Les Miserables
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.