Tea at Trianon: The Death of Working-Class Paris

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, November 13, 2020

The Death of Working-Class Paris

From The Nation:

Many low-income Parisians share the feeling, hustling to make ends meet as their city has transformed into a global magnet for financial services, tourism, tech, and high-creative industries. Worse yet, many are being erased from the cityscape entirely, decamping to the sprawling suburbs in search of affordable housing or simply leaving the metropolitan area altogether.

Between 2012 and 2017, the year with the most recent available data, around 11,000 residents departed the French capital each year, with state officials projecting the population decline to continue until at least 2024. In the meantime, the share of Parisian residents who fit the traditional census definition of working class has declined from 35 percent in 1999 to just 26 percent—a stark contrast to the 51 percent of the total labor force such workers represent nationally.

Things were challenging enough before the pandemic, but with France now in its deepest recession since World War II, the exodus could grow even larger. Without a major shift in public policy or swift reversal in macroeconomic trends, some fear today’s crisis may well be the last nail in the coffin of Paris as a place where ordinary people can afford to live. In that case, France’s capital will have nearly completed its transformation into what the French call a ville musée, or literally a “museum city”: a theme park for tourists and wealthy visitors paying eternal homage to its past. (Read more.)