[ExI] disadvantage of x

[Stefano Ticozzi]

Hi Spike,
sorry for the delayed response; I’m not always able to keep up with the
flow of emails.

I’m fairly familiar with the situation in France. First of all, France is
certainly no stranger to long-lasting and vigorous protests.The unrest
began with high-school students demonstrating against overcrowded
classrooms, teacher shortages, and deteriorating school buildings (btw,
exactly the same problems that we have in Italy). Students' protest quickly
merged with broader cost-of-living anger, drawing hundreds of thousands
into the streets.
Coming to your questions: "Can’t the government put more money into them?
Cannot the French government cut taxes to reduce the cost of living? Why
cannot the French government build more housing?"
Although some announcements have been made, particularly regarding
investments in schools, the current government's spending capacity is very
limited. Public debt has increased rapidly in recent years, well beyond the
3% of GDP threshold adopted by European Union countries. There is no
parliamentary majority to pass the needed laws, and new elections are
expected within a few months. In the meantime, the financial markets are
placing additional pressure on French public finances and savers. The
spread between French government bonds (OATs) and German Bunds has risen to
around 160 basis points, significantly higher than the Italian BTP-Bund
spread, which stands at about 115 basis points.

There would naturally be a lot more to say and explain, but the ultra short
answers to your questions are:

why do French protest? Because of the cost of living.
can the government do something? Not much.

ciao
stefano

On Tue, Oct 27, 2026 at 3:45 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

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> *From:* spike at rainier66.com <spike at rainier66.com>
> *Subject:* disadvantage of x
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> >…TwitterX has been disparaged as a news source.  I can offer a perfect
> example: I have seen there so many contradictory explanations for the riots
> in France, I have no unified theory on why there are riots there.
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> >…Many here use news sources which present a unified theory.  Do share
> please.  Why are there riots in France?  spike
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> From the non-response, I conclude that the unified theory news sources
> don’t know why there are riots in France either.  I listed some theories.
> Are the riots about all the stuff I listed?  But if a protest is about
> everything, it is about nothing.
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> Meanwhile, there are opportunistic looters taking advantage of the
> gendarmes being distracted by more urgent concerns than guarding bourgeoise
> merchants, so the looters cheerfully go about smashing and grabbing
> designer purses and such.  If the protests are about everything, and
> consequently about nothing, they are about distracting law enforcement,
> providing cover for looters.
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