Saturday, November 05, 2005

Mitterrand: France is different because it "is the country where the level of social protection is the highest in the world"

Just to make things perfectly clear: Just as Hurricane Katrina could never happen in France, neither could anything like the 1992 riots in Los Angeles. The New York Sun (merci à Tonton Hervé):
Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported in 1992: "the consensus of French pundits is that something on the scale of the Los Angeles riots could not happen here, mainly because France is a more humane, less racist place with a much stronger commitment to social welfare programs." President Mitterrand, the Washington Post reported in 1992, blamed the riots on the "conservative society" that Presidents Reagan and Bush had created and said France is different because it "is the country where the level of social protection is the highest in the world."

… immigration into a country with a dirigiste economy is a recipe for trouble, which is why supporters of immigration into France have long warned of the need for liberalization.

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