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Jewish World Review Nov. 10, 2005 / 8 Mar-Cheshvan, 5766 Paris' harvest of socialism By Dick Morris
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The increasingly violent riots that are gripping France are only likely to get worse. The anger of immigrant Muslims reflects their lack of opportunities and their dead-end prospects.
For a North African or Middle East immigrant in France, there are few avenues that offer a prospect of upward mobility — in stark contrast to the plethora of choices available to immigrants in the United States. Instead of gearing itself to job creation and upward mobility — as the American system does — the French economy, society, labor regulations, tax laws and social structure are all designed to provide a high-quality life to the traditional, white population without allowing the growth and expansion so necessary for the swelling ranks of immigrants.
While the United States was built to absorb people from other lands, France was never designed to accommodate immigrants. Its system was built only for the French.
For many, the system seems ideal. French men and women get free health care and education. Almost all employees get the same kind of job security against dismissal we only give our civil servants. Workers are guaranteed extensive vacation, good pay, and limits on the work week.
Shopkeepers are protected against low-cost competition and farmers are sheltered behind a wall of agricultural subsidies that are the bane of the European Union that foots the bill.
And almost everybody in France gets a check every month. The amounts vary, but even millionaires get a handout from the government. There is no resentment against welfare or the dole in the salons of Paris because everybody gets it. Middle-class entitlements are the order of the day.
But this seeming utopia costs money. Taxes in France absorb a bit less than half of the national income (compared with about one-third in the United States). And the rigidity of labor laws make it very hard to dismiss a worker, assuring that few jobs will be created.
The combination of taxes and labor protections has left France with an economy that creates very few jobs and grows at a snail's pace, if at all.
As fellow columnist John O'Sullivan observed, immigrants to the United States invest heavily in our national "narrative," popularly called the American dream. Ask any Islamic taxi driver in New York and he will tell you his children are going to college and will regale you with his high hopes for the future. This sense of optimism and improvement kindles a national pride which tends to offset the pull of the separatist Islamic culture and nullifies much of its anti-Western connotation.
But the French Muslim has no such offsets. Far from a melting pot, the stagnation of the French economy — and the rigidity of its society — leaves them a congealed mass at the bottom of the economic ladder, concentrated in poor suburbs, shunted out of sight and out of the way. With 10 percent of the population thus confined to the lowest rung of society, the threat of violence is quite real.
When America had her own racial riots in the '60s, they came at a time of unprecedented upward economic and social mobility. Segregation was collapsing. Minority educational and income levels were poised to rise rapidly in the ensuing 30 years. While the riots raged, relief was around the corner.
But France's entire social and economic fabric was never designed to accommodate outsiders. Without fundamental and wrenching changes, it will not be able to deal with the increasingly heavy ballast at the bottom of its economic boat, a weight that could increasingly threaten the navigability of the ship of state.
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© 2005, Dick Morris
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Mitch Albom | |||||||||||
