Polimom’s finding it very hard to feel much sympathy for the rioting students in France, who are the laughing-stock of the western world (and now, Polimom).
“It’s a revolution!” they cry, righteous with their suffering. “Vive le France!”
“Pfffft”, responds Polimom. These “revolutionaries” are cry-babies who, when faced with the possibility of competition for jobs, are throwing themselves on the ground in the finest two-year-old form, intent on maintaining a status quo that has crippled their own economy for decades. From the BBC:
Such odd revolutionaries. No heartfelt cry to change the world, but a plea for everything to stay the same.
For France to remain in its glorious past: a time of full employment and jobs for life – a paternalistic state to take care of them from cradle to grave.
I stand in awe at this demonstration of French hubris and willing self-destruction, but there’s a reason for their delusions: the French system has taught them that to be taken care of by the government is a human right . There is no room for normal job creation through capitalism; the government is expected to create jobs and then maintain them. Forever and ever, amen.
From the National Review:
In France, you see, companies don’t grow because it’s too costly to hire while it’s against the law to fire. Hence, since they rarely add jobs, French businesses under-perform, under-produce, and under-employ. Think of it: It’s awfully tough to increase output without a growing workforce to produce it.
The Villepin reform, of course, would make it a lot easier for firms to hire since they would no longer have to lock-in high wages and benefit costs without first confirming worker productivity, at least for two years. But in response to this mild capitalist reform, a reported 500,000 students have emerged in angry protest. There’s now even a threat of a general strike, with government unions, trade unions, and student unions possibly teaming together to shut down the entire French economy (or what’s left of it).
As it happens, France has been headed down the tubes for quite a while, and this threat of a general strike has the very real potential of doing far more than “shutting down the entire French economy”. It could remove them from the global economic stage altogether.
Theodore Dalrymple compared this latest round of French Follies to the South African strikes of 1922, but Polimom sees a parallel much closer to home – the attempts of whites in the southern United States to maintain their way of life in the face of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s. Of course, that could be nothing more than my American sensitivity to the masks and hoods – but then again, maybe not.
Yes, Polimom thinks it’s funny indeed that France, who so quickly called out the effects of racism in the wake of Katrina, would now fight so hard to maintain their own status quo.