New York State law requires that one out of every five Thomas Friedman columns make some sense. This one bags his quota for the month.
the French government's decision to raise its pension retirement age from 60 to 62
That's the early retirement age they're raising, to the same 62 as the US has. The normal retirement age is being raised from 65 to 67, 1 year later than the US at 66. Oopsies.
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/more-comm..., confirmed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement
Despite it all, I enjoy reading Friedman. Even though his job description is apparently "be professionally wrong about everything for the New York Times", there's something cozy and comfy about his writing. His tone communicates that the world makes sense and the moustache will explain it to you. What's interesting is how nice it makes one feel, even when one knows the probability of any sentence being bullshit approaches 1.
Edit: Friedman also has the merit of inspiring the greatest smackdown review of our time. There aren't nearly enough laughs of this calibre in this world:
Actually, Friedman gets a bit of a bum rap because he's so fun to make fun of. As long as you ignore all the (pseudo-)facts, some of his insights are pretty good.
Edit: It is interesting to consider how some of this stuff makes it past editors at a leading world newspaper, though. If people like us can google these things in our limited spare time, what the hell are they doing?