Column: eliminating national holidays is a promising idea. Start with the racists

You believe it or not, France has had a social security form since the seventeenth century, and its modern system began seriously by 1910, when the world's life expectancy was only 32 years old. Today, the average human reaches 75 years and for the French, is 83, among the highest in Europe.

Great news for the French, bad news for their pensions.

Because people live more, mathematics to finance pensions in France are no longer mathematics, and now the country's debt is almost 114% of their GDP. Remember that it was only a couple of years ago when the protesters set fire to Paris because President Emmanuel Macron proposed to increase the legal retirement age from 62 to 64. Well, now Prime Minister Francois Bayrou has proposed to eliminate two national vacations, in an attempt to address the country's debt.

In 2023, before Paris burned, approximately 50,000 people in Denmark met outside the Parliament to express their anger for leaving one of the country's national holidays. The roots of the big day of prayer date back to the 17th century. Eliminating it, hoping to increase production and tax revenues, brought together unions, opposing political parties and churches in a rare trifecta. That explains why several schools and companies closed for vacations in 2024 challenging the official change.

This week, Bayrou proposed to eliminate Easter Monday from France and Victoria Day holidays, the latter marked the defeat of Nazi Germany. In a Reuters survey, 70% of respondents did not like the idea, so we will see if Paris begins to burn again. Or maybe citizens will take the example of the Danish and simply will not work in those days, even if the government decides to continue businesses as usual.

Here at home, President Trump has also presented the idea of eliminating one of the national holidays. However, because he raised the idea in Juneteenth, through a publication of social networks about “too many non -labor vacations”, I will assume that tax revenues were not the only motivation for his comments that day. You know, given your crusade against corporate and governmental diversity efforts; his refuse to apologize for asking for the death penalty for five innocent colorful children; and its approval of the Alcatraz crocodile. However, although I disagree with the comments of President 2025 about the holidays, I agree with what he said about Junetethent when he was president in 2020: “It is actually an important event, an important moment.”

Indeed.

Although the institution of slavery allowed this country to quickly become a global power, studies show that the greatest economic profits in the country's history come from the end of slavery, also known as Juneteenth. Two economists have discovered that the economic reward by releasing enslaved people was “larger than the introduction of railroads, according to some estimates, and with a value of 7 to 60 years of technological innovation in the second half of the nineteenth century,” According to the University of Chicago. Because? Because the final calculations revealed that the cost of enslaving people for centuries was much greater than the economic benefit of their freedom.

In 1492, when Christopher Columbus “discovered America”, civilizations had prospered on this land for millennia. The colonizers introduced slavery to these coasts two years before the first “thanksgiving” in 1621. That was more than 50 years before King Louis XIV began the first pension in France; 60 years before King Christian V approved the big day of prayer; and 157 years before the 13 colonies declared the independence of Great Britain on July 4, 1776.

Of all the national holidays worldwide, it would seem that Juneteenth is among the most significant historically. However, he won federal recognition only four years ago, and remains vulnerable. Transatlantic slaves transformed the global economy, but the numbers show that it was Junetetht that raised the United States to the top. Which tells him that the president's track about his elimination has little to do with our greatness and everything that has to do with the worldview of an elected official who was Backed by the Ku Klux Klan newspaper.

If you reach the point where we, such as France and Denmark, end up seriously considering vacations, my vote is for Thanksgiving. The retail industry treats it as an increase in speed between Halloween and Christmas, and when the story again tells its origins, it is not a holiday that is worth protesting to maintain.

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