Posted on 11/04/2005 5:36:05 AM PST by JohnLongIsland
And that's why my Schadenfreude is tempered.
Skywalk, in Post #114 you got it exactly.
That is not a new article. I read it awhile ago.
For reference, I have spent weeks in "La Zone"...Bondy, Le Blanc-Mesnil, Bures-en-Yvette. I have many relatives who live there. I've lived in the 10th, in Belleville, and 19th.
I think that some of what is in the article is accurate, but some of it is comic-book exaggeration. Things are not good in Clichy. Obviously. There's a riot going on. But everyone is not a howling 19 year old thug.
As far as the source of the problem, I would say that the "socialist" epithet is facile.
It is not the fact that everyone has health insurance that makes them so, nor that those who work get a pension. Nor is it the fact that there are housing projects, which low-income people must rent. It is not the fact that there is a universal public school system of good quality. All of these things are "socialism", properly called, and they are not the source of the problems.
Non-integration is the problem.
And the primary source of that is the inability to find work.
Joblessness is the real cancer eating at France, and socialism does not cause it. Indeed, public pension and medical plans, in the long run, benefit companies, by allowing them to focus on business and not have to also run insurance departments.
The chief cause of French joblessness has been rigidity in the labor law, and rigidity in access to capital.
But let's not fool ourselves. In America, the government sector employs some 40% of the workforce, when one factors in all levels of government, security forces, military, and regulatory agencies. The American solution to the same problem that is facing France today was to massively expand the civil service, and make the government the employer of last resort.
In France, there was a willingness to do that in certain eras, but there is no willing to do it for Africans and Arabs.
And THAT is the problem.
One is born in France, in a relatively bleak zone.
One is educated, learns to read, write and compute.
But THEN what?
Nobody will hire the black or the arab for anything but menial labor. Women can get out on their looks, but men?
Idle hands are the Devil's workshop, and in a wealthy country like France, the differences between the well off and the poor are starkly visible. And they breed resentment.
This is always true everywhere.
But in America, the minorities were employed in government jobs and became stakeholders, except in the worst ghettos, which are as bad as France and have more murders.
In France, there is the same problem.
There is one other difference between American ghettos and France which bears noticing. Think of the babies who are aborted in America, and where they would be. Would America look the same if it had 30 million more poor urban blacks? That would be America without Roe v. Wade.
Now consider France. Abortion is much more restrictive there, and perhaps more importantly, culturally Arabs and Africans don't like to abort. The white French will abort. The Arabs and Africans will have the babies. That this gives a family allocation follows naturally, since there are no jobs and people do have to eat.
This cultural difference explains much.
It's very difficult to know what the solutions are.
A simpleminded assault on socialism is not the answer. Pensions and health care are not the reason the job market is so bad. What France needs is JOBS. Only the government, really, can create enough jobs initially to get people off the streets.
After that, if the labor laws are gradually relaxed, the private sector may be able to pick up additional employees, to a point.
Thank you very much for your assessment. I do appreciate hearing from someone who lives/ has lived in France. I live far, far from any urban centers, so I don't personally see what's going on, but I know that the US has plenty of this cancer of its own.
And the solution is not simple, as the problem is not simple. And once a person has become more or less feral, they may not be able to be brought back.
The 'root cause' is the "Great Socialist Utopian Experiment". Chirac or de Villepan, like any other Socialist Liberal figures that you appease and cradle Islam, you'll live in peace and perfect harmony.
I love that shot.
Excellent article
PS: You must learn not write long passages everytime you make an argument.
Higher Ed isn't really related to the posted article, but if you want to check out
what social psychologists are promoting, you can check out the "From
Desegregation to Diversity" conference website yourself. Ironically, there was
NO diversity of thought expressed at the diversity conference.
http://www.spssi.org/symposia.html
The roundtable summaries are educational as well.
It appears to me that you are contradicting yourself here. Rigidity in the labor law and rigidity in access to capital are intrinsic parts of socialism as conducted in France. Public pension and medical plans may benefit companies in a very restricted sense, but they reduce the motive to work and remove capital from business through the taxes they require.
France has high unemployment in large part *because* of its generous pension and medical plans.
Suppose they are rioting because of Bush and that's fanning the worldwide upsurgenece of Islamofascism, I say great let's get it on sooner is better than later. Don't let them get any stronger...
Both you and your son get an A+ from me. I'm impressed w his courage - you obviously have done very well raising him!
What France needs is JOBS. Only the government, really, can create enough jobs initially to get people off the streets.
People do not have to eat if they do not work. Make the requirement of a Job (even if it is a non-productive government make-work job) a requirement to recieve the benefits of French Socialism.
The government cannot regulate the economy in sufficient detail to create competitive, productive jobs. That is the lesson of failed socialist experiments in the former Soviet Union, China, and Europe. Only the market can transfer enough information quickly enough, via pricing, to produce jobs that can be competitive in the world.
Now, after you have people working in these minimally productive government jobs, (at what wage?) you will need to convert them to jobs in the private sector that can be competitive. But unless the wages in the private sector are as high as the government jobs that were subsidized, why would they go to the private sector job?
The problem is a basic one of socialism, in that a central planner can not have enough information to make the jobs competitive, thus the jobs are subsidized and not productive enough to pay for themselves. The job program then becomes a further drain on society, accelerating the collapse of the socialist system.
How do you know this with such certainty? Are you repeating what the papers and news are saying, or are you associated with the ring-leaders or investigators?
Vichy Mark II
You'da thunk the school might have been a mite embarrassed to show that whilst the riots were in progress. Male bovine used food indeed.
Excellent article!
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