France is not Disney Land

Many people seem to make the assumption that so many French youths are in the streets is just because they like to be there or because they are refusing to accept the fact that the world is changing and that they have to change with it. Steven Pearlstein wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday which I would have called just simply wrong if he hadn’t repeated all the clichés about France and its unwillingness to accept globalization, liberalism and capitalism, but because instead of making his point, he uses stereotypes, I will called his arguments stupid and offensive. The French youth is in the streets because their government is sacrificing them to restart the economy and to make the labor market more dynamic. The government is unwilling and unable to pass any other kind of reforms that are more urgent such as pension law and health care law. They chose to write a labor law that solely focuses on the French of less than 26 years old because they are the most vulnerable sine they do not vote and since for that reason they are easy to pick upon to try to reform a system that results in more than 20% of youth unemployment. The problem, I will argue is not an attempt to preserve some economic fantasy, but rather a refusal to accept that the youth that is after the future be sacrificed so that the baby boomer be allowed to live long and comfortable retirements. The government of Dominique de Villepin took some risks by reanimating economic patriotism and it did this in spite of the fact that it may face sanctions from the European Union from violating the rules of the European common market. The French youths are in the streets because they want their government to take the same risks for them not by maintaining the façade of security at the price of the future, but rather by making sure that they have the tools and all of the help that they need to compete in a globalized world. Villepin did not talk to those youths and my guess is that he couldn’t talk to them because he could not tell them with a straight face that this law would help them survive in a globalized economy. Some things are worth fighting for and thank god, the jeunesse française knows it.

Comments

[Jérôme]

Thanks for sharing your point of view.

Sometimes you need more than clichés to understand what's really going on in foreign countries... This op-ed is really offensive.