The classic 1966 movie Is Paris Burning? centers around Adolf Hitler’s desire, as the Allied armies advance through France in 1944, to see Paris destroyed rather than fall into the hands of his enemies. Paris didn’t burn in 1944, but the conflagration, as it turns out, was just delayed. CNN reported Friday that “Paris and most major cities – including Lyon, Marseille, Lille, Bordeaux and Rennes – have been hit by protests.” Hitler is finally getting his wish. But why now?
France is in turmoil, CNN added, because of “proposed pension reforms.” Reportedly, “many people are unhappy with President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform, which will raise the full-pension retirement age from 62 to 64. They’re also angry that he used constitutional powers to push the reform through.” France’s legendary welfare system has hit a wall.
As is typical for Leftist political elites today and throughout the ages, Macron is pushing austerity on his people while having no intention of tightening his own belt: he drew international ridicule Friday for putting his hands under the table during a televised discussion and surreptitiously taking off a luxury watch, the estimated worth of which could be as high as $86,000, while talking about how the French people were going to have to make sacrifices.
The hypocrisy of the elites, however, is just one small aspect of a much larger problem. A 2016 study ranked France’s welfare system as the most generous in the world, and that system has not changed significantly since then. “France’s social security deficit was approximately $22 billion in 2012,” said the study, and as you’d expect, that problem has not been solved, but has only gotten worse. Reuters reported in September 2020 that “France’s social security deficit will reach record levels this year,” and was set to reach 44 billion euros ($51.4 billion) that year, “far more than the deficit of 5.4 billion forecast last year [2019] by the government.” This is because of the government’s record-breaking profligacy. The 2016 study notes that France “has the most generous social welfare spending, which amounts for 31.5% of its GDP.”
Why does France need this massively generous welfare system? In large part to support the migrants who were brought into the country to serve as a work force as the native French population, which had stopped reproducing, aged and retired. A 2016 Brookings study noted that while fifteen percent of native French fifteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds were unemployed, fully forty percent of migrants from North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and Turkey of that age were jobless.
Brookings observed that “recent immigrants and their descendants tend to concentrate in public housing projects that were built in the 1960s and 1970s in low-rent neighborhoods; in France, these projects are located on the urban outskirts, known as banlieues or cités.” These areas are predominantly Muslim: “the proportion of residents of North African origin may be very high, but it is never all inclusive; other Africans, Turks, and nonimmigrant French live alongside Arabs and Berbers from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.” And “these neighborhoods are marked by poverty” and “welfare dependence.”
Non-Muslims paying for the upkeep of Muslims is a Qur’anic dictate, as the Islamic holy book commands Muslims to fight against Jews and Christians “until they pay the jizya [a poll tax] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (9:29). The caliph Umar said the payments from the non-Muslims who were subjugated under Muslim rule (dhimmis) were the source of the Muslims’ livelihood: “I advise you to fulfill Allah’s Convention (made with the Dhimmis) as it is the convention of your Prophet and the source of the livelihood of your dependents (i.e. the taxes from the Dhimmis.)’” (Bukhari 4.53.388)
UK jihad preacher Anjem Choudary said in February 2013: “We are on Jihad Seekers Allowance, We take the Jizya (protection money paid to Muslims by non-Muslims) which is ours anyway. The normal situation is to take money from the Kafir (non-Muslim), isn’t it? So this is normal situation. They give us the money. You work, give us the money. Allah Akbar, we take the money. Hopefully there is no one from the DSS (Department of Social Security) listening. Ah, but you see people will say you are not working. But the normal situation is for you to take money from the Kuffar (non-Muslim) So we take Jihad Seeker’s Allowance.”
But now the gravy train is running dry, and France is aflame. The protests are enormous and destructive. According to CNN, “More than a million people took to the streets across France on Thursday with protests turning violent in some areas…. French police said around 1,000 people acted ‘violently,’ setting fires, launching smoke bombs and damaging property. In the southwestern city of Bordeaux, protesters set fire to the entrance of the city hall during ongoing clashes with police.”
And so it must be asked about the entire enterprise of bringing massive numbers of migrants into France, many of whom depend on a welfare system that is now cracking under the strain: was it worth it?
Thanks Robert, the gravy train is running dry, thanks to illegal muslim immigration. Now what happens?
I think we’re seeing what happens. Just like the French Left that spent the country into penury and now may have to work a whole two more years to collect their version of Social Security, the immigrants, many of whom would be unaffected by this change because they don’t work at any age, will have to tighten their belts. And they, too, will be most unhappy about it.
The main problem isn’t immigration ( though that is a problem ). The main problem is that generous welfare benefits are available to begin with. Immigrants just happen to be the usually poor and the most likely to take full advantage of the welfare state. But having dependency creating benefits to begin with is the real problem.
Same thing can be said for America. When immigrants came here 100 years ago, there was virtually no welfare state. Then immigrants went to work in a free market and built the strongest economy on the planet. Now Somali refugees come her for example, and a generous buffet of public assistance is available to them to make the transition painless and create dependency. Not to mention the economic harm welfare causes by sucking resources out of the private sector.
It’s a little more complex than that, local (white) people cannot get benefits unless they know how to play the system, yes they get the basics but it doesn’t come close to how much they can get if they know the system.
Fake refugees get everything they need because the government officers are terrified of being called racist.
“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, will prove the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.” — The late Dr. Adrian Rogers , 1931 to 2005
The usual four horsemen.
As Margaret Thatcher remarked, “Socialism is great until you run out of other people’s money”
One wonders if there will even be a “Europe” in 20 years? Or an America.
I always had a problem with that famous comment. Socialism is theft, so theft is ok as long as there are goods to steal?
I get your point, I’m not trying to argue with you , but just saying.
Just funnel weapons to them… giant war in Europe.
As Thomas Sowell said… “The engineer whose building collapses pays with his career and reputation. The intellectual who causes a complete social breakdown and civil disaster pays no price at all.” (paraphrased)
This was the Obama – Merkel plan.
This is the results of Open Borders your going to get this reaction from t he so called Religion of Peace . Buring Paris there is a old movie PARIS WHEN IT SIZZLES
“We’ll always have Paris.” Not.
The French Revolution Part Deux.
That was Soros’ plan all along. Break the back of Western Civilization.
Can you imagine if the numbers of immigrants to America went to France? America is in much worse shape than France.
“ raise the full-pension retirement age from 62 to 64. ”
It’s been 65 in the UK for decades and has crept up here to 67 I think but it’s reasonable for it to go up as life expectancy has increased dramatically since it was first introduced as aged 65
The French do love to protest, during the lockdown they destroyed completely the speed cameras used to spy on people breaking the rules.
“Macron is pushing austerity on his people … while surreptitiously taking off a luxury watch, the estimated worth of which could be as high as $86,000 …
The hypocrisy of the elites…”
Turns out said watch was worth around $3,000.
My point? I don’t actually have one, except to say my Timex is worth around $100 and I don’t consider that makes me a good person.
The solution is obvious. Don’t give a cent to anyone who has not contributed to the fund. The French police are notoriously brutal, so let them start shooting demonstrators and robbers and anyone getting violent. They’ll have to start doing this soon anyway, might as well give them a leg up on it now. France, like the UK, is Socialist, which is the nice word for Communist. It’s all going to descend into complete chaos over there first and is going to be lots of fun to watch right up until it’s our turn.
Socialism eventually runs out of money, while the population becomes dependent, lazy and unmotivated until it the $$$ runs out.
regarding the proximate cause of this unrest: I was surprised some years ago to read that modern ‘retirement’ was created by Bismarck as a sop to the socialists as he was consolidating modern Germany in the late 1800s.
so that, for no apparent reason, once reaching a certain age you’re entitled to reach into other people’s pockets!
la la la la la.
ungrateful moochers don’t like their freebies stopped.
as to the Moslems, wow. you’ve just been told in so many words what those ragheads intend to do to us. what’s in your refrigerator? Akmed is hungry.
All this Muslim rioting and all the arson violence that is part of it may be yet better explained by one of the fables of Aesop which is entitled THE FARMER AND THE VIPER. So here it is “Once in ancient Greece there was a farmer outside on a very cold winter day walking in if field to make sure that everything is in order and as it should be. The farmer came upon a half-froze viper about to die from the bitter cold. The kind yet foolish farmer took pity on the viper and in an action of kindness put it his is vest jacket to warms and up and thus save its life. The viper warned up revived and then bit farmer through the vest jacket. So the kind but foolish farmer died a slow painful death in awful agony because he felt sorry of the viper and saved it life. The point to this fable is the no amount of kindness will change and vicious and evil nature.
So it is with those Muslim migrants who were allowed to enter the France to live . Those violent migrants who are Muslims will not be impress and change because kindness of Westerners. This is because those violent Muslims have that ungrateful dangerous viper nature because of their venomous and violent religion which is Islam.