Just weeks after hugely disruptive protests and strikes over pension reforms in France finally died down, businesses in the country are grappling with the fallout from a week of rioting.
Why can’t americans be like the french? Protests have to cause damage to be effective!
Maybe they shouldn’t have pushed the pension reforms if they didnt want to lose money?
It’s not just about money, it’s about workforce. Imagine being in a nursery, without nurses available. As for the money, you cannot expect society to pay for a specific standard of living for too long. The workforce must support the people that are not working. Now that we are getting older on average, it would mean that the workforce will have to support more non working people. Imagine that you retire at 60, but people now live on average to 80, which is increasing every decade now
There are really only two options here, increase retirement age, or increase taxes on the workforce. Take your pick.
That’s a false dichotomy. There are many more options. Increasing the salary part of the gpd would increase the the base income the pension takes a part of. But salary part of the gpd has never been so low.
And no, increasing salaries would not grow inflation if companies take the money on the insane benefits they did these last years. Wages raise don’t make the inflation. Companies that increase prices to increase their benefits grow the inflation.
Killer Mike said it best,
Don’t criticize rioting because I understand it. But after the fires die down: organize, strategize and mobilize. Like Ferguson, you have an opportunity to start anew. I don’t have a solution because whoever’s there will have to come up with it. But we need community relations: Riots are the language of the unheard.
What a cesspit of racists promoting violence. I did not expect this. I expected people who value safety and civility. There are protests and there are riots. There’s justice and there’s setting fire to the mayor’s house, injuring his family. There’s a democratic state, and an angry mob destroying stuff. There’s innocent kid, and an unknown individual at the wheel of a ton of high-speed steel illegally in a city full of people. These “cars” by the way, have the biggest violent death toll in developed countries. Guns? Heck no!
I am so disappointed.
There are no safe and sane riots. This is how rioting goes. I don’t take part in riots, but I understand that it is the language of the unheard (much in the same way that war is “diplomacy by other means,” rioting is what happens when protests don’t work).
There were no protests. No lawsuits, no nothing. Straight to violence.
And people here actually believe that it’s good to hurt other people, as if that fixes the death of one person. Horrible in every way. Shameful and disgusting.
This is like telling somebody who is abused to do nothing. If you can’t leave you fight the abuser if you can, you destroy the things they enjoy if you can’t.
And I’m sorry but if you own a business that survives by selling to the plunderers, you’re part of why they want to take that money and time and why cops are shooting people.
Do you have any idea how many people are killed by the police when they are unarmed? Here it was blatent murder, and if it wasn’t for the video leaked on social media the cop would face absolutely no consequences.
Murderers place is in jail. When justice fail, the social contract is broken. When the social contract is broken, there is no peace or discussion.
Neither France nor the USA were built on peaceful protests. At some point, the idiot in charge has to understand how it goes.
We spent four years at war over the death of one man, and twenty years at war over the deaths of three thousand.
And this was not the first black person to be murdered in France by the police like this. The Parisians are responding to a pattern that has not been ended no matter how much they protest.
For those who don’t know, while previous tensions regarding the recent pension protests are most likely not helping the current situation, these riots are about a cop murdering a 17 years old in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.
Mainstream media pushed the narrative that it was the fault of the parents if the teenager was a thug and tried to present the kid as a dangerous individual (while he had some issues with the law, his lawyer insisted he didn’t have a criminal record). The cop in question claimed the teen tried to ram him with his car and shot him out of self defense. Multiple videos of the event emerged and the police officer’s claim turned out to be a complete lie (he even threatened to put a bullet in his head if he didn’t comply for not having his license or something like that). Apparently, this is the kind of story that happens quite a lot in these parts of France, but now that videos of it emerged it caused the current outrage.
Now the government is claiming the riots are caused by social medias and video games and two police unions wrote a press release declaring war on these “hordes sauvages” (savages hordes) and “nuisibles” (harmful/detrimental) referring to the people of Naterre by all means necessary. (Some politicians from the oppositions are quite disturbed by it).
I’m not French, but that’s what I got from multiple reports so far, I might be missing some details.
To add insult to injury, supporters of the police officer raised a crowdfund. It is now above 1.5 million €.
During the “gilets jaunes” protests, one participant boxed a riot police unit (in full riot suit) & got arrested. A crowdfund was opened to help him. The government cancelled the funds within 48 hours.
The French government is sending the clear message that “it’s okay for French police to kill people; even better if they are minorities (arabs,muslims,…)” and they will always get the support of the state. Disgusting.
As an european, don’t downvote me, i’m trying to show to you a different point of view. This sum for the police officer is huge, that’s mean that the people are really angry. ( yes this is more and more before these riots ) . Far right parties all around europe are gaining traction ( a lot ) and far right parties that seems too light on immigration are been replaced by other more extemists parties ( see poland ). I don’t think that this american point of view is welcomed by a growing part of european population. Politicians with lesser pro rioters views , like melenchon are targeted as left-islamists by member of the center wing of governement. See that like a sort of troubles in northern ireland, but bigger, with more ideological differences.
This is just another data point that French police and government are in repression mode. Let’s not forget also how they attacked firefighters during their protests in 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/28/french-police-clash-with-firefighters-during-paris-protest
It’s truly disappointing to see that, as an American, this is what France is now. French troops saved my grandpa (AA) back in WWII when they were a more racially progressive country than the USA and I always looked up to them for that. Black POWs would often be mysteriously “killed in the camps” right before being rescued by American troops, but the French troops found him first.
I’m glad many are rioting over this. That is the France I know.
I don’t think France is any more or less racist than the US at any point. France has been multicultural, more receptive to people of colour, and did not officially have racial segregation, but they still treated non-white French as second class citizens albeit low key. The fact that France had colonies and fought hard to keep them after World War II despite postwar economic devastation showed they have still been discriminatory. The French government in the 60s was nearly couped by ultranationalist army officers for granting independence to Algeria. Even today, there are many French who are ultranationalists and there is a reason why Marine Le Pen won 40% of the French population.
