France's poor forced to live at the margins



Liz Alderman
April 3, 2012 Read later


As just one of the euro crisis victims, electrician Jean is living in a makeshift shelter in woods near Paris. Photo: New York Times

The rich European country is facing a rising tide of workers struggling to live.

WHEN Melissa Dos Santos leaves her job at the end of each day, she goes home to an unlikely place: a tiny trailer in a camp ground nearly 50 kilometres north of Paris, where scores of people who can barely make ends meet are living on a sprawling lot originally designed as a bucolic retreat for holidaymakers.

''I grew up in a house; living in a camp ground isn't the same,'' Ms Dos Santos, 21, said wistfully.

Her dreams of a more normal life in an apartment with her boyfriend evaporated when they both took minimum wage jobs - she in a supermarket and he as a Paris street sweeper - after months of searching fruitlessly for better paid work. ''People call us marginal,'' she said.



''Little by little, it's eating us up.''

Europe's long-running euro crisis may be cooling. But the economic distress it has left behind is pushing workers into precarious straits in France and across the European Union. Hundreds of thousands of people are living in camp grounds, vehicles and cheap hotel rooms. Millions more are sharing space with relatives.

These people are the extreme edge of Europe's working poor: a growing slice of the population that is slipping through the long-vaunted social safety net. Many, particularly the young, are trapped in low-paid or temporary jobs that are replacing permanent ones destroyed in the economic downturn.

Electrician Jean, 51, who lives in a Paris park tent shelter ''never dreamed'' he would end up without a place to live. ''I never dreamed I would be here,'' Jean said. ''But my contracts ran out, and at my age, it's getting harder to find new ones.''

Economists, European officials and social watchdog groups are warning that the situation is set to worsen. As European governments respondby pushing for deep spending cuts , ''the population of working poor will explode,'' said Jean-Paul Fitoussi, an economics professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies.

With generous minimum wage laws and the world's strongest welfare systems, Europeans are accustomed to thinking they are more protected from a phenomenon they associate with the US.

But the European welfare state, designed to ensure that those without jobs are provided with a basic income, health care and subsidised housing, is proving ill-prepared to deal with the steady increase in working people who do not make enough to get by. The trend is most alarming in Greece and Spain, but it is rising even in more prosperous nations like France and Germany.

''France is a rich country,'' Mr Fitoussi said. ''But the working poor are living in the same condition as in the 19th century. They can't pay for heating, they can't pay for their children's clothes, they are sometimes living five people in a nine square metre apartment.''

In 2010, 8.2 per cent of workers in countries that use the euro were living under the region's average poverty threshold of €10,240 for single adult workers, up from 7.3 per cent in 2006, according to Eurostat.




Read more: www.smh.com.au . . .

And it's not getting better there - or here. All printing press illusions.

However, these millions of hopeless young Eurotard socialist airheads will become easy marks for extremist parties - left and right.

They never broke out of the post war development model - now they are completely fucked.

Good times coming

They both work and can't afford an apartment? Smells fishy to me. Then again, I suppose an option would be to go back to wherever you fucking came from if it's so bad there.

A question for the Frenchies, are Fitoussi and Dos Santos French names? One sounds A-rab and the other maybe, Spanish.

In truth, my last name originated in Normandy as much as 1000 years ago or more.

SevenSeventeen wrote:

And it's not getting better there - or here. All printing press illusions.

However, these millions of hopeless young Eurotard socialist airheads will become easy marks for extremist parties - left and right.

They never broke out of the post war development model - now they are completely fucked.

Good times coming

I cant wait for the poor to start eating each other

SevenSeventeen wrote:

They never broke out of the post war development model - now they are completely fucked.

Germany completely fucked? Last time I checked, Germany was in Europe.

And France's GDP per head is higher than that of the UK. Where is the Thatcher miracle?

SevenSeventeen wrote:

And it's not getting better there - or here. All printing press illusions.

LOL. pretty rich from a country that literally lives off its printing presses.

It's in the cards the USD won't maintain its reserve currency status, guess who will belly flop?

SevenSeventeen wrote:

Good times coming

For the BRICS?

.

Oh JeanV - you are a Euro zealot that only converts can have.

Nederland and Austria are no longer considered 'core' Euro countries due to GDP shrinkage and external debt.

Finland is next since their toy headset maker is imploding - really

So that leaves Germany - stable for now granted - and Fwance - sorry but Fwance really is fucked - and - why yes Luxembourg.

So these 3 countries are going to shoulder the unending trillions of Euros to prop up Med Europe?

And by all means buy Remnbi, roubles, pesos - the new reserves. I think that's a swell investment idea - remember - get in early and go all in

talk about brazil out preforming R,I,C, and having a great long term shot and jennyver will blow a gasket

hes loves him some chinks

hes a true believer

fuckin moneky worshiper and traitor to the west

betrayer of france

he has zero pride in his own heritage and culture

but a lot of frogs are like that
to ashamed of thier own country they adopt another

whether its grandma blowing a german or worshiping a monkey god and licking piss eggs in china

I guess anything is better then being a frenchman from france

always tagging along or hanging on to others coat tails
wishing america would just go away


they wanna be in the same leauge as an America but they just arent ,cant, never will they come close in the modern world.
so they look elsewhere for anything that seems like it might have a shot

they hang on to the dream of a european union

or to a china vanquishing america to neptune

if i remember correctly I belive were going to be vanquished to neptune on chinese rockets

FrogFryer wrote:

talk about brazil ... chinese rockets

182 empty words.


Do you sometimes talk to yourself? Laugh at your own jokes?

talking to a rock is more interesting then your ignorant chinese ass

.

LOL. Franch. My grand daughter and daughter in law were in frunch last week. Thet went to eurodisneyland amongst other things and were so glad to get out of arrogant armpit land that they finally were able to breathe.

I had to tell them, "I told you so!"

They are just arriving in Barcelona having been through Italy, Germany and Switzerland. They told me that anything in Europe is better than the muslim shithole of france.


Fuck france!

Funny.. cunts like "Sore arm" arrfur and simpleton have always bragged about the liberal benefits provided by the nanny state? All of these cool free things like housing, food, medical and even pussy tightening sessions after you plop out another tax revenue object, or in arfur's case , his mum, who has taken on more "pipe" than the Alaskan Pipeline and was stretched out like the top of a rain boot.. Arfur is jealous that they don't provide the same for a torn up prolapsed sphincter. It has inhibited his income level.
As Nozzle and others mention... easier marks for the extremists. Watch for more radical action in the eu as these suckers have to resort to sucking yet more trouser trout to get a free meal.

Frogs hate Belgian wannabes.

Preperation " H " is feisty today?

Battylidipuebli and "funny" don't really go well together ...

Kindda funny that even the person living in that tent displays an American flag? don't you think? Unlike your muzzlime youth, that gladly burn half of the cars in pAhrii ?

FrogFryer wrote:



I cant wait for the poor to start eating each other

What kind of wine goes with that, I wonder?

vikingson wrote:


A question for the Frenchies, are Fitoussi and Dos Santos French names? One sounds A-rab and the other maybe, Spanish.

I'd say Jewish from North Africa (pied-noir) and Portuguese respectively.

Doesn't being fronch, by it's very definition, make one marginal at best?

ArthurH wrote:

Somewhere along the way, Artie forgot that Walloonyland is even less relevant than Frankenreichistan, which itself is about as relevant as Bangladesh. For someone that uses so many illustrations, it is apparent that I may have to draw a picture for some people, and even that may not be enough.

You're so stupid that you make Simplefrog the paperboy look like Dr. Werner von Braun by comparison, and that my friend is a fucking accomplishment.

Touchy the little wankeestanies !!

But not very surprising considering their current state :

"You're so stupid that you make Simplefrog the paperboy look like Dr. Werner von Braun by comparison, and that my friend is a fucking accomplishment."


do you want to smell my ass homodivision ?

Is that the standard form of greeting in franch?

You "people" disgust me!