May 2, 2008

A young french testimony: the tyrany of generation 68

No it's not a new terrible science fiction book, it's the theme of some french who have been published in France quite recently.These books speak about the tyrany of the "papy boomers": the numerous generation born after WWII...The generation who's demonstrated in french street in 1968,May, while american counterparts were hippies opposing Vietnam war.
This generation had benefited from the economic prosperity following the rebuilt of Europe, thanks to American subsides, and low priced good commodities from former colonies.
With cash flowing like rivers in Canada, western (including french) society soon turned into a hedonistic and individualistic playground.
Following the "sexual revolution" (abortion and pill) and women emancipation (work, banking, political and divorce rights) there has been les and less children born. Following the health improvments there have been more and more very old people alive.
This has lead the papy-boomers while they were still powerfull money oriented adults to force their parents into retirement and old age houses, so that generation 68 could avoid to competiting for jobs, especially management roles, with them and to caring about them.
After making sure their parents would not trouble their souls any more (as the saying goes: far from sight, far from heart), they also made sure their own children would not.

Not only did they secure by law heavy pensions at the expense of the next fewer generation, but also did they highly speculate on real estate prices in order not only to be homeowners but also to get juicy lifelong endowments from very small flats rented out to students and young workers: the generation of their own children.
In addition they made sure that salaries would be linked to age, so that younger workers have close to none opportunity to get high pays (the recent Kerviel scandal at Société Générale is quite a good illustration of possible consequences of the despair which young french are plunged in)
So what's our life like?
A small salary, high rents and taxes to pay...moreover after decades of exploitation (by generation 68 of course! their former hippies' lifestyles have long gone utopia!) Mother Nature is beginning to revolt and make us pay higher price for rare commodities, which means rising food and other prices.
So I am living poorer as my grandparents in Algeria 50 years ago, but I have studied 14 years more than my grandmom!
No wonder I had to give up my motherhood dreams: I can't rear a child when I have to support the greed of my parents and the retirement of my grandparents...
Generation 68 has only planned the extinction of "blood" french people (at least 40% of current birth rate in Paris region comes from foreign parents), because the only people happy to live as poor as I am are those coming from the even poorer Subsaharan Africa or poor chinese countryside, that may be why Paris is begining to look more black than New York...