I've read this before, perhaps from you. I also have read in many more places that the French population is in steep decline, in line with the rest of European non-Muslim populations. Europe is being Islamicized, with immigrants paying the taxes necessary to support the aging population.
The center-right government has been unpopular, but it has reformed labor law,
My impression of this "center-right" is that the term in an American sense is useless. It is not centrist in the sense in which we understand centrism. John Kerry is a French centrist.
...allowing for flexible hours within the contours of the 35 hour limit. Overtime is also allowed more flexibly. The 35 hour rule stands as a symbol for the socialists, but the government has enacted a regime of derogations expansive enough to provide business and workers the sort of flexibility they both have said they desire.
These are pure rationalizations that do not address core inefficiencies. They are pretty words, e.g., "a regime of derogations expansive enough to provide business and workers the sort of flexibility they both have said they desire", but they reveal, perhaps, myopic Francophilia steeped in wine rather than logic. Flexibility in the use of high-wage inefficiencies will not build competitive resolve into a workforce. If it were not so obviously silly, it might be believable.
"I've read this before, perhaps from you. I also have read in many more places that the French population is in steep decline, in line with the rest of European non-Muslim populations."
The French population, of course, includes all people who are born French citizens. "French" does not mean white. It means French citizen. Black people in the DOM are French citizens, as are Amerindiens in la Guyane Francaise. People of Muslim origin are French citizens.
The population of the Republic continues to grow robustly. The portion of it that Le Pen refers to as "les francais de souche" - meaning ethnically white French - has a low fertility rate.
But they are not the only French, of course.
"Flexibility in the use of high-wage inefficiencies will not build competitive resolve into a workforce."
Whatever, then, shall America do to preserve its textile jobs from all going to China, its engineering and backoffice work from being outsourced to India, its carpentry work from being taken by Brasilian and Polish immigrants, and the entirety of the manual labor force from being taken over by illegal Mexicans?
And as this happens and unemployment in America creeps up, what will be the solution? To reduce American pay and benefits until it equals Mexico?
And who will buy all of these fine products on such low wages?