Do you think protests like those in France should happen across Europe?

[Zeno]

In my opinion, the French are more than rightful in protesting so violently. First off, Macron showed to everyone that he hates the people and wants to remain as long as he wants in power, using the taxes of the population to his personal benefit. Because this pension "reform" won't reform anything, won't be effective in improving the state's finances and deficits, and do not address the main burden of the budget and society as a whole, which is... Immigration. Because immigration caused this to happen. Where did the fiscal deficits come from? Where did overspending come from? And so on... From the 1/3rd of the population which does NOT work and lives almost exclusively on benefits, which is the immigrants. If anything only the native French protest this. Because they are going to sustain the burden, not the immigrants. And they are correct. Because if they don't react, they will become wageslaves for both the government and for parasites which don't deserve to be in France, let alone receive a single penny.

And that doesn't happen only in France. But in all of Europe. It has already happened for a fact. In Greece the pension age got raised from 61 to 67 years. And in many other countries it has gotten from 62-64 to 67. That in order to sustain the budget, along with increasing immigrant populations, which, through welfare, have vastly increased pressures on the state finances of each country.

Everyone should protest this, because raising the pension age will get to nowhere. Soon, they'll tell it's not enough, and they'll raise it further. Just to sustain some parasites longer.

The solution to amounting economic pressure is to kick the immigrants out, and reinforce the native population, which will provedly contribute to further and actual economic growth. Not raising the pension age to sustain a portion of the population which contributes next to nothing in the economy and in society, despite the aid we're offering them.

[Laly]

I am afraid such protests won’t change anything.

The people could have expressed itself differently in the ballot box, if it wanted really a change. The people pays the consequences of its actions. The protesters disagree with the government, want “more justice”, but they don’t have any program, any project, in order to improve the situation, and particularly, they never address the question of immigration.

These violent protests remind me of the jacqueries, that are paesant revolts that took place in the Middle Ages and later. But these jacqueries actually never threatened the power, the authorities. They always led to the reinforcement of the power in place. In fact, the peasant revolts always ended in relatively small reforms concerning taxes or the or the law enforcement, and it strengthened the State. These revolts were not directed against the State, they were rather distress calls, calls for justice, addressed to the State.

[Tooting Carmen]

With or without immigration, a rapidly ageing population is a very real problem across the developed world (look at Japan and South Korea).

[gixajo]

I think protests at this level should be more frequent, but for other reasons.

Raising the retirement age is the solution to a symptom of a society's disease, but protesting the type of medication that they give us to solve that symptom is not the solution to the problem that causes that symptom.

In reality the protest is led by the left to erode a right-wing government (actually it is center-right) taking advantage of the fact that it has made an unpopular decision.

It´s the same thing that will happen in Spain if the right comes to govern: the left will mobilize the unions and "social agents" after any governmental decision that is minimally unpopular (anything can become unpopular if you dominate the media), while when the left governs nobody moves in the street and everything seems seen from afar, that it is going well. In reality, people accumulate their anger and indignation, which when the left wins, is directed to the new government.

It is not that the right is much better, it is simply that the left found the method sooner or had less qualms about putting it into practice.

[Victor]

I hope so

[Zeno]

With or without immigration, a rapidly ageing population is a very real problem across the developed world (look at Japan and South Korea).

Well, but this shouldn't be solved through immigration. Because it has been proven insufficient, in real time in fact.

[Mejgusu]

If 1/3 of the population(I think you mean people who are able to work) don’t work how is an unemployment rate of around 7%(according to the article which was sent days ago here)possible? French people like to demonstrate, more than other Europeans, which is a French tradition, on the other hand Germans never demonstrate. Even I agree with the demonstrators, most European countries are faced with demographic changes which will lead to raising age of retirement. If demonstrations are senseless, I don’t see any democratic benefits from them. For example, demonstrating against high inflation made by politicians could be something useful, if it leads to change anything. And without violence, I don’t understand why people damage public property.

Besides of this, France has a good government comparing to UK or Germany.

[Petalpusher]

If 1/3 of the population(I think you mean people who are able to work) don’t work how is an unemployment rate of around 7%(according to the article which was sent days ago here)possible? French people like to demonstrate, more than other Europeans, which is a French tradition, on the other hand Germans never demonstrate. Even I agree with the demonstrators, most European countries are faced with demographic changes which will lead to raising age of retirement. If demonstrations are senseless, I don’t see any democratic benefits from them. For example, demonstrating against high inflation made by politicians could be something useful, if it leads to change anything. And without violence, I don’t understand why people damage public property.

Besides of this, France has a good government comparing to UK or Germany.

The official stat is 24% on unemployement benefits in "banlieues", which are close to 100% ethnic neighbourhoods to be clear (remaining % are usually from other European countries even). The inactivity per say might be close to 1/3 or even 1/2 in some places (for women it's even past 50% of inactivity). Those who don't even ask for benefits because they are engaged in the likes drug trafficking and other ciminal activities. It's been demonstrated there s a whole parrallel economy providing for entire families even if they are not directly taking part in it, and that drug related activity is almost entirely derived from said neibourhoods.

Those are about 10% of the population overall, so that doesn't discard the fact on average 7% of the whole country might be unemployed but of course it also means natives are a bit less unemployed than the average suggests.

[Mejgusu]

...

I didn’t ask anything else, I do believe that places with high numbers of Non-French citizens also have high numbers of unemployment rates, it isn’t different in Germany, maybe even worse. It shows that France has(like Germany) a wrong policy towards migrants who are misusing the social welfare. But nevertheless France has an unemployment rate of 7, maybe 8% which makes the claim, 1/3 wouldn’t work, a wrong claim.

[Petalpusher]

I didn’t ask anything else, I do believe that places with high numbers of Non-French citizens also have high numbers of unemployment rates, it isn’t different in Germany, maybe even worse. It shows that France has(like Germany) a wrong policy towards migrants who are misusing the social welfare. But nevertheless France has an unemployment rate of 7, maybe 8% which makes the claim, 1/3 wouldn’t work, a wrong claim.

Oh but it's not about citizenships, a good chunk of the people living in those neighborhoods have a piece of paper saying their nationalities is French. The rate of unemployment for immigrants is actually lower, something like 14%, still double the average but they include people from other place than North Africa and Africa like it's overwhelmingly the case in banlieues.

For example East Asians very rarely live there, but most of them don't have the nationality. In Paris they almost all live in one specific arrondissement inside Paris (the 13th) but once you go to Saint Denis in the surburb, you see even less East Asians than natives in the city as a whole, as there is also a bias between the cities and the housing areas. Former prime minister of Spanish origin Emmanual Valls called it an apartheid when he visited because it actually looks like one in effect.