Is Paris Burning Again?

In late 2019 and early 2020, I was hoping to spend a month or two in Paris in the immediate future at the invitation of a friend who lives there - possibly as soon as the summer of 2020.  When COVID hit, I decided that I should wait until the pandemic abated - by 2023 at the earliest.

Yeah, I'm not going to Paris this year either.  And not because I've given up any hope of going anywhere in Europe ever (though I have) . . . 

It seems that the French are on the warpath again, burning everything in sight, including this unfortunate Peugeot (at least I think this is a Peugeot; it's hard to tell when the brand emblem and the radiator grille have both melted), because of President Emmanuel Macron's move to raise the retirement age.  Macron wants to raise the retirement age in France so that the national old-age pension plan doesn't go bankrupt due to the aging population and the low birth rate (which made me wonder how the French could be such great lovers yet still be unable to procreate, until I remembered that even Marine Le Pen wouldn't criminalize birth control).  The French are not only burning cars but going on strike in just about every industry and service, letting garbage pile up on the once-romantic streets of Paris.

What does Macron want to do with the retirement age?  He wants to raise it from 62 years to . . . 64.

Are you kidding me?

I mean, in the United States, the retirement is even higher than Macron wants it to be in France, and many Americans can't retire at the U.S retirement age of 65  - and by the way, the retirement age for my generation and for subsequent generations is higher still, at 67.  Some politicians are already suggesting that the retirement age in the U.S. could be raised even higher, like up to 70.  The French will still have it better than we do with a retirement age of 64, and yet they start destroying and shutting down the country in protest?  It makes you wonder what we could achieve if we protested as angrily and as violently as the French.

Oh, right . . .

I remain utterly amused by the French.  They have it better than we do in so many ways - paid family leave, high-speed rail, Emmanuelle Béart - yet they go ballistic when they're asked to give up something small or tolerate a minor inconvenience, even when the result is continuing to have a better quality of life than us silly Americans, still without a Cabinet-level equivalent to France's Ministry of Culture.  Raising the retirement age to an age still below that of the retirement age in the United States - a country where workers can't take all of August off - is hardly the reason to let the trash pile up higher than Mont Blanc.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: Sure, the French have more to lose than Americans do, but that's only because they have more in the first place!

President Macron has directed his prime minister to subvert the French Parliament and push his retirement reform bill through by using an obscure procedure allowed by France's 1958 constitution.  The 2024 Paris Olympics are going to be a big disaster, if this keeps up.