Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Au Revoir to La France


In case you were asking yourself how all that socialism was working out for France, Time Magazine has the answer.

It’s been a year since the French, in their great wisdom, voted for the candidate who promised to raise taxes on the rich, to regulate businesses to death and to continue all of the generous welfare programs.

It hasn't been working out very well. The French are leaving their native land in droves, seeking freedom and opportunity elsewhere:

In fact, the sense that the world beyond France might hold a lot more promise for French people than home does has so intensified that in recent months two weekly magazines, L’Express and Le Figaro — both fiercely conservative critics of the Socialist government — featured the same cover headline: “Why they are leaving France.” L’Express added the subtitle: “It’s not just the rich!” as though the editors were amazed that regular folk would opt to try their luck elsewhere and forgo cherished French benefits like minimum five weeks’ annual paid leave, decent public health care and free schooling. The magazines cite the 300,000 French estimated to be living in London, and the 200,000 French residents of Belgium, a 25% rise since 2010, according to Le Figaro. Each magazine interviews young go-getters who’ve upped sticks for New York City, Dubai, Shanghai and elsewhere for better pay, more-rapid promotion and a chance to make their mark — things that those profiled say are all-but impossible under a sclerotic French system. Alexandre Perrot, 30, featured in Le Figaro, moved to New York City a year ago and works for a business-intelligence company, is quoted as saying that France’s system “does not value or stimulate active youth.”


If there’s anyone who still needs convincing that France is in a dyspeptic funk, a flurry of statistics last week showed just how serious the situation is. The statistics suggested that the problem might not be due only to Europe’s economic crisis, as Hollande argued during his press conference on May 16. On May 14,Pew Research published a poll saying that “no European country is becoming more dispirited and disillusioned faster than France,” with 91% of those surveyed by the organization saying that the economy was doing badly and 67% ranking Hollande as doing “a lousy job.” The next day, May 15, France’s official statistics agency INSEE announced that the country had entered its third recession in four years, with unemployment rising more than 11% since Hollande came to power. And on Friday came a new poll by Gallup, showing that only 16% of French youth were optimistic about their future, the lowest rate in the E.U. Compare that with Spain’s youth, 49% of whom felt optimistic about their future, even though their country’s unemployment rate is double that of France.


6 comments:

Sam L. said...

And TIME, pitiful remainder that it is, likes socialism!

Anonymous said...

Jewel: I had no idea. That is very interesting. Please share more if you are so inclined... about any of it. It sounds like the old "anything goes" mentality has left young people with very little, including their national identity and value as citizens. Yeesh.

Tip

Jewel said...

Read Gallia Watch.
http://galliawatch.blogspot.com

Tiberge has been chronicling the French decline for years. If you read French, or even if you don't, Salon Beige, à vrai dire, Yves Daoudal and Bernard Antony all have excellent coverage, especially videos of the vigils and peaceful protests. Some of the videos are shocking because police are seen tossing gas grenades at 4 and 5 year old children. Fridays in Paris and Marseilles see the streets become open air mosques with armed thugs patrolling and the police doing nothing, even though it is in violation of French laws. Worse is the scandal involving the substitute of halal meat. Halal rituals are bloody, cruel and unsanitary. The press is not interested. The people have had enough of their government and the press.

Jewel said...

Here is a video made by Génération Identaire:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4e7n7g1xAM

n.n said...

It's not just socialism, but also displacement. Progressive involuntary exploitation is bad enough, but then they added denigration of individual dignity (i.e. "diversity) to the mix. The problems were further exacerbated through immigration policies which promoted overpopulation and cultural corruption.

Dennis said...

The young in this country better get it together and start paying attention to politics, their own self interest and stop avoiding personal responsibility. We are not that far away from France in the desires of its electorate to get a lot of "free stuff" from the government. The more free stuff the less freedom.