Eiffel Tower
It is so hard to watch what is happening in France. On Saturday night, masked rioters looted shops in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, and Bordeaux and set cars ablaze along the Canal Saint-Martin, one of the loveliest corners of Paris. In Limoges, the spire of a 143-year-old town hall collapsed in flames, and for many in France, it brought back memories of the night Notre Dame burned. More than 2,000 people were arrested over the weekend, and now at least two people are dead.
France helped America win its independence. It is our oldest ally, and it is in trouble. But so too is our country, because some of the problems and ideas that brought France to this point are becoming more apparent in America.
This year’s protests began with high school students angry about overcrowded classrooms and crumbling schools, and their frustration is understandable. France spends more on social programs than any other wealthy country, yet it cannot keep its schools in good condition, because the money has run out:
- The French government spends an amount on social programs equal to 57% of the country’s economy, compared with 38% in the United States.
- French debt has reached 119% of GDP, the highest since World War II.
- Next year, France will spend €74 billion ($83 billion) on interest, more than it will spend on education or defense.
- The government has proposed €54 billion ($60.5 billion) in cuts, including frozen pay for public workers and frozen pensions for all but the poorest retirees.
In France, retirees now have higher incomes than working-age adults. Over the past 50 years, median income for French workers doubled, while income for retirees rose by more than 160%. When millions of people rely on the government for their income, every attempt to rein in spending is fraught with peril. France could not even raise its retirement age from 62 to 64; after months of protests, the government gave up last year. All of this shows a truth that anyone who lived on the other side of the Iron Curtain, or in Cuba or Venezuela, knows all too well: Socialism does not create prosperity. It creates dependency.
But then the protests stopped being about schools. Protesters waved Palestinian flags in the Place de la République while a bus stop burned nearby. What does the war in Gaza have to do with teacher shortages in a Paris suburb? Nothing. Movements like this one pull in every grievance because what unites their loudest voices is hostility to the West itself. Students with real complaints ended up marching alongside people who came just to break things and loot stores.
Some of the loudest cheering for the riots came from outside France. BreakThrough News, a New York-based outlet funded by Neville Roy Singham, an American tech millionaire who lives in Shanghai – promoted the unrest as a historic strike against austerity. Congress is investigating Singham and his network of nonprofits over his ties to the Chinese Communist Party and whether money from the same network has helped fuel protests here in the United States. Whatever the people promoting this unrest want, better schools are not on the list.
None of this means the frustration driving socialist politics in America is imaginary. Millions of Americans work hard and still cannot afford a home, pay for childcare or keep up with medical bills, and many feel Washington stopped listening to them a long time ago. The question is what to do about them.
The Democratic Socialists of America have a platform that envisions America adopting several policies France has already tried, sometimes with disastrous results:
- A 32-hour workweek at full pay. ¯In 2000, France cut its workweek to 35 hours to create jobs. Studies found it did not raise employment.
- Aggressive wealth taxes. ¯France had one for decades. Wealthy taxpayers left faster than they returned and took billions in assets with them, until France repealed the tax in 2018.
- Free health care, college, and housing. ¯According to the Congressional Budget Office, Medicare for All alone would add $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion a year in federal spending.
America is far richer than France, but our budget is already headed the same way. Washington will run a deficit this year equal to 5.8% of GDP, larger than France’s, and the national debt is on track to pass its World War II record within a decade. Adding the DSA agenda on top of that would put us on the same road as France, where riots are the norm and there is no clear path back from the brink.
We hope France can find its way through this latest crisis, and we hope it serves as a wake-up call to Americans. If our leaders cannot find the courage to solve our problems and fix the mismatch between what government has promised and the money it has to spend, Americans could find ourselves confronting the chaos now unfolding on the streets of France.
No Labels exists to support the leaders in both parties who are willing to make those hard choices, and to stand up to the extremes on the left and right that make them harder.
This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
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[ H/T WorldNetDaily ]
