Tuesday, June 9, 2020

How Are Things in France?

If you think that you have it bad, check out what is happening in France. A combination of government ineptitude and bad immigration policy is destroying the nation. The president, Emmanuel Macron, seems incapable of doing anything to stop it. 

Let’s begin with the state of the French healthcare system. You know all about it. It’s free. People pay for it with their taxes. The Democratic Party wants to import it into America.

Guy Milliere reports for the Gatestone Institute:

Although France spends a significant amount on its healthcare (8.6% of France's GDP), the pandemic there has been frighteningly mismanaged. There was a tragic shortage of intensive-care beds: 5,000 for the whole country, compared to Germany's 28,000. There was also, until the end of April, a near-total lack of masks and protective equipment for hospital doctors and caregivers. Further, there was the great lack of an ability to test for the coronavirus. The situation led the government to decide on one of the strictest general lockdowns in Europe. For eight weeks, the French economy, like others, effectively stopped. The results were devastating.

Apparently, nationalized health care did not work so well. But, how is the economy doing? Also, not so well. High unemployment, intrusive regulations and an overly powerful bureaucracy produced economic stagnation:

France, before the pandemic, was already in an alarming economic state. For several years, the country's growth rate had been barely above zero; the country's central bank had lowered its growth forecast for 2020 to 1.1%. France's unemployment rate was high (8.1%); it had not fallen below 8% for two decades. France was, in addition, paralyzed from any kind of growth by a proliferation of regulations and an omnipresent bureaucracy. The Index of Economic Freedom, published each year by the Heritage Foundation, ranks France number 64 , behind the United Kingdom (7), the Netherlands (14), Germany (27), and far behind formerly communist countries such as Poland (46), Romania (42), Bulgaria (37) or the Czech Republic (23).

Today, France is in recession, a bad recession:

France has now entered a deep recession. Economists anticipate that growth at the end of 2020 will be minus 8%. By comparison, the figure given for Germany is minus 6.3%. Many economists seem unsure if, in 2021, growth in France will resume at all. They say the country's rigidities are such that for the country fully to recover, it could take a decade. Although the French government has not published any recent statistics on unemployment, commentators say that one out of two persons working in the private sector is now unemployed. Worse, as a large number of small and medium businesses have gone bankrupt during the pandemic, there is virtually no hope of seeing millions of jobs quickly recreated. Although the French government also has not published any recent statistics on poverty, an increase in unemployment is bound to go hand-in-hand with an increase in poverty.

And let’s not forget taxation. France is a high tax country. Surely, this inhibits economic growth:

Before the pandemic, taxes and public spending, the highest in the developed world, also further paralyzed France's economy. The overall tax burden equaled 48.4% of the country's GDP; government spending amounted to 56.5% of the country's GDP. The country's budget deficit was at least 3% a year. To cover its spending, the government, had to borrow; so the country's debt continued to rise. In 2019, it reached 100% of GDP.

As though that were not bad enough, France has admitted a plethora of Muslim migrants. These latter are acting like conquerors: they have established a separate state within France. They have no intention to assimilate:

France's situation is all the more untenable in that for decades it has been a country of high immigration. France has accepted hundreds of thousands of newcomers -- on average, 400,000 migrants annually. Most have no marketable skills and rely on welfare indefinitely. Among people living on social benefits, the proportion of first-generation immigrants is more than 20% -- double the rest of the population. Even if the French government decided to put an abrupt end to immigration, the weight of unskilled immigrants already present in the country would not disappear.

As for assimilation, consider this:

Before the pandemic, integrating Muslims into the general population did not seem to be working particularly well. In a survey conducted for the Institute Montaigne in 2016, 29% of French Muslims questioned said that, "Islamic law (sharia) is more important than the law of the Republic"; 65% said that women should wear an Islamic veil and that women who do not wear one are "immodest", and 24% said that modest women should wear the niqab, a veil that also covers the face. The figures for responders under the age of 25 were even higher.

And, also:

Muslim populations are increasingly living apart from the rest of the population. In Muslim neighborhoods, for instance, the lockdown was not respected at all. When journalists asked Muslims why they did not pay attention to the pandemic, they replied that Allah was protecting them and that the sickness only affected infidels.

There you have a perfect breeding ground for the virus. But, Allah will protect them, so they do not need to social distance or to see physicians.

France has over 700 No-Go zones:

There are presently 751 sensitive zones in France. There, gangs reign and the law that is enforced is the law of Islam, sharia. Most of the non-Muslim residents have gone. Doctors enter these areas only under escort. During the last decade, several perpetrators of the jihadist attacks that struck France -- and left 263 dead and many more wounded -- came from these districts. More than 150 mosques there are run by radical imams who incite hatred without the slightest murmur.

And you think that America has problems.

6 comments:

Fredrick said...

"France has over 700 No-Go zones:"
De-funding the police here will have the same effect, especially when the retiring officers get replaced with ones loyal to the right party.

UbuMaccabee said...

Charles Martel, you are wanted on the urgent existential line, please pick up immediately.

Sam L. said...

All I can say is that I'm TOLD that the Frenchies can make some mighty tastey wine. I wouldna know, myself.

Oh, yes! They do losing their country very, very well.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

No doubt the French No-Go Zones are places where equality and justice prevail. And FGM is an outpatient procedure.

Did you hear about the LA City Council President Nury Martinez had a LAPD security detail at his home for 2 months? Yes, it is true. And it is true that SHE is one of the proponents of defunding the police. Ya gotta love it.

This is in the city where someone hung a severed pig head (a real one) out in front of LAPD HQ today.

This is how a country turns into Venezuela. A cop in Minneapolis kills a black man, and now all the police are racists. We have to get rid of them. Which will lead to more laws getting passed and not enforced. We will shovel all tax revenues into the bottomless hole of social services. Infrastructure will collapse. To pay for it, the middle class and small business will be taxed to the hilt. Corporations will buy off politicians (remember: Amazon pays ZERO in federal taxes), and the rich will carve out tax shelters. Cities will become unlivable, so the people who make it unlivable will move to the suburbs. Democrats will continue on their virtuous crusade. Gerrymandering will accelerate. Texas, Georgia, and Florida go deep blue... forever.

You get Venezuela when you have nothing left. This is the Leftist Utopia -- the place where we are all equally miserable. And the streets of today show us how it can happen in just one generation.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

In the name of the movement called Some Lives Matter, the Constitution will be gutted thusly:

The First Amendment is so yesteryear. Everyone acknowledges religious practice as non-essential. The Press is reports only news that does not reflect badly on Democrats. Free speech is allowed, so long as you say things that don't hurt the virtuous peoples' feelings. Peaceful assemblies are gatherings where "the people" chant moral rhymes. It takes 90 days to get a permit for assemblies of more than 17 people. Forbidden assemblies are "disrupted" by masked men, clad in designer black, wielding medieval weaponry -- a cadre of America's top Ivy League humanities graduates. Comedy is banned. Suspicion of sarcasm is a capital crime. There are no grievances in the newer, better, more morally magnificent America. Fun is not permitted, lest some virtuous soul be offended, bullied or marginalized. Chuck Todd is pleased.

The Second Amendment is (at last!) gone. CCW licensure has been repealed because convicted felons could not own guns, nor have said concealed licenses. This is a perfect example of disparate impact, which protects "white privilege." People who have CCWs are Deplorables, and might as well be Klansmen. People must be disarmed because they might defend themselves, make a mistake, or frighten virtuous neighbors. NYT op-eds sound the alarm, saying gun owners are worse than the police. Slingshot purchases require a background check and mandatory 64-day waiting period. Michael Bloomberg champions absolute gun confiscation, while surrounded 24/7 by his own bodyguards (who have guns). He claims he needs this protection from Republicans.

The Third Amendment will be interpreted literally about troops being quartered, so it is irrelevant. A voice in the wilderness stands up at an Anderson Cooper CNN Town Hall and says "The sprawling surveillance state is the exact same #$@%ing thing the British Colonists feared" in a jolting Originalist interpretation of the Constitution. People become frightened, because this raconteur has challenged their belief the Framers were all evil, slave-owning, bourgeois white men. The person with the courageous voice mysteriously disappears, but no one cares. After all, there's more great programming on the Glowing Box, and the actors there say #@$% a lot more, which is totally awesome. Cooper is reprimanded by the FCC for his lax audience vetting process.

The Fourth Amendment is gone because... who needs it??? You might possess something you're not supposed to possess, but that's your fault. After all, claiming Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure protections is a de facto claim that you have something to hide. No citizen should be allowed to hide anything because such behavior fosters envy. And no citizen should be envious of anyone else. For anything. The people accept this Truth. They learned it in college, which is now free and totally online so children never have to leave home. Any hint of hoarding envy-inducing possessions violation is probable cause for a 6:00 AM pre-dawn FBI tactical raid is home invasion, like the one Tucker Carlson just got. He deserved it.

Fifth Amendment rights are gone because people only remain silent if they have something to hide. If you are suspected of a thought crime, we move to summary judgment. Capital punishment will come back into vogue, because it's applicable in such thought crimes, with are the very, very, very worst. Especially accusations of racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia, cisgenderism, capitalism, freedomism, libertyism, caucasianism, and any _____ism that isn't approved by the state. According to the Bezos Post, Keith Ellison is the most respected Attorney General in the history of the United States.

-- Continued below --

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

-- Continued from above --

Now that relics like a "speedy and public trial" are passe, the Sixth Amendment is irrelevant. You can keep state criminals incarcerated indefinitely while the "investigation" is going on. The idea of witnesses and the validity of their recollections will be quashed on the grounds that "studies say" people cannot remember events accurately. Judges are virtuous, always. Google's Eric Schmidt has spent billions of his own money on search algorithms that figure out who the most dangerous "bad-thought-people" are, so now we can find them pretty darn well. Meanwhile, Schmidt forbids anyone to look at his life at all.

The Seventh Amendment is no longer necessary, because a jury of one's peers is impossible to assemble. After all, juries are notoriously stupid. This relic of a "slave-owning, vicious, white society" must be destroyed because there were some people didn't get fair trials in the decades and centuries before. There is a swelling movement to de-fund juries. Mark Zuckerberg is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for inventing the official Facebook voting system, one that guarantees Democrat victories with no Russian interference in our elections. You "Like" your president now, instead of voting for her.

The Eighth Amendment is ridiculous on its face, because Leftist leaders have already abolished bail. The state will not impose cruel or unusual punishments -- they will use vigilantes and mobs to mete out justice. No justice AND no peace -- a winning combination! A $70,000 fine and felony for violating quarantine and closing businesses is a sensible practice, as shown by 2020 Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. There are no police, and thus no crime reports. Therefore, there is no crime. Fun, fun, fun for everyone, unless you have $#&% to get done!

The Ninth Amendment will be nullified, as states, counties and municipalities will pass countless laws. Liberty and freedom are no longer permitted, except to get abortions and smoke cannabis. No one complains, because everyone is walking around as a potential felon, hoping to avoid being targeted by the state. No one looks anyone else in the eye. Chiara de Blasio-Soros, the 4th wife of billionaire George Soros (64 years her senior), and daughter of NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, is FBI Director. She tells Vox, “I married George for love.” Caitlyn Jenner is jealous.

The Tenth Amendment? Well, we all know federalism is dead. Unless Democrats are in power -- then it is sensible, because COVID-25 is a real KILLER. 2.2 million people might die! That's why we've cryogenically preserved the great viral Oracle Dr. Anthony Fauci (with his mask on). He is available on a moment's notice if we face epidemiological disaster! He will tell us what is science and what is not, because he is the perfect, unbiased, unelected bureaucrat who gets a paycheck no matter what happens.

And that's just the original Bill of Rights. Which must be shredded because... well, you know... look who WROTE IT!!!

The French had their Reign of Terror. Let's see if anyone survives ours.