Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
It is every society; France, America, whereever. The key is to understand the signs, and how to build effective safety valves and off ramps for insurgency.
The French situation illustrates a problem that often complicates this equation: the steps necessary to placate one segment of the populace may infuriate another segment. In this case the less restrictive wage and tenure policies needed to generate employment for unskilled and semi-skilled workers are absolute anathema to the left and the organized labor sector, which have more clout in French politics than the immigrants and the domestic underclass. The government can't do what it needs to do to solve one problem without generating more effective (if likely less dramatic) resistance from other sectors.