I’m finding support for my assessment that the riots in France have their roots in the country’s stultifying socialist economic policies, the government’s hostile treatment of religions, and radical Islam’s growing influence in Europe.
Joel Kotkin writes in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal that France’s economic system is contributing to the crisis. I said the other day that massive government-mandated employee benefits are deterring creation of new jobs and Kotkin agrees: “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.” To make it worse, the huge welfare-state benefits for the unemployed and retired add to the huge tax burden for those who actually do have jobs, encouraging better-educated Frenchmen and other Europeans to seek better opportunities in countries like Ireland, the UK, and the US.
The obvious rub is that for the Euro authorities to successfully reclaim their countries from this rabble, they will have to junk many of their fondest ideological illusions. As was seen in the run up the WWII, there are those who would do almost anything but that.
Domenico,
If you want to read a astoundingly prescient article, check out The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris, City Journal, Autumn 2002 by Theodore Dalrymple.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_4_the_barbarians.html
Note the date.
An interesting column by David Ignatius of the Washington Post – on French denial, and why the U.S. is in a better state in its handling of immigrants:
http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/08/AR2005110801106.html