Why Immigrants Don't Riot Here (Leftist Economic Policy Created the French QUAGMIRE)

The Wall Street Journal ^ | 11/08/05 | Joel Kotkin

[MikeA]

The French political response to the continuing riots has focused most on the need for more multicultural "understanding" of, and public spending on, the disenchanted mass in the country's grim banlieues (suburbs). What has been largely ignored has been the role of France's economic system in contributing to the current crisis. State-directed capitalism may seem ideal for such American admirers such as Jeremy Rifkin, author of "The European Dream," and others on the left. Yet it is precisely this highly structured and increasingly infracted economic system that has so limited opportunities for immigrants and their children. In a country where short workweeks and early retirement are sacred, there is little emphasis on creating new jobs and even less on grass-roots entrepreneurial activity. Since the '70s, America has created 57 million new jobs, compared with just four million in Europe (with most of those jobs in government). In France and much of Western Europe, the economic system is weighted toward the already employed (the overwhelming majority native-born whites) and the growing mass of retirees. Those ensconced in state and corporate employment enjoy short weeks, early and well-funded retirement and first dibs on the public purse. So although the retirement of large numbers of workers should be opening up new job opportunities, unemployment among the young has been rising: In France, joblessness among workers in their 20s exceeds 20%, twice the overall national rate. In immigrant banlieues, where the population is much younger, average unemployment reaches 40%, and higher among the young. To make matters worse, the elaborate French welfare state -- government spending accounts for roughly half of GDP compared with 36% in the U.S. -- also forces high tax burdens on younger workers lucky enough to have a job, to pay for an escalating number of pensioners and benefit recipients.

[Bob J]

Wow, 20% for defense for the world? Time to make France and Japan pony up...

[jordan8]

This is what I said when this article was posted under the title Our Immigrants, Their Immigrants:

The Wall Street Journal is well known for its advocacy of open borders, the happenings is France come as a cold slap of reality. Someday, well within a century, France will be majority Muslim, what will all the folderol about government regulations and ethnic entrepreneurship mean then? And even if the Muslim New France becomes a economic powerhouse should the former natives celebrate because the land mass previously occupied by their now exterminated culture is doing well financially? The Wall Street Journal thinks so, they are bigger believers in Economic Man than any Marxist, and their brand of internationalism based on capitalism is more destructive than any form of communism.

[Feiny]

Plus, we have sports fans who riot over a win.

[MikeA]

No, the 17% was the percent of all govt. spending as a percent of GNP.