This a very long article, the main theme is that different factions in France are in a kind of soft war with a clear faction on the loosing side. They are immigrants, the Elite and the older working class.
As a old Frenchman I would say two things that are self contradictory, first I think this guy makes a good diagnostic of the current situation, second: Things are not that simple, the last time France was a pleasant utopia was before WWII. After that it had continously been a mess:
De Gaulle made a coup to get the power in 1958, Paratroopers were sent to Paris[0], Corsica was briefly taken under military rules[0] and the IV republic died quietly without blood bath.
The 70" were nice but the 80" were horrible economically speaking. After that it was the rise of Europe, which closed plants but did not created jobs. Most of the economy is now controlled by the state (56%).
Since 2008 we have lost most of the freedom that citizens enjoy under democracy: Our parliament has no right, there are moral laws as in 1984, generalized spying on citizens and soldiers in arms are everywhere in public spaces.
There's also the Midnight in Paris theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_in_Paris) where everyone's idea of a golden-age in Paris is someone else's least favourite, and the true golden-age was actually an earlier era...
> The 70" were nice but the 80" were horrible economically speaking.
That's basically how it went for many countries in the Western world. The 1970s weren't bad, but the 1980s saw income inequality start to spike completely out of control. Income for the average person stagnated, and in all honestly has never really recovered.
France is a peculiar institution with a wild, tangled history, but it's not immune to global trends.
Odd because the current adult generation, born in the 80s probably only remember the fruits of the 70s tree: music, movies, games, fashion, electronics.
I want to thank @redsummer for posting this fascinating article. Despite its flaws, Hacker News is one of the best things going on the Internet right now, especially for retired folks like me who have the time to wade through the new stuff and find the occasional gem.
My takeaway is that globalization has winners and losers. The winners get to keep the spoils and write the history books. The losers are debased and then ignored.
I am a bit late to reply, but languages are changing also. The average written French in media is now much poorer in vocabulary than it was before 1995, and there now are many grammar mistakes. The language evolves continuously.
And the spoken French has incredibly changed in the last decades. Most young people would have problem to understand the spoken French of 1900.
That said, French (like English in GB, or German) spread a lot thanks to TV in the 50'/60'. When I was young there was still old people speaking the local language of their tiny part of Brittany.
This is an excellent and unsettling article. The problem is that neither the old parties nor the new right have any solutions that would really solve the problems.
Nothing to see. The article is not even about France or French, it's only about Paris.
Paris is getting evermore expensive and people are driven away. Just like every major city in the world. The people who already got a property are golden, while everyone else will never manage to afford one.
Same issue with all the major cities: London, Paris, Geneva, Zurich, New York, SF, Tokyo, Hong Kong...
It is perhaps a global issue, but it has not much to do with Paris.
I live in one of the "rich" towns mentionned in the article (Rennes) and the unemployment rate is an incredibly high 15%!
The article is IMO more about a state that had killed the private sector, which was previously providing good jobs.
Now as you say, the middle class who made every efforts to get the magical "Master in something", still do not have access to state sponsored housing and do not either find any of the highly qualified jobs that were promised by countless politicians.
The citizens whose parents emigrated decades here ago, are very angry toward the state, even if they live in state social housing, because they have no jobs either and they live constant harassment by police forces.
As a old Frenchman I would say two things that are self contradictory, first I think this guy makes a good diagnostic of the current situation, second: Things are not that simple, the last time France was a pleasant utopia was before WWII. After that it had continously been a mess:
De Gaulle made a coup to get the power in 1958, Paratroopers were sent to Paris[0], Corsica was briefly taken under military rules[0] and the IV republic died quietly without blood bath. The 70" were nice but the 80" were horrible economically speaking. After that it was the rise of Europe, which closed plants but did not created jobs. Most of the economy is now controlled by the state (56%).
Since 2008 we have lost most of the freedom that citizens enjoy under democracy: Our parliament has no right, there are moral laws as in 1984, generalized spying on citizens and soldiers in arms are everywhere in public spaces.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Resurrection
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op%C3%A9ration_Corse