Battle of France : NATIONAL REVIEW EDITORIAL ON SARKOZY ELECTION

The National Review ^ | May 7 2007 | The Editors

[Cincinna]

Excellent analysis from a Conservative point of view.

[Cincinna]

FReepMail me if you want to be part of the FRENCH ELECTION PING LIST.

[D-fendr]

Good article.

His questions seems to be: Has France had enough pain to change?

If not, there’s much more on the way..

[2ndDivisionVet]

You’ve got to be paying some huge taxes to make Great Britain look like a tax haven!! The Boston Tea Party was over a 1% tax, IIRC. What will it take to get us up in arms about the ridiculous taxes we pay?

[Dutchguy]

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.

[AlaskaErik]

So, if representative democracy works as it is supposed to do, Sarkozy will push through the market reforms that France has needed for at least two decades. He will deregulate its labor market, slim down the public-sector payroll, abandon the symbolic 35-hour work week, reduce public spending from its current 52 percent of GDP, and reform the French welfare state.

Good freakin' luck. The riots will begin as soon as his reform plan is announced.

[D-fendr]

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.

[Cincinna]

An 85% voter turnout is, IMHO, a sign that France is ready for change.

[D-fendr]

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.

[Nathan Zachary]

" Good freakin' luck. The riots will begin as soon as his reform plan is announced."

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.

[driftless2]

I'm sure many defenders of the socialist or nanny state model fail to understand why socialism is so pernicious. Imagine if every gradeschooler in the U.S. was told at the age of seven or so that no matter what they did in life, the state would assist them and provide them minimum living arrangements even if at the squalid level. Which of course the state does do for certain people. If all Americans of whatever age were assured that if they fell down somehow the state would provide, imagine the sorry situation this country would be in.

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.

[driftless2]

"status quo"

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.

[bkepley]

To the barricades. Every day will be children’s day again.

[not2worry]

I think the French in France have suffered enough pain to change. I think it’s the new immigrants in France that ate looking at the free socialistic handouts that turn to violence on the hand that feeds them so to speak.

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.

[NeilGus]

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.)?

[PGalt]

That task is made harder and more complicated by non-economic problems — notably immigration and national identity. Young people in the banlieues around major cities, either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants, are disproportionately unemployed because of France’s inflexible labor market. Economically and socially excluded, they fall prey to extremist ideologies, generally Muslim ones, and reject their identity as Frenchmen. That makes them less employable. To make matters worse, they are likely to fight against the very measures of labor-market flexibility that could help them.

Anti-truth, anti-freedom, anti-individual, anti-life collecives are likely to join forces.

[Louis Foxwell]

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.

[salocin]

Only one data point, but this article on Yahoo indicates that Royal only garnered 48% of the female vote according to one exit poll. Particularly reassuring was the quote from a women's movement saying...

"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.

[Mr. Jeeves]

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?

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.

[Oberon]

ping