Paving the road for future riots?

I've read some of the commentary of the French protests over the new law on employment. Quite a bit of it consists of mockery of the students of France's most elite institutions, and their ignorance of basic economics.

I wish I could share these people's view. The way I see it, we're headed for the same mess. After all, when President Bush tried to stave off Social Security's eventual collapse, his efforts literally died in the water. As I recall, we saw some protests even then; the only reason we didn't see protests on the French scale, is because no one needed to whip the furor up to that level. A Congress controlled by the President's own party never mustered the courage to raise the age of retirement, to put a means test on benefits, to fix the benefits at a certain living standard, or any of the other possible reforms they could have considered.

When, on the other hand, President Bush tried to expand the Medicare entitlement program by including a prescription drug benefit, the popular discussion wasn't about whether we could afford it. After all, there's simply no question that we can't afford it. If you think it's expensive now — the administration clearly did, since they covered up the expense — imagine what it would have cost to fund it properly, so that we wouldn't have witnessed the mass confusion that occurred when the program went into effect a few months ago.

It's true that Congressional leadership had to twist arms within Republican ranks to get it passed, but this is not because the Democrats opposed the idea of expanding Medicare to cover prescription drugs. Rather, the argument as I perceived it centered around which plan should be enacted: the Republicans' or the Democrats'.

I must confess that I admire the French to this extent: at least they've arrived at the point where the new law is a serious enough threat that people are protesting. In this country, we can't even get that close to curtailing our entitlements.

I have this feeling that I'm missing something; feel free to clue me in.