I Stand With The Unicorns

 ... after all, every single French politician of note is doing it.

The "student protests" are all about school conditions. That's why they're vandalizing and torching schools, looting businesses, defacing monuments, tearing apart historic buildings and torching irreplaceable architecture. It all seems reasonable when you think about it, particularly the part about how Muslim businesses have not been touched nor has a single mosque been touched.

Makes sense to me. I'm on Team Unicorn.

Even if we assumed the rationale for the, err, social movement as the tender folks at theLouvre put it when they posted on X that the museum was going to be closed for the time being, we still need to assess whether or not the French government could increase education funding even if it wanted to do so.

The answer is no.

For one thing, borrowing money so they can hand it to their students has gotten much more expensive.

France is also spending a ton on the good stuff.

Country	Total Government Expenditure (% of GDP)	Primary Spending Drivers
France	57.0% – 57.2%	Highest in the EU; driven by extensive social protection systems (pensions, unemployment), healthcare, and public sector employment.
Italy	50.4% – 51.2%	Substantial pension liabilities, demographic aging costs, and high sovereign debt interest servicing.
Germany	49.4% – 50.5%	Comprehensive social insurance systems, federal subsidies for energy transition, and infrastructure/defense commitments.
Spain	45.3% – 45.5%	Public healthcare and pension programs decentralized across autonomous communities; lower relative administrative overhead.
United Kingdom (England)	44.0% – 44.6%	NHS healthcare delivery, state pension commitments, and debt interest, partially offset by lower general welfare replacement rates than continental peers.

In short, there's no more money to spend and borrowing is out of the question.

So when the far-right, Hitler-wannabe Marine Le Pen says she wants to stand with the students and understands their plight and the commie what's-his-face does the same, it's all nonsense from the land of Unicornia.

There's no money. It's all been spent. Even if the "kids" really were lobbying for more Euros and not just trashing the place, they're gonna get stiffed.

Someone ought to tell them this. Someone might also want to hand them the bill for the clean up because the grownups are tapped out.

Nah.

Bonus Unicorn Content

Our granddaughter is 4 and loves unicorns. During a recent sleepover with Grammie, I used ChatGPT to make some coloring book pages for her featuring unicorns in different situations. My favorite had a unicorn with Jordan Peterson.