> France has a long standing tradition of granting citizenship for service to state, nation or society (he right of spilled blood, bad translation).
Indeed, and that should not be diluted by lowering the bar to "has been showing up for work for two years", which is pretty much as low as can be and, frankly, an insult to those who got it by spilled blood or outstanding service.
I'm not against this program but, since it is done in relation to the pandemic, it should have been restricted to those who did exceptional things to help during that time , garbage collectors clearly haven't even if their role is essential.
As a French, I'm more ashamed by your comment than by anything these people might do. It's going to be hard to cheapen "our" citizenship given how low French born people have dragged it.
> I am not surprised France is not France anymore. It’s not a country with shared ideals, it’s just a bunch of people living in the same area.
Despite what the far right like to pretend, France never was a country of shared ideals. France history is one of continuous struggles and disagreements. It starts with war in the Vendée, through Thiers having the communards executed, the pro and anti-Dreyfusard to Petain having the communist members of parliament expelled. It's even more fun when you consider that most of the people who fought for France in its darkest hour did so from a frankly internationalist ideal.
The defining factor of France if there ever was one is its strong and highly centralised state and its undying love for meddling with the lives of its citizen and private companies. France is first and foremost a state more than a nation. You could argue that the French nation is actually defined by adherence to the Jacobin ideal of the state.
I really wish people stopped believing the tosh the state cronies served to peasants and labourers at the beginning of the 20th century to convince them to go die in a trench.
> Every French person enjoys life, wants to work the less they could and they feel entitled for everything. More than half the people there work for the government and are more worried about their rights than what they could do.
I dont think so ,french people are not lazy at all , and it's common for employees in a private business to do extra hours FOR FREE !!! yes for free. And we dont take 3 hour breaks for lunch, we eat at the office. Whatever you heard about french public service is not true in any private business in France, people work very hard.
> I like to make fun of the French as much as anyone else but I really respect and admire the French people's propensity for protest and to stand up for what they believe. That's advanced citizenship in action.
You'll be disappointed then. The French are protesting for benefits and not for social change. Aka, they are not better than the police they are engaging with.
> In this case bureaucrats should be condemned as if they were thief.
I don't think the public gets to go scott free in this. France is a democracy. If the French government does something, all French people are responsible for it. That's what the world says about us, why not France?
> Nation-wide solidarity costs little to each person but gives a lot to those who need it.
The money I save from French taxes (I left this year) I can easily afford all manner of insurance plus I get paid a heck of a lot more to save quite a bit of money.
French employment is over 10% and the economy is stagnant. Could it be if you incentivize unemployment you get more of it? It sure seems like that in France. Chronic and intentional unemployment is not unusual in France. And everyone gets to pay for it. Disposable income in France is also significantly less than in the US.
> there will still be swimming bags of potato chips and cigarette cartons and beer cans and receipts, and all the other junk Parisians tend to toss in there
Time to enforce littering fines.
Seriously, as a French person living in Belgium, I am disgusted with how little of a shit people give about keeping their own city clean.
If we start enforcing littering fines a bit more in western europe, this shit will stop within a couple of years. It's 100% cultural and this is something we absolutely have to change in our culture.
I like how you distinguish between the people who are eligible and the people who have applied, because some eligible people do not know they are and therefore do not apply.
It is brought up in the press [1] from time to time, and the percentage in France is somewhere between 40% and 50% of the eligible people, which is huge!
> Can someone acquainted with the situation shed light on why they are doing this?
Hard to explain, even for a french person. That's why I basically want to move ASAP, at least abroad I'll care less about politics.
It tragically funny, there is like 10% unemployment rate in France right now, and instead of trying to give businesses some air, ie less laws and regulations, they keep on coming with ridiculous ones.
> the 5th French Republic is going well since the 50s, isn't it?
Is it going well, though? There's never been so much inequality, industrial pollution is spreading everywhere (is there even a single river left you can drink in France?!), political corruption has been adopted as governing principle (see also: Jacques Foccart and the Françafrique scandals), law enforcement is plagued by nazism (French police was never denazified after WWII), and the social services De Gaulle was forced (by popular power) to implement have either been dismantled or rendered painful for both workers and users (healthcare/education/housing).
> Basing 21st Century politics on something written in the 18th century is... weird.
I agree in principle, but it's important to realize that the most important social issues we face today (including depletion of resources and pollution) have been fought against for centuries. We have a lot of lessons to learn from the past.
> It has an awfully elitist education and employment system
Who cares? France gives everybody mobility, a computer and network, plus free training in case they cannot go self-taught. Most of French new jobs are deliviery and remote work by African immigrants (extensively represented due to France having half Africa as a former trading point, faith territory and colony).
This is reductive to the point of misleading. France does control its borders, but has chosen to accept the freedom of movement of Schengen, become a party to the Dublin Regulation, and participate in Frontex.
The idea that France is helpless to deal with the question of how it treats the migrants and the asylum seekers within its borders because of these agreements is to absolve them of responsibility towards people that they have taken on through those choices in addition to their own domestic law.
Telling people they can't work at all in your country, when they have nowhere else to go, is cruel. That is a choice France -- and other countries like Germany -- have made, and should be held responsible for.
(PS, I also disagree with the characterisation of the European borders as 'porous', given how much money, manpower, and how many human lives are expended enforcing them. If they were porous, people would not be drowning in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe.)
>At the end of the day, the French have no obligation to change their society to accommodate newcomers;
oooh I'm not sure I agree with you here.
A similar scenario (though very much on the micro level) is "the birth of a child doesn't obligate either parent to accommodate the newcomer."
I'm not saying the french need to bend to their every whim, or that the immigrants dont need to adopt the local culture as well. Its a two way street. When you let immigrants in you acknowledge that you're letting change in.
> French workers actually on average these days put in a longer week (37 hours) than Germans (35 hours), and are nearly as productive per hour worked.
At least a reasonable sentence, which describes well the reality of work in France.
I guess the problem is actually that France is still a feudal society with many social classes. And soon it will erupt like a volcano in fury.
What I mean is that in every French micro-society such as office work there are people who have the right diploma and who strongly despise those who have a slightly different diploma. For example there are four types of high school teachers, (professeurs certifiés, professeurs agrégés, professeurs contractuels, promotion interne) but you find the same phenomenon more or less everywhere. Contempt is everywhere "il y a les sangs bleu et les autres" Or as said a previous President "les sans dents".
In many companies your salary depends on the school you attended and this criteria will not change all along your life, whatever your achievements.
If you do not speak with the right accent and mannerism you will never be promoted. But everybody in the management will deny it exists.
Indeed, and that should not be diluted by lowering the bar to "has been showing up for work for two years", which is pretty much as low as can be and, frankly, an insult to those who got it by spilled blood or outstanding service.
I'm not against this program but, since it is done in relation to the pandemic, it should have been restricted to those who did exceptional things to help during that time , garbage collectors clearly haven't even if their role is essential.
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