to raise the minimum retirement age to 62 from 60.

“The reform is essential and France is committed to it and will go ahead with it just as our German partners did,” he told reporters late Monday in the Normandy resort of Deauville, Reuters reported.

Work till they're 62? Poor babies! I'm sitting here with a "normal" retirement age of 66 (i.e., no reduced Social Security check) and the knowledge that if I work till I'm 70 I might have enough to retire on, and these clowns have the nerve to protest 62? The lesson for us here, of course, as we continue slouching toward European-style social democracy, is that what the government giveth can be hard to taketh.