As IF Times

link My Way News – French students up protests over retirement reform.

As if.  So the cameras are trained onto ‘students’ who are allegedly all steamed about the French Government’s proposal to raise the mandatory retirement age from 60, all the way to 62.  Sacre Bleu! Students are doing this….because…??  This is obviously absurd since these earnest ‘students’ are missing something reasonably important in order to protest against job conditions, namely a job. 

If all they’ve ever done is to read Tolstoy, play les video games and drink beer for 2 or 3 years, they’re hardly in a position to protest about their latter working years.  Heck, most students I know would be happy to have any job after graduation, never mind worry about  retirement issues.  This would be as valid as me  getting upset upon learning that Charlize Theron was going to stop dating men. 

More likely, some union thugs came by campus and offered free beer to any students who would show up for the chance to be protesting on TV.  Actually, from the looks of the crowd, they don’t even have to be students, being young and ethnic looking was enough.   Even if they were bona fide students captured on TV passionately tossing Molotov cocktails at the police,  it’s unlikely they were studying anything useful.  Probably law or philosophy students of which Entitlement 101 was a prerequisite.   Certainly not economics or any hard science.  As a side note, their education is also likely heavily subsidized by the state. 

If  they had some basic grounding in any kind of education which had links to reality, they would know about the concept of limited resources.  The theory goes that a female pig, or sow, has only so many nipples.  If you’re the 7th pig in a six nipple litter, well then you get less.  If you’re the 35th piglet, then your share is going to be even smaller.  The only logical things that can happen are the following:  a: get more nipples, b: have fewer piglets, or c: get more production from present nipples. 

France has finally come to face the consequences of generations of the entitlement mentality in their social system.  For the longest time, their 35 hour workweeks, lavish (by western standards) vacation allotments which can be 6 to 8 weeks per year, were the envy of liberal western politicians and union leaders.  In addition, the vast cradle to grave social net created what appeared to be the idyllic social system. So compelling was this system that naturally people from outside France all clamored to get in to get a ahare of the Gallic nipple.

Until now, when all of a sudden, there are, a: not enough nipples, b: more piglets and c: not enough production from present nipples.  But the entitlements that have been offered to society up until now are so entrenched that they are viewed as basic human rights for most in this fairy land.  To move the retirement age from 60 to 62?  Well, you may as well outlaw huffiness from French culture.

Look what’s happening in the U.K.  http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.187f08033fe68c98d16032a3c93790a9.501&show_article=1  Not quite the entitlements of France, but the same issue, that is, not enough money to fund civil service obligations. 

This is all very amusing perhaps and abstract to most people.  The fact is, this very same scenario will be repeated in north america very soon.  As federal, state and municipal budgets collapse from entitlements, the process to cull some retirement expenses will begin imminently.  We can expect ‘students’ and perhaps the odd union member to mount vocal and perhaps violent protests against the reduction of entitlements. The great nipple battle, coming here soon.

link Europe’s prospects brighten as U.S. fades | Reuters.

I guess anything’s possible.  But these kinds of forecasts have been around for a while and somehow, never come to fruition.  It’s very fashionable these days to forecast the demise of America with the associated parallels to the Roman Empire, yada yada yada.  While this particular author may point to short term statistics that purport to show signs of growth in European economies, given the big picture political background, it’s unlikely to be more than a blip in the longer term declining picture.  In an article for The Wall Street Journal a few weeks back, Bret Stephens ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704057604575080602346820226.html )  articulated the fundamental structural flaw with the European way of doing things:

“…All European economic policies are the cultural derivatives of one dominant, nearly totalitarian statist ideology: the state is good, the market is bad,” says French economist Guy Sorman. The free market, he adds, is “perceived as fundamentally American, while statism is the ultimate form of patriotism…”

as well,

“…Then there is the media. Last week, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who leads the country’s market-friendly Free Democrats, took to the pages of Die Welt to lament that Germany’s working poor make less than welfare recipients. “For too long,” he wrote, “we have perfected in Germany the redistribution [of wealth], forgetting where prosperity comes from. For his banal observations, Mr. Westerwelle was roundly accused of “[defaming] millions of welfare recipients” and urged to apologize to them. It takes a remarkably stultified intellectual climate for an op-ed to spark this kind of brouhaha: It is the empire of the Emperor’s New Clothes, adapted to the 21st century welfare state…”

With this mindset entrenched in most European cultures and governments, it is only a matter of time before the events in Greece find their way to the northern neighbors.  Once you have granted a set of entitlements to people, it is very hard to take them back.  Socialist leaning parties will maintain their grip on government because the masses who think they will benefit from wealth spreading will keep them in power.  While it may sound civilized for Europeans to routinely take anywhere from 4 to 8 weeks holiday a year, the fact is, someone pays for this.  Mostly, this will be manifest by higher prices, higher taxes and decreased productivity.  Try to sell this notion to the Chinese or Indians.  Canada is well on it’s way to emulating the European model as most government jobs entitle workers 3 to 4 weeks paid holidays a year.  If you happen to belong to a union, even better. 

Americans have historically operated on a different mindset, that is, the notion of working hard to get ahead.  This fundamental notion is the pillar of what makes America, America and created the whole  image of American exceptionalism.   Of course, at this time, there is strong movement to change this mindset.  The entitlement clamor is loud and alarmingly influential.  The siren song of getting something for nothing is an irresistible lure.  Like a powerful engine with cylinder leaks, the American economy is hampered by drains on productivity rather than aided by contributions to it.  The success or failure of this movement may in fact determine whether the U.S. can continue to be the world’s economic engine. 

 It may be noted that historians have opined that Rome was destroyed by rot from within, not from external forces.  It’s hard to disagree with this premise as it applies to the U.S., given what’s happened over the past few years.  The most important thing Americans can do to reverse their demise is to excise  the rot.  As can be seen in Europe, once rot sets in, it’s pervasive.  As if Americans want to be cheese eating surrender monkeys who think soccer is interesting.