I’m just making up the 1.94 percent number, but the International Herald Tribune reported last year that unfunded liabilities in France are nearly 550 percent of GDP. The news reports don’t include any estimates of what Sarkozy’s reform will mean, but I would be surprised if it had a big impact on France’s long-run fiscal nightmare. But, as the old saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step, and Sarkozy has pushed through the reforms notwithstanding protests and riots from left-wing unions and brain-dead students (who don’t seem to realize that they’ll pay even higher taxes if entitlements aren’t reformed).
Under pressure from the government, the French Senate voted Friday to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62, a victory for President Nicolas Sarkozy after days of street rage, acrimonious debate and strikes that dried up the supply of gasoline across the country. The vote all but sealed passage of the highly unpopular measure, but it was unlikely to end the increasingly radicalized protests. The coming days promised more work stoppages and demonstrations by those who feel changing the retirement age threatens a French birthright. …Leftist critics called the move a denial of democracy by an increasingly confrontational president. “No, you haven’t finished with retirement. You haven’t finished with the French,” said Socialist Sen. Jean-Pierre Bel, alluding to an apparently unflagging determination by unions, now joined by students, to keep protests alive — even through the upcoming week of school holidays.
If France ever did consider some significant reforms, it might be the first country to experience a Zombie Apocalypse, as the undead rise to protect their entitlements.
..”Leftist critics called the move a denial of democracy by an increasingly confrontational president. “…
if the outcome of the French Senate vote would have been as those leftists wish, many of them would have called the vote “democracy at its best” instead of a “denial of democracy”. But, whichever the outcome, what would have happened is that a political class -a socialist aristocracy of bullies that gave themselves exorbitant political power- would had made the decision, not the people of France. If the french people had not been stripped of its power by the french political class there would be a very different story.
Doing enormous street riots to allege that “the people” is alleging for this or for that is typical of leftists. But those gigantic street riots are precisely the consequence of a political system were the political class -and not the people- has the power. If people actually had power in France and could decide the issue by popular vote, on referendum, those humongous street riots would make little sense, since those riots are often used by the left to coerce the political class into voting in the way they wish. If the people could decide the matter on referendum there would be little of those humongous riots. Social security would be a much different system and not the actual french bankrupt system where the political class made old people, through exorbitant taxes, both poor and dependent on the wish of the political class and dependent too on taxes on the “disappearing” youths (in many Western European tax hells they are running out of youths to tax to sustain the old).
Socialism is not real democracy, socialism is a regime of bullies established by a political class that may be democratically elected, as in France, but a political class that gave itself exorbitant power over the people; elections there ressemble a process where the people give the political class a “blank check”.
Socialism is a regime of bullies where a political class has exorbitant power over the people. Extreme SOCIALISM -COMMUNISM and National SOCIALISM-, where the power of the political class is EXTREME, becomes a regime of EXTREME MASS MURDER by government and, under TOTAL goverment power -COMMUNISM- the regime becomes moreover a regime of EXTREME MASS THEFT of property by government.
In Ukraine your “duty” was to left the Stalin regime rob you your belongings and your means of production, if you do not agreed then you would have been MURDERED by one of communism favorite sadistic means of mass murder, MASS MURDER BY STARVATION!!! There was even cannibalism between family members becoming insane when the communist regime stole them their food and belongings and impeded them to leave the place.
When they had TOTAL power, in the first part of the 20th century, governments killed circa 200 million people. In the Americas, excepting Mexico, we never had such cruel regimes.
R. J. Rummel in his website “Power Kills” http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/ has shown how the more power the political class has, the more MASS MURDERS by governbment will be. This is another INCONVENIENT TRUTH that mainstream academia, media & bureaucracy, often promoting more power, control & money for the political class, will rarely tell us
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