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January 11, 2020

Videos emerge showing French police violently beating protesters

By Andrea Widburg

On Thursday, French people took to the streets to protest their government.  This time, the protest revolved around the government's plan to overhaul pensions.  The French have long been known for their generous pension system, but Emmanuel Macron's government has claimed that the system is no longer sustainable.

One does not need to have an intimate knowledge of French economics to believe that Macron is probably correct.  According to the CIA World Fact Book, France's birth rate is 12.1 births per every thousand people.  France therefore has one of the lowest birth rates in the world.  (America's birth rate is a less than robust 12.4 per thousand people, while several African nations have birth rates of over 40 births per thousand.)  Meanwhile, France's elderly population is rising, even as its younger population falls.  These demographic trends will not support generous retirement benefits.

Demographics and budgets, however, mean nothing to people who have been raised on the promise that the government will care for them as they age.  This knowledge deters savings.  For French people with minimal savings and the specter of vastly extended retirement ages, the betrayal has been great — so they've taken to the streets:

Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to streets across France on Thursday in the latest mass protests against a pensions overhaul that critics say could cut benefits even while requiring people to work longer before retiring.

Tensions flared in Paris and other cities as some black-clad protesters smashed glass-panelled shopfronts and bus stops, while others hurled paving stones against police who tried to disperse crowds with tear gas.

It was the fourth day of demonstrations since the protest began on December 5 with a massive public transport strike now in its 36th day.

Police said at least 24 people had been detained in Paris, where 56,000 people marched toward the Saint-Lazare train station, according to the interior ministry.

A Polish-based twitter account has released videos that purport to show French police brutally beating protesters:

Perhaps the most amazing video shows French police forming a huge, pulsating mass in an effort to prevent lawyers from entering the courthouse to demand that Macron's minister of justice resign:

Macron is an unsympathetic figure, and his posturing toward the U.S. is distasteful, but there's no question that he has an impossible task ahead of him: in order to bring the French budget back to reality, he has to take benefits away from people who have relied on them for decades.

Framed that way, Americans would be wise to take a lesson from France and demand control over America's debt before our system begins the slow-motion collapse we're seeing in France.  While it's great that Trump's soaring economy is bringing in more tax revenue, both parties are spending like there's no tomorrow.  With a debt as large as ours, our economy can be saved only if we both increase revenue and decrease spending — and so far, nobody in Washington is willing to do that.

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