Posted on 05/08/2007 1:20:00 AM PDT by Cincinna
FReepMail me if you want to be part of the FRENCH ELECTION PING LIST.
Good article.
His questions seems to be: Has France had enough pain to change?
If not, there’s much more on the way..
The earlier you cure a sick patient, the better chances of survival he has.. Waiting until he’s almost dead is a bad idea, IMHO.
Good freakin' luck. The riots will begin as soon as his reform plan is announced.
Very true. In his analogy, the patient has to know he’s sick and want the cure. It takes more for some to realize than others.
I’m with you on hoping France is ready.
An 85% voter turnout is, IMHO, a sign that France is ready for change.
But 47% voted for status quo...
I’m really hopeful. I can’t imagine the riots alone wouldn’t make any civilized society ready. But as the article points out, the have quite a large dependent sheeple population.
They already have.
I guess it will be a matter of numbers, whether or not there are enough French citizens who are tired of carrying around the useless who think they are entitled to 2/3's of their paycheck. Of course, if they have media against them, it won't be an easy fight. All they have to do is look at what's going on in America with corrupt media supporting the marxist party here to see what kind of uphill battle they face. They have nothing to loose at this point however. If they loose, France and the rest of Europe behind it will continue to head towards total economic and societal collapse as it always does under the marxist stupidity the keep on inflicting upon themselves. This is sort of like a last chance effort to row back upstream just before the boat goes over the falls- too little too late.
France's system of assuring everyone that they will have state-provided funds no matter what reminds of the story about the frog being slowly boiled. At first he's comfortable, but as the water gets hotter he finds it becomes too difficult for him to get out of the cauldron.
It would be interesting to see a demographic breakdown of that 47%. I would bet that most of those voters are in the very young and/or very socialist camp. Plus a high percentage of the bureaucrats, educrats, and other "elites" of French society. In short most of the people entrenched in the privileged French sector who think they will lose a lot if forced to work for a living.
To the barricades. Every day will be children’s day again.
Most Frenchmen and women work hard and I agree with the article many who have worked hard, have been financially successful despite the Socialist Tax Structure, are fleeing to other Countries, including the United States.
I have several successful French Friends who have fled to the USA to avoid Social Taxation AND Radial, Violent Islamic Immigration that has occurred in their Country.
Question. According to the article (which is consistent with others I have read), government spending in France is around 52%.
What is it in the US? I know Federal spending is around 18 to 20% but what is it for all forms of government spending (state, local, etc.)?
Anti-truth, anti-freedom, anti-individual, anti-life collecives are likely to join forces.
All forms of taxation combined approaches 50% of income for the average family. Spending on all levels of government is not likely to be less.
"Just because you're a feminist, you don't vote for a women who does not have the ability. We're talking about the presidential election here ... It's too serious to link this to a phenomenon of femininity or feminism,".
Another quote that's a bit disturbing, but in one way probably good fun for this audience, is...
Statistics show women in France are far from equal. Just 12 percent of lawmakers are female and only one woman heads a firm in the CAC-40 index of blue chip companies, and she is American.
On the subject of French taxes, they're huge on the income tax front, but less so (I believe) from the capital gains tax angle. Particularly onerous are inheritance taxes and a special tax on the capital of the very wealthy (that i know very little about). Ask me again in a few months, I'm moving to Paris in 3 weeks! You might say I had a vested interest in the outcome of this election, and that sound you can hear is me, breathing a big sigh of relief.
I've often wondered about the perceived French distaste for wealth, I don't really understand it but it seems underpinned by a vaguely-formed notion that if you're wealthy, you must have somehow cheated or exploited others or taken advantage of the general masses to become that way - possibly a throwback from a previous age when status was purely inherited? What I'm getting at is that these socialist policies aren't entirely an outcome predicated by a set of clearly-defined political beliefs, but something more akin to psychology and collective national history that's harder to pin down and therefore also more difficult to argue against. I've tried.
A common belief in Catholic countries, probably stemming from - as you suggested - a history when the only way to get rich was to loot from someone else.
ping
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