Marc Steel makes the case that the French strikes are an example of the poverty in rich countries. Steel argues that strikers are expected to accept globalization without making too much of fuss, to just work more and get on the program without the rich having the same obligation. Sugary excerpt:
The argument to scrap these "privileges" goes on to explain that they cripple the economy, making everyone worse off. So presumably the French should be more like the British, because we've been far-sighted enough to have much worse pension schemes, and our working week is on average 2.63 hours longer than the French one. So obviously that makes us better off. But even we're lagging behind truly modern economies, like Burma, where there are no pensions and people are forced to work all day and night or be whacked with a stick. They're rolling in it, the jammy bastards.
Seeing as the new government in France is determined to smash the culture of unearned privilege, Nicolas Sarkozy must be familiar with the characters at the top of the French rich-list. The No.1 spot in this list is a surprise, as you would imagine it must be occupied by a train driver from Lille with lots of stubble, but it turns out that it's Bernard Arnault, chairman of Christian d'Or, who's worth $21bn. He must be in a really outdated union.
[…] Sarkozy represents the frustrated wing of French business that wants their country to be handed to the same City types, their one per cent. Whereas some of the strikers appear to have grasped that when a government proposes cutting pensions, closing 200 courts, cutting 11,000 primary school teachers and privatising parts of the university system, these aren't random flights of madness but part of a pattern. And surely any policy that says, "The way we run our railways is outdated – let's run them more like the system they have in Britain", can't be allowed to succeed.
I agree with the sentiment expressed by Steel, but I think that the solution is to focus more equality and equity. For the key issue is France is not the sustainability and the reexamination of the privileges of certain French workers, but rather the sustainability and the examination of all privileges so that the French can make a decision about what type of society they wish to have.
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