TRAVELER wrote: Why work or start a business when you can get a check for doing nothing?

This is one of those misinformation pieces that gets repeated enough to where people start believing it.

I am not aware of any European country where there is a general handout program.  TMK, in all cases, welfare is tied to unemployment (after having had and lost a job) or childcare - much like it is in the U.S.  There are some short-term special programs (including some for immigrants), but no broadbased "you get money" program that I am aware of.

While many European countries do have more extensive social programs than the US, the "more extensive" part mostly relates to funded health care, education, and retirement.

Somebody please point to a European benefits program that just hands out money for nothing.

Kristofer wrote: Its also to me an indirect way of showing why capitalism is much better. although it is flawed in many ways.

France is capitalist...

Kristofer wrote: i was under the impression they were socialist like most of europe. like socialist democracy

All of Western Europe is capitalist.  Post-USSR, most of Eastern Europe is as well.  Kazakhstan, Albania - there are some exceptions, but capitalism is pretty universal in Europe.

bluemunky wrote: You mean Belgium, not belum, and I thought they spoke French?

Them's fighting words for a Belgian...  :)

pballa123 wrote: Heres why: The United States have save dtehm form speaking German twice in the last 100 yrs, but possibly more importantly, they are our "allies."

All that shows is your lack of a sense of history.

Germany, France, England, Spain, and the rest of Europe have been fighting and conquering each other for the last 1,000 years.  Your focus on one short little war is out of proportion.

And while France may be an "ally" of the US, they are much closer to Germany, England, Spain, etc., but geographically, culturally, historically, and in every other way.

It is astoundingly arrogant to think that France would side with the US against other European countries on anything ever due to some perceived debt or loyalty.

pballa123 wrote: yes, but We aren't looking at at the entire 1 million + years of human history. Were looking at recent history.

Speak for yourself.  I can promise you the French (and everybody else in the entire world) is looking at more than recent history.

If Americans would stop looking only at recent history, we would do a lot better when dealing with everybody else.

(Not to mention, of course, that as pointed out above, we probably owe the French a lot more than they owe us in recent history)

pballa123 wrote: Heres why: The United States have save dtehm form speaking German twice in the last 100 yrs, but possibly more importantly, they are our "allies."

Ok.

So post WWII, When the USSR was trying to hold its grip on eastern Europe with heavy millitary influance, we should have helped, right? We should have helped them keep control on Romania and Poland, right?

Oh thats right...We didnt...We must be bad allies....

TRAVELER wrote: You are wrong, flat out. I've lived in Scotland, Denmark, France, and Italy. The social programs there are astounding. Low cost or no cost housing, free furnishing and appliances for said housing, free food, health care, eduction. Even grants to purchase a car.

Please provide some more specifics.  I also have some familiarity with those places. 

Healthcare and education - yes, I said as much. 

Low or no cost housing?  If you look closer I wager you will find that in each case there are specific circumstances.  You cannot simply write Chirac and say "je voudrais un maison, s'il-vous plait".  It just doesn't work like that.

Many countries provide student housing, transient housing, immigrant housing, etc.  Many countries (including the US) provide significant help to poor people for permanent housing.

Are there some circumstances under which some people can qualify for significant housing aid, or car purchase aid?  Sure - but that simply proves my point, as we have similar programs in the US. 

And neither here nor there are these programs universal or unlimited, or without catch.  And, moreover, they are very specific - you get help with housing/transportation.  This is very different from the mythical "welfare" where people just get dough for hanging out (like you implied in your statement).

[random irrelevant macroeconomic observations deleted]

That would be like the rioting Parisian suburbs...

Think Cabrini Green projects.

At the nursery school in Acheres, west of Paris, part of the roof was caved in, childrens' photos stuck to blackened walls, and melted plastic toys littered the floor.

The town had been previously untouched by the violence. Some residents demanded that the army be deployed, or that citizens rise up and form militias. At the school gate, the mayor tried to calm tempers.

"We are not going to start militias," Mayor Alain Outreman said. "You would have to be everywhere."

Fires and other incidents were reported in the northern city of Lille, in Toulouse, in the southwest, Rouen, in the west and elsewhere on the second night of unrest in areas beyond metropolitan Paris. An incendiary device was tossed at the wall of a synagogue in Pierrefitte, northwest of Paris, where electricity went out after a burning car damaged an electrical pole.

"This is dreadful, unfortunate. Who did this? Against whom?" Naima Mouis, a hospital worker in Suresnes, asked while looking at the hulk of her burned-out car.

On Saturday morning, more than 1,000 people took part in a silent march in one of the worst-hit suburbs, Aulnay-sous-Bois, filing past burned-out cars to demand calm. One banner read: "No to violence." Car torchings have become a daily fact in France's tough suburbs, with about 100 each night.

The Interior Ministry operations center reported 754 vehicles burned throughout France from Friday night to Saturday morning — three-quarters of them in the Paris area.

Arrests were also up sharply, with 203 people detained overnight, the center said. By comparison, Interior Ministry Nicolas Sarkozy said Thursday that police had made 143 arrests during the whole first week of unrest.

The violence — sparked after the Oct. 27 accidental electrocution of two teenagers who believed police were chasing them in Seine-Saint-Denis — has laid bare discontent simmering in France's poor suburbs ringing big cities. Those areas are home to large populations of African Muslim immigrants and their children living in low-income housing projects marked by high unemployment, crime and despair.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin oversaw a Cabinet meeting Saturday to evaluate the situation.

The persistence of the violence prompted the American and Russian governments to advise citizens visiting Paris to avoid the suburbs, where authorities were struggling to gain control of the worst rioting in at least a decade.

An attack this week on a woman bus passenger highlighted the savage nature of some of the violence. The woman, in her 50s and on crutches, was doused with an inflammable liquid and set afire after passengers were forced to leave the bus, blocked by burning objects on the road, judicial officials said.

Late Friday in Meaux, east of Paris, youths prevented firefighters from evacuating a sick person from an apartment in a housing project, pelting them with stones and torching the awaiting ambulance, an Interior Ministry officer said. The officer, not authorized to speak publicly, asked not to be named.

"I'm not able to sleep at night because you never know when a fire might break out," said Mammed Chukri, 36, a Kurdish immigrant from northern Iraq  living near a burned carpet warehouse. "I have three children and I live in a five-story building. If a fire hit, what would I do?"

A national police spokesman, Patrick Hamon, said there appeared to be no coordination between gangs in the various riot-hit suburbs. He said, however, that neighborhood youths were communicating between themselves using mobile phone text messaging or e-mails to arrange meeting points and alert each other to police.