Post by MARIO on Mar 29, 2006 17:26:38 GMT -8
Not to be excessive in my glee for the Frenchies' economic problems, but I liked this article.
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STRIKE OF THE ABSURD
By RALPH PETERS
March 29, 2006 -- DAKAR, SENEGAL
IN solidarity with protesting students from elite universities, French labor unions decreed a national celebration of self-righteous sloth - known elsewhere as a general strike.
Workers of France, unite! You have nothing to lose but your competitive edge.
Why have the students been demonstrating? Because their government proposed that young workers should not automatically be granted a (short) lifetime of job security from the first day they're hired. Under the proposed reform, the first two years of employment would be a probationary period (under siege, the government offered to compromise at one year).
The regime's hope is that employers might be more willing to take a chance on hiring more young workers if they aren't automatically condemned to keep even the most inept or lazy workers on the payroll - and on their tax rolls.
Reasonable? Mais non, Monsieur le Anglo-Saxon Capitalist Cochon! The burdern must be on the employer to pay, not on the worker to work!
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is hardly a sympathetic figure, yet this time around he's right. It's essential for France to create more jobs - especially for the blue-collar youths and the slum-dwellers who rioted out of hopelessness last autumn.
By American standards, the minor reforms proposed seem common-sensical. But common sense has fled the land of Cartesian rationalism. To gratify the world's most-spoiled workers, employers must be treated as bridegrooms forced to marry blindly and for whom the cost of divorce is exhorbitant. And, of course, striking is the French national sport.
But consider who's doing the striking: Workers who already have tenure, plus fashionably left-wing students. Those students ultimately will get their degrees and they'll either find jobs at home or have the credentials to migrate - to that nasty Anglo-Saxon capital, London, if they can't get work visas to the United States.
French students from elite schools can protest and riot all they want. For them, there are no consequences.
It's different for the blue- collar kids. In la belle France, once you leave the Disneyworlds of central Paris or Provence, a quarter of the young are unemployed (the rate's almost 50 percent among those whose skin isn't white).
As for those "progressive" French labor unions, they're not interested in creating new jobs in a changing world or in fostering competitive skills. They just want to protect the unaffordably lavish benefits their current members enjoy.
The strikes and demonstrations aren't about justice. They're about shameless selfishness.
Perhaps we should send a thank-you bouquet to the French strikers for making the English-speaking world look even more attractive to investors than it already did: The French strike, we work. Guess who wins the economic sweepstates. And guess who says the mean world isn't fair.
The French (and their neighbors in Old Europe) enjoyed a golden half-century living off the fat of the land. Now the bones are showing. For all of the worries about our own Social Security system, it looks as robust as a regiment of super-heroes compared to the European government pension funds plummeting toward bankruptcy today.
It's true, folks: There ain't no free lunch. Aging populations suffering from depression-level unemployment rates can't survive if those with jobs demand 35-hour work-weeks, a couple of months' vacation and lavish benefits upon an early retirement. Oh, and 100 percent job security.
The results? French industy is staggering, research is torpid, French investment funds are fleeing offshore and new ideas hardly have a chance.
Think GM's got problems in the showroom? Any of you want to buy a Renault?
France is headed for severe difficulties (and long before a Muslim majority rips out the vineyards of Chateau Margaux). Unfortunately, we need to worry, too.
Quarrels aside, a prosperous, competitive Europe would be good for us and good for the global economy. A continent in spiteful decline threatens to generate enough trouble for internal consumption and wide export, too.
Europe's failures have cost us dearly enough in the past. We shouldn't be caught off-guard a third time because we think that "everything has changed."
Europe hasn't even changed its underwear, let alone its political morality.
Here in West Africa - where the French still loot the local wealth today - the people would line up by the millions for any jobs at all. And they wouldn't expect to keep those jobs if they didn't work. Their relatives in the slums of France would love a chance at even the most-meager entry-level jobs. (The people in francophone Africa speak of the job opportunities in New York City as other people speak of eternal paradise.)
But in France the dogma of theoretical rights trumps the true "Rights of Man." The strikers and univeristy brats in France constitute an economic al Qaeda. They're intolerant, reactionary fundamentalists and rigid opponents of globalization (that Anglo-Saxon conspiracy). They prefer an illusory heaven to an improved reality.
The strikers and protesters in the streets of France aren't defending the Have-nots. They represent the tyranny of the Haves. For now.
---------------
STRIKE OF THE ABSURD
By RALPH PETERS
March 29, 2006 -- DAKAR, SENEGAL
IN solidarity with protesting students from elite universities, French labor unions decreed a national celebration of self-righteous sloth - known elsewhere as a general strike.
Workers of France, unite! You have nothing to lose but your competitive edge.
Why have the students been demonstrating? Because their government proposed that young workers should not automatically be granted a (short) lifetime of job security from the first day they're hired. Under the proposed reform, the first two years of employment would be a probationary period (under siege, the government offered to compromise at one year).
The regime's hope is that employers might be more willing to take a chance on hiring more young workers if they aren't automatically condemned to keep even the most inept or lazy workers on the payroll - and on their tax rolls.
Reasonable? Mais non, Monsieur le Anglo-Saxon Capitalist Cochon! The burdern must be on the employer to pay, not on the worker to work!
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is hardly a sympathetic figure, yet this time around he's right. It's essential for France to create more jobs - especially for the blue-collar youths and the slum-dwellers who rioted out of hopelessness last autumn.
By American standards, the minor reforms proposed seem common-sensical. But common sense has fled the land of Cartesian rationalism. To gratify the world's most-spoiled workers, employers must be treated as bridegrooms forced to marry blindly and for whom the cost of divorce is exhorbitant. And, of course, striking is the French national sport.
But consider who's doing the striking: Workers who already have tenure, plus fashionably left-wing students. Those students ultimately will get their degrees and they'll either find jobs at home or have the credentials to migrate - to that nasty Anglo-Saxon capital, London, if they can't get work visas to the United States.
French students from elite schools can protest and riot all they want. For them, there are no consequences.
It's different for the blue- collar kids. In la belle France, once you leave the Disneyworlds of central Paris or Provence, a quarter of the young are unemployed (the rate's almost 50 percent among those whose skin isn't white).
As for those "progressive" French labor unions, they're not interested in creating new jobs in a changing world or in fostering competitive skills. They just want to protect the unaffordably lavish benefits their current members enjoy.
The strikes and demonstrations aren't about justice. They're about shameless selfishness.
Perhaps we should send a thank-you bouquet to the French strikers for making the English-speaking world look even more attractive to investors than it already did: The French strike, we work. Guess who wins the economic sweepstates. And guess who says the mean world isn't fair.
The French (and their neighbors in Old Europe) enjoyed a golden half-century living off the fat of the land. Now the bones are showing. For all of the worries about our own Social Security system, it looks as robust as a regiment of super-heroes compared to the European government pension funds plummeting toward bankruptcy today.
It's true, folks: There ain't no free lunch. Aging populations suffering from depression-level unemployment rates can't survive if those with jobs demand 35-hour work-weeks, a couple of months' vacation and lavish benefits upon an early retirement. Oh, and 100 percent job security.
The results? French industy is staggering, research is torpid, French investment funds are fleeing offshore and new ideas hardly have a chance.
Think GM's got problems in the showroom? Any of you want to buy a Renault?
France is headed for severe difficulties (and long before a Muslim majority rips out the vineyards of Chateau Margaux). Unfortunately, we need to worry, too.
Quarrels aside, a prosperous, competitive Europe would be good for us and good for the global economy. A continent in spiteful decline threatens to generate enough trouble for internal consumption and wide export, too.
Europe's failures have cost us dearly enough in the past. We shouldn't be caught off-guard a third time because we think that "everything has changed."
Europe hasn't even changed its underwear, let alone its political morality.
Here in West Africa - where the French still loot the local wealth today - the people would line up by the millions for any jobs at all. And they wouldn't expect to keep those jobs if they didn't work. Their relatives in the slums of France would love a chance at even the most-meager entry-level jobs. (The people in francophone Africa speak of the job opportunities in New York City as other people speak of eternal paradise.)
But in France the dogma of theoretical rights trumps the true "Rights of Man." The strikers and univeristy brats in France constitute an economic al Qaeda. They're intolerant, reactionary fundamentalists and rigid opponents of globalization (that Anglo-Saxon conspiracy). They prefer an illusory heaven to an improved reality.
The strikers and protesters in the streets of France aren't defending the Have-nots. They represent the tyranny of the Haves. For now.
