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jimbokunyesterday at 8:02 PM1 replyview on HN

The French have excellent government benefits and services and that’s partly due to their willingness to riot.


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joe_mambayesterday at 8:48 PM

Reddit IQ argument.

Germans, Swedes, Dutch, Swiss, etc do too and they never riot. Government services come from taxes, not riots. French also have high youth unemployment and wages on the lower end compared to the rest of wealthy EU nations, plus quite some emigration of their skilled workers abroad.

You see, rioting only works for you if you're the only game in town and money has nowhere else to go, but it doesn't work for you in a free trade market economy where investors can pack up and move elsewhere in the EU.

A lot of present day French prosperity is not due to their rioting, it's coasting on the inertia of their past success and generous borrowing conditions, not on current labor force productivity.

If rioting would automatically equal prosperity, then Poland would have gotten wealthy by rioting instead of working hard under cutthroat conditions with low taxes and no welfare state in the 90s.

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