Given its corpulent government and inexplicably entitled populace, I’ve long been in awe of the fact that France functions at all. In the past four weeks, the verdict is belatedly in: it doesn’t.
Early estimates of the riots: 1,500 shops damaged, destroyed and/or looted; 1,000 police officers injured; at least 1,800 arrests; innumerable cars burned; multiple architecturally irreplaceable public buildings set alight or vandalised.
Two versions of the ‘unrest’ have emerged. For the left-wing press, ‘mostly peaceful’ minors protesting poor educational provision were joined by ‘mostly peaceful’ adults protesting the cost of living – who were then infiltrated by masked outside ‘agitators’ of totally unknown identity who looted and set stuff on fire.
We all know the temptation of giving into frustration when we can’t get some gizmo to work and smashing it
Version two, shared by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance: the violence is wholly down to immigrants. The proposition that these ructions are all about class sizes, teacher absences and missing ceiling tiles is a joke.
The truth seems a mix of both. Clearly the usual Islamo-left alliance is at work, along with numerous Me-Too types who just want in on the fun. But as the disorder spreads beyond France, consider why this is happening and what it’s achieved.
Genuine objections to poor French schooling seem justified. Yet in the European context, France has an above-average education budget and spends above-average sums per secondary student. Inadequately financed schools would sensibly be explained by a bloated civil service absorbing the allocated funds.
Which brings us to the cost of living. At 57 per cent of GDP, by far the biggest line item in the budgets of working French citizens is the cost of their government. According to the Molinari Institute, average French earners lose 55.6 per cent of their wages to taxes and ‘social contributions’ (i.e., taxes).
So the state can indeed affect the cost of living, but not in the way politicians enjoy taking responsibility for. Ludicrously, President Macron blames his people’s pummelled pocketbooks on Trump’s war with Iran. But the knock-on effects of newly higher oil prices are dwarfed by the effects of decades-long mismanagement of public finances.
The French themselves also bear responsibility for their growing impoverishment. Waves of protest have ensured the state remains bloated, burdening younger taxpayers with the extreme cost of pensions that still kick in at age 62 – youth’s reaction to which appears to be an eagerness to jump on the same gravy train at the earliest age possible.
Both groups out on the streets in force since mid-September – unassimilated immigrants and young, naively communist white French nationals – feel little vested interest in their country. According to an Ipsos survey this month, 79 per cent of French young people have considered moving abroad.
Immigrants from North Africa and their descendants don’t feel French and aren’t really regarded by their white compatriots as French. They’re not only alienated from the world of the designer shops they’ve been demolishing, but fiercely hostile to it.Despite colonial ties, ghettoised, largely Muslim immigrants have little cultural affinity with perhaps the most supremely European of European nations. Excluded from the mainstream culture with few obvious routes to prosperity, immigrants must feel they’ve nothing to lose. If they feel they don’t belong in France, maybe they don’t.
Likewise, lefty, ethnically French young people must feel they’ve little investment in France. Tritely radicalised teachers have drilled into them that not only is their culture evil, but that they have no future. Climate change will scorch the earth to a cinder. Having last passed a balanced budget in 1973, their country is headed for fiscal oblivion (true). AI will eliminate all entry-level jobs, if not all jobs. They’ll never afford their own homes. Benefits being weighted towards the elderly, whose cohort only expands, the few younger folks who find work will have most of their earnings confiscated by the gerontocracy. Low fertility condemns Europe to decay, a conviction that further lowers fertility. Expecting nothing but collapse, conflagration and injustice fosters nihilism.
To the extent that these firebrands are considering the future at all, the very welfare state they find so ungenerous enables them to assume that, once the mess they’ve made is tidied up by other people, some entity from on high will always ensure they still have food, a roof and wifi.
So what has all this destruction accomplished? The demands of the gilets jaunes (initially, don’t increase fuel duty) and the pension protests (don’t increase the retirement age from 62 to 64) were concrete. The demands of these protests are vague, making them less amenable to the establishment capitulation that’s historically encouraged more of the same. To address the poor state of the very schools protestors have burned down, presumably government should allocate still more funds to education – thereby making the state of the public finances even more dire and a debt spiral that much more imminent.
Otherwise, for what, exactly, are ‘cost of living’ protests lobbying? Budget-busting cheques sent to every household? Price controls, which never work and only lead to scarcity? Utility and food subsidies or other free stuff, which would further break the public bank? Beyond shrinking the state itself, thus reducing benefits and services – driving the French even more nuts – it’s difficult to posit what government can do.
Most ‘activism’ is for its own sake. So far, this scaled-up hissy fit has ‘achieved’ major losses to shopkeepers, municipal governments and insurance companies, as devastated urban areas painstakingly put Humpty Dumpty together again. One of the mayhem’s greatest ‘achievements’ is putting off prospective tourists. One in ten employees in Paris have tourism-related jobs. My American friends won’t be booking for the 6th arrondissement anytime soon.
We all know the temptation of giving into frustration when we can’t get some gizmo to work and smashing it – after which, in my experience, a funny calm descends: a methodical picking up of the pieces while pondering whether the gizmo can be repaired. That’s France. Or at least until next April’s presidential election, when, should Le Pen prevail, these autumnal antics will look like the proverbial walk in the parc.
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