David Chazan:
Francois Hollande was elected to the French presidency on a pledge to reverse France’s rising unemployment but, two months on, he is facing some major setbacks.
Alice works in one of the last surviving textile factories in the gritty industrial belt of northern France, near Valenciennes.
Thirty-seven years ago, when she was taken on, the group that owns the factory employed about 8,000 people. Now, only 200 jobs are left. Alice, who is now in her 50s, says the group is still making the same products – but not in France. They are made in countries where labour is cheaper.
For 20 years, she says, she has heard politicians promising to do something to stop industry moving abroad but it was just talk. And she reluctantly accepts that Francois Hollande and the new Socialist government in France cannot exert as much control as they would like over industry and international business.
They are discovering that they can do little to stop the car-maker Peugeot from closing a factory just outside Paris. The government is threatening to cut state aid to the ailing company, but executives argue that will only make things worse for workers. And yet beneath the combative rhetoric of the left-wing unions, I have found that many people are as resigned as Alice to the idea of a future with fewer manufacturing jobs in France.
…President Hollande’s campaign slogan was “change is now” but, since he has been in office, another catchphrase has started to be heard more often. It is one inherited from the previous Socialist president, Francois Mitterrand – “Donner du temps au temps”. It roughly translates as “all in due course” or “be patient, don’t rush things”.
…I spoke to a group of architects in their 30s and 40s. On the face of it, they are doing quite well. The last thing any of them wants to do is leave France.
Most of them, in fact, voted for Mr Hollande but, like a lot of other middle-class people, they are starting to feel uneasy about the impact of higher taxes on their business.
They want more social justice but they also want the government to recognise that French companies have to be able to compete internationally.
Peugeots, for some reason, are the main targets of the Car-B-Quers who are STILL burning about 100 cars a week throughout France.
People who lose their cars in this way usually have no garage or otherwise safe place to put a replacement car, so they give up driving.
A huge drop in auto sales in France.
No wonder Peugeot would rather just concentrate of their non-French markets.
And that last part of the story; how these French voted in a SOCIALIST but expect him to do a U-turn, becoming less radical and more friendly to business as did Mitterrand in the 1980’s is sheer folly!
Why not vote in the business-friendly leader to begin with?
@Nan G:
Hmmm. Sounds eerily similar to something that happened here recently. Of course, Obama never openly flouted his socialist ideology, and none of the MSM did their jobs in revealing exactly who Obama is, even as people were asking.
A tiger cannot be expected to change his stripes just because his environment changes. Obama cannot be expected to move away from socialistic ideals just because he represents the entire country.
These fools have it coming. This is not the first time Europe went through an incomprehensible crisis of due unsustainable Welfare State, taxation, spending and borrowing. It went rather poorly for France then too …
Hitler’s Beneficiaries
Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State, by Götz Aly
They want an easy life paid for with someone else’s money. That’s why they rolled back the French retirement age to 60 from 62. It should probably be 72 or 74. To the extend they may care about the disadvantaged they don’t expect to sacrifice personally. They expect that social justice will be paid for with someone else’s money. And if the someone else is a person or class they resent? All the better!
@Mike O’Malley:
It is what the people who would rule are counting on, Mike. Envy, jealousy, and the kind of greed that stems from coveting other people’s property.
If the people had simply looked a little ways to the east of them, they would have seen what happens when the promises become so great that they cannot be kept. When the offerings to the masses, of which they were happy to have, become so much that the people actually paying for them decided it was too high of a burden to bear. And why should they bear it? Their neighbor didn’t bear that burden, and he got everything for “free”, right?
Greece is the most recent example of what stems from “social justice”. France may be next.
@johngalt:
Fortunately Greece lacks a Wehrmacht, as does France.
Fortunately Greece lacks a Wehrmacht, as does France.
For that matter, neither does Germany!
@Bookdoc:
And Russia is in terminal demographic collapse.
Is the new word of the day: IMPLOSION?
Give the guy a break—he was only elected on 5/6/12. Talk about jumping to conclusions. If he was a capitalist, and the economy was in the toilet since he was elected, you’d be saying, “Give him time”. Strictly ideologically based argument a so narrow-minded.
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
Unsurprising that you missed the point of the article, Lib1. It didn’t really have anything to do with what he hasn’t done in office, but what he has done.