[Philistone]

I agree 100%. It is not going to be pretty.

The French are extremely passive in general (unless they are communist union types). I was in France in ‘95 when the train workers and the truckers went on strike for almost four months. The truckers blocked all roads into and out of Paris and people were walking three hours each way just to get to work. Whenever they were asked on camera whether they resented the strikers, 99% of them said “no, they have the right to strike.”

Something like 50,000 small businesses went bust and hundreds of thousands lost their jobs before the government caved in (to a raise that came out to about $10 a month). The business closures actually help the Socio-Communists because it increases demand for government jobs (and the corresponding required union membership).

[Stultis]

Wow. Thanks for the insight. I had no idea French fatalism and acquiescence was that extreme. No wonder that French conservababe — What’s here name? She was registered here at FR for awhile — made such big news when she started an anti-strike movement some years ago.

[jveritas]

The French and many other Europeans are really convinced that their socialist way of living is the right way of living. Despite all the destructive impact of socialism on their economy and their standards of living, they simply want to keep it and in the meanwhile further increase their envy, jealousy, anger, and complex of inferiority toward the United States who is superior to Europe on every level and in most levels vastly superior to Europe.

We should give up on the Europeans, they are hopeless.

[kellynch]

Going on strike is the French national pastime. I lived there in the summer of 1977 and the school year 79/80 and there were several strikes during each stay. In fact, the students at my university (Grenoble) went on strike when I was there in 79/80, and the professors went along with them.