The Social State and Globalization

Most commentators agree on one thing: the movement against pension reform is the sign of French society’s reluctance to accept the effects of globalization. What are these effects? Social protection costs a lot and hampers the competitiveness of enterprise, and this clearly means that the fact that French employees benefit from decent pensions, free education, and access to medical care – and in principle remain so equally – enters into the costs of goods and services produced in France, which thereby cannot compete in the market with products and services coming from countries where social protection is non-existent. Therefore the sole solution must be to cut social expenditure, to reduce the public deficits they entail, and by these painful but indispensable means to restore the competitiveness of our country on the world market. This reasoning is simple and the leaders of the French right cannot understand why there are still deluded people who do not accept its relevance and continue to defend the “social achievements” whose cost is constantly pulling our country downward.