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Comment by uncletaco | Hacker News Reader

Social security and Medicare are both social safety nets that one cannot take advantage of while they're working in most cases, and everything else you've mentioned either requires a person to be in extreme poverty or severely disabled.

Meanwhile a healthy, young, gainfully employed person in France can take advantage of a wealth of social services and benefits.

Mentioning them the way you have requires a very uncharitable interpretation of the previous posters point.

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The American system sounds like what something called a “safety net” should provide. Why would someone actually need to use a safety net while they are healthy, young, and gainfully employed?

I should have said "socialized services" in my original post. Sorry, I've been brainwashed by years of American right-wing owned media to call it a safety net.

> Meanwhile a healthy, young, gainfully employed person in France can take advantage of a wealth of social services and benefits.

If they have such an amazing welfare system, then why are the French perennially rioting[1]? And why do so many recent French presidents have abysmal approval ratings[2]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unr...

[2] Macron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_the_Emmanue...

Hollande: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Hollande#Approva...

Sarkozy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Nicolas_Sarkozy#...

The French have a strong welfare system precisely because they are willing to take action and forcefully protest when it is threatened.

The approval rating doesn't seem to be much better than US Gov't[0].

Also, the US is also constantly protesting too. What do you think Black Lives Matter, the Google Walkout, the Amazon protests in NYC, the current and ongoing unrest surrounding ICE camps, and the teachers union strike in LA are?

0. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx

But the GP was trying to point out how France is much better than the US. With a better system, I would expect less protests and better approval ratings.

And I am arguing that approval ratings and protests may not be highly correlated or have causational relationships with the amount of social services.

> I would expect less protests and better approval ratings.

You must not know the French very well, or you wouldn’t expect this. :)

> If they have such an amazing welfare system, then why are the French perennially rioting

because they are alive and free.

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