Posted on 03/30/2006 7:53:56 AM PST by SmithL
SEE HOW low the mighty have fallen. In France, more than a million students have demonstrated in the streets, riots have erupted and strikers have shut down public-transportation systems throughout the country. Now Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who worked so hard to undercut President Bush's popularity before the Iraq war, has reaped the same unhappy job approval rating -- 37 percent, according to Le Journal du Dimanche -- as Dubya.
Sadly, de Villepin is in trouble because he is doing the right thing for his country. Last November, prolonged rioting by largely unemployed Muslim and Arab youth served as a wake-up call to President Jacques Chirac that he had better do something to increase employment in Parisian suburbs. De Villepin was determined to reduce one of the highest youth-unemployment rates in Europe -- 22 percent, according to the French government, but a whopping 40 percent for the least skilled.
De Villepin introduced a reform of the "first employment contract" (referred to by the French acronym CPE) to allow private employers to fire workers under the age of 26 during the first two years they are on the job without cause.
Opponents charge that the measure would allow employers to dispose of young workers like "Kleenex." The current system, however, has turned potential employees into underemployed deadweights.
Dennis Bark, a Hoover Institution fellow who spends a great deal of time in France, explained that, after six months, employers cannot fire workers without cause, but: "If you have cause and (an employee) takes you to court, you're very likely to lose the case, even if you're right." Employers then often have to pay a year's salary to someone who no longer works for them.
"The main reason why French unemployment is so high is the highly rigid labor market,
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I thought this was gonna be something about French & Saunders.
France has a 91.4% employment rate.
America has about a 7% unemployment rate (not 4.5%) if American unemployment were measured using French standards.
France is not teetering on the brink of economic collapse or anything like it. The French economy is growing, and France's debt-to-gdp ration is a bit lower than America's.
There are many ways to fix an economy. Aiming to undercut worker protections works in America, but is politically bone stupid in France.
The French economy will not collapse if there is no reform. What will remain is high YOUTH unemployment, which is obviously a problem.
There needs to be some reform, in many sectors, but fabricating a crisis and using it as an excuse to destroy French labor protections is not going to fly with the French electorate. They know better.
The objective cannot be achieved this way.
It's like border control in America: the objective cannot be achieved by demanding everyone report illegals: they won't. Probably, it can't be achieved, and time itself and the evolving economy will have to take the pressures away.
Employees that are non-productive should be disposed of like Kleenex.
Charles Martel, Charlemagne...
were hardly primitive cowards. How about knocking off the broad brushstrokes.
but fabricating a crisis and using it as an excuse to destroy French labor protections
Pretty good fabrication when one sees millions in the streets and thousands of cars burning objecting to the nation's attempt to change a policy that can not continue.
Under present law and tradition there is no way in hell that I would have a business in France and if I did, I'd never employ a French citizen.
It's sad that these people think the present policy protects workers. What it does is protect a few at the cost of jobs to the many
Relax, it was a joke. If America can be the butt of non-humorous, stupid, or down-right offensive jokes across globe, the French can take a little ribbing, too.
were hardly primitive cowards. How about knocking off the broad brushstrokes.
let's see ya went back to about 780 or 790 AD and the 13th Century to find these brave frenchmen.... kewl.
The problem is that they didn't reproduce enough and allowed the wimps to overpopulate and flourish. That's why you have these sites...
American cemetery at Normandy Beach
American Cemetery at the Marne
American Cemetery at Verdun
My question.... where are all the French cemeteries in Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Iwo Jima, Vietnam, the Rhine, Philippines, North Africa...
their warrior class and gene pool is gone,
they do several things well, drink wine, eat cheese, surrender, complain about Americans, cross their legs very well and of course tilt their head back to show their nostrils while talking to you...
here's a list of the places where Americans gave their lives and are buried on French soil
Aisne-Marne, France
Ardennes, Belgium
Brittany, France
Epinal, France
Flanders Field, Belgium
Lorraine, France
Meuse-Argonne, France
Normandy, France
Oise-Aisne, France
Rhone, France
Somme, France
St. Mihiel, France
Suresnes, France
great modern day French military men....
thin pamphlet
Charlemagne's birthday was believed to be April 2, 742; however several factors led to reconsideration of this traditional date. First, the year 742 was calculated from his age given at death, rather than attestation within primary sources. Another date is given in the Annales Petarienses, April 1, 747. In that year, April 1 is Easter. The birth of an Emperor on Easter is a coincidence likely to provoke comment, but there is no such comment documented in 747, leading some to suspect that the Easter birthday was a pious fiction concocted as a way of honoring the Emperor.......
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Perhaps some World famous French heroes within the last the last century, would be more convincing.....
Most Americans would reject the suggestion of De Gaul, whom most of us regarded as the insufferable, arrogant, self promoting, backstabbing model for most of the modern French "diplomats"......
Semper Fi
Semper Fi
How about staying in this millennium let alone the past century?
BTW - 
your figures are nonsense. So is your post
Ah...Contrar...
Border control can certainly be achieved if America returns to the Ellis Island mentality and welcoms legal immigrants only.
You consider THAT a broad brushstroke? 'Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus', Girolamo Fracastoro, 1530.
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