<b>Insight - Hard work, long hours: French find Chinese recipe sour</b> By Alexandria Sage and Nicholas Vinocur PARIS |Oct,2013 10:17am BST (Reuters) - A newspaper open on the bar of this Paris cafe tells of a row over France's Sunday trading rules. But the bar owner, Zhang Chang, says he has little time to follow such debates. He's too busy working. While French workers worry the country's long economic downturn could mean the end of laws banning Sunday trading and enforcing a 35-hour week, <b>Zhang and Chinese immigrants like him are quietly getting ahead the old-fashioned way - 11 hours a day, six days a week.</B> "As I see it, when you work, you're paid. So why stop at 35 hours?" he asks, perplexed by France's landmark law which shaved four hours off the statutory working week in the late 1990s. Zhang owns the Cafe Le Marais in central Paris and is part of a wave of entrepreneurial migrants from China's coastal Wenzhou region who are taking over France's "bar tabac" business. <B>They are doing it by sweat and sacrifice. That approach, and their work ethos, runs counter to the work-life balance long treasured by many French and vigorously defended by their unions over the past century - but it chimes with others who say it may be time for a change.</B> While the debate continues, the Chinese plough on. Many are pouring their energies into bar-tabacs - a focal point of French life where locals can drink, buy cigarettes and bet on horses that is being abandoned by many French owners on the grounds it is too labour-intensive for too little profit. <b>Sixty percent of the businesses for sale in Paris are being purchased by Asian buyers, most of them Chinese, said Gerard Bohelay, head of the Paris federation of bar-tabac owners.</b> "I'm the only one left," sighed Patrick Loubiere, whose parents were among many French country people from the central Auvergne region to seek a better life in Paris. They set up Le Celtic bar-tabac, near Zhang's Le Cafe Marais, that he now runs. "The younger generation doesn't want to do it," added Loubiere, who doubts his son will take over the business. <b>"It's too early in the morning for some, too late at night for others. They're getting lazy."</b> "People aren't hungry here anymore," he said. "But they're going to have to get back to work, because the new immigrants are ready to work twice as hard, for twice as long, and they will end up being the bosses." http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/20/us-france-labour-chinese-insight-idUSBRE99J01R20131020 You just have to chuckle at this story. Lazy like fuck and now the Chinese go in and own everything.
Socialism encourages laziness and sloth. When the government gives people LOTS, the people come to expect they will receive more and for little or no effort.... and they become a dumbed-down society. Yesterday on Fox Business, they showed where in Reading, Math, and Comprehension, US kids ranked 9th, 10th, and 11th, out of 13 countries (Don't recall specifically which ranking went with which category.) We did better when we were motivated to work.
The Chinese businesses will still be stifled by massive French work legislation (making it almost impossible to fire people, enforcing vacations, etc). If the French labor ministry gets too many complaints about the Chinese, expect them to hassle these businesses and crush their ability to make money. I have witnessed it personally.
The Chinese should choose countries where their "ways" are welcome. We say the same re our immigrants.
Except for the fact that the conservatives in this country represent what the country was at it's birth, far more than any of the progressives do. In fact, I'm struggling to think of one progressive policy or talking point that would be aligned with the founding fathers. The conservatives are against change, the progressives for it.
Ricter, as usual, is full of crap. Conservatism, Libertarianism are the antithesis of Progressivism. Unfortunately, many of the self-proclaimed conservatives in Congress are actually RINO.