France Fried: The 2012 Elections & Return to Socialism

[Ed Hudgins]

France Fried: The 2012 Elections & Return to Socialism

By Edward Hudgins

May 8, 2012 – French voters guillotined the reelection hopes of center-right President Nicolas Sarkozy in favor of Socialist François Hollande, putting France on a faster road to national collapse.

The welfare states of Western Europe have practiced milder forms of the statist economics and spiritual collectivism that were found in the former Soviet bloc. They have thus been experiencing a slow-motion version—now accelerating—of the collapse that occurred two decades ago in the East.

For decades the French government has heaped regulations and penalties on wealth creation and entrepreneurship. In the late 1990s, for example, with unemployment chronically at over 10 percent, that government decided to cut the work week to 35 hours, though workers would still get the same pay. Anyone working more than that would actually be punished. In "France Labors at Folly," I examined the très tragique results of this comédie français.

Sarkozy was defeated because of unpopular government austerity measures made necessary by irresponsible government spending and economic regulation. The new president no doubt will try to raise revenue with Obama-on-steroids confiscatory taxes on "the rich." And those targeted productive individuals no doubt will take their wealth offshore or simply not produce as much. Atlas will shrug and the French death spiral will continue.

In a collectivist culture, individuals assume that they are not responsible for their own lives and wellbeing, but that their neighbors are and have a duty to serve them. If everyone thinks that way, then nobody is responsible. The sickening results of such a culture were seen in 2003 when some 15,000 elder French citizens died in a heat wave in part because their adult children just assumed that the government would take care of mom and dad. Read about that horrific story in my piece "France’s Killer Collectivism."

The same culture that killed those elderly is killing the French economy. How much misery and death will result only the outcome of the moral battle between producers and expropriators will tell.

[caroljane]

This equation of family with state responsibility is entirely specious. It negates the choices of the elderly involved.

[Mikkel]

This equation of family with state responsibility is entirely specious. It negates the choices of the elderly involved.

Yes, for those elderly who still have the mental capacity to deal with a heat wave. Not for those who don’t have that!

Mikkel

[anthony]

This equation of family with state responsibility is entirely specious. It negates the choices of the elderly involved.

Carol,

That incident of personal neglect and shirked responsibility is an aberration, but it's indicative of a deep malaise in individuals and Society.

Basically, of course you are right, but as Ed writes in his linked article, the partial root cause is insane dependency on the State safety net.

There are degrees of addiction on State dependency, I think - reflected in the self-responsibility most people show in some nations (I refer to Germany sometimes - if only SA came even close to it - and similarly with the US and Canada) where I guess there is the approach of "Government helps those who help themselves".

(Kind of.)

I do believe that nearly all people *naturally* move towards individualism in their lives, but - lack of focused thinking, the dictate of being our brothers' keeper, and knee-jerk obedience to authority, pave the way for Statist growth: and so, to mind-sapping collectivism.

[Dglgmut]

Well, hopefully it gets bad quickly rather than slowly and France can serve as another example to the rest of the world.

[anthony]

Well, hopefully it gets bad quickly rather than slowly and France can serve as another example to the rest of the world.

I used to think that way, but I've come to realise there is no end to human justification and evasion.

The causality of ideology and misery is just not self-admitted: - "it wasn't done right" - or, the greatest cop-out of them all: "XXXism is too good for human beings; they are not ready for it yet."

We've enough examples. What would be uplifting, is a contrary example to point to.