How we became the United States of France | Completetosh.com, by Neil McIntosh

A little bittersweet but… well, Bill Saporito in Time made me laugh with an almost Clive James-esque lament. Excerpts (although I could have found much more):

“You just know the Frogs have only increased their disdain for us, if that is indeed possible. And why shouldn’t they? The average American is working two and half jobs, gets two weeks off, and has all the employment security of a one-armed trapeze artist.

[...] Now our laissez-faire (hey, a French word) regulation-averse Administration has made France’s only Socialist president, Francois Mitterand, look like Adam Smith by comparison.

[...] We’ve always dismissed the French as exquisitely fed wards of their welfare state. They work, what, 27 hours in a good week, have 19 holidays a month, go on strike for two days and enjoy a glass of wine every day with lunch — except for the 25% of the population that works for the government, who have an even sweeter deal. They retire before their kids finish high school, and they don’t have to save for a $45,000-a-year college tuition because college is free. For this, they pay a tax rate of about 103%, and their labor laws are so restrictive that they haven’t had a net gain in jobs since Napoleon. There is no way that the French government can pay for this lifestyle forever, except that it somehow does.”

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COMMENTS / 2 COMMENTS

You have a half french rellie!

chris thought this on Sep 23 08 at 6:48 pm

Trust me, the French can pay for it.

The Americans claim to know how to make money, but don’t.

The French don’t claim to know how to make money, but do.

I spend much time among the French in the rural countryside. Relax. Disdain is too strong a word. They ARE mildly amused, rather often.

For decades the US-controlled World Bank and similarly Washington-centric multinational bodies have been telling the French government not to let its farmers grow so much food.

Oops! Wrong again!

Now there is a global food shortage. All the farmers have sold all of their crops — this year and three years into the future — at the highest prices in recorded history. (A lot of great new tractors are an the road these days).

If the UK gets the nuclear power that its government says it has to have (I don’t agree, by the way), it will buy most of it from EDF (Electricite de France). EDF now pretty much owns the UK nuclear industry.

When a goofy trader Jerome Kerviel blew a ton of money for Societe General, there wasn’t a bailout. SG even hung on to a modest profit for the quarter. There was never going to be a bailout.

SG’s motto is, “Red, black and rising.” I suggested, “Red, black, but mostly red.” It didn’t catch on.

Renault wasn’t content building cars and selling them profitably all over the world. It got control of Nissan and made them profitable. Now they are sniffing around and lurking in the shadows, trying to see if they can take over General Motors and restore them to profitability, too.

Trust me. France can pay for it.

REG CROWDER