Posted on 08/30/2007 5:49:22 AM PDT by Kaslin
PARIS -- "We," the finance minister says, "have a terrible past." She also says: "In a way, we've had it too easy." Christine Lagarde is correct on both counts.
Her first "we" refers to Europe; the second, to France. Both Europe's cataclysms and France's comforts condition the context for reforms.
Lagarde, 51, has a more informed affection for America than anyone who has ever risen so high in this country's government. She was an exchange student at a Washington prep school and a Capitol Hill intern during the Nixon impeachment proceedings. As a partner in a large law firm based in Chicago, for several years she lived in, and loved, the most American city.
Today, her challenge is defined by this fact: France's welfare state, which has enabled many to have it "too easy," is incompatible with the welfare of the state, and of society. The government, preoccupied with propitiating dependent groups that it wants to proliferate, is big but weak. And the welfare state weakens its clients. "The ethic of work," Lagarde says, "has vanished."
Recently she threw the intelligentsia into a tizzy by saying: "France is a country that thinks. ... Enough thinking, already. Roll up your sleeves." Proving her point, intellectuals here theorize about why President Nicolas Sarkozy's jogging is unprogressive: It involves "individualism," "the cult of performance" and "management of the body," whereas walking is "sensitive." Rolling up one's sleeves is, however, almost illegal because of the statutory 35-hour workweek. Lagarde's response to this "stupid" (her word) law is "a law in favor of work," one implementing a slogan that helped Sarkozy get elected in May: "Working more to earn more." What a concept.
Lagarde has undertaken to subvert the 35-hour restriction, which has been enforced by government agents snooping in companies' parking lots for evidence of antisocial industriousness. Overtime work will be exempt from taxes and social insurance charges. For this, she has been abused in parliament by socialists -- their invectives are as stale as their doctrines -- who compare her to Marie Antoinette.
Why not just repeal the law? Because, Lagarde says, the left considers this "an accrued right." Think about that -- a right to be forbidden the right to chose to do something elemental (work). French intellectuals are adept at thinking themselves into such tangles. "They," Lagarde says, "want to bring people down to solidarity." And "they regard work as alienation in the old Marxist understanding."
France's problems actually derive less from a 19th-century German than from a 17th-century Frenchman. Lagarde works in an office complex with portions named for Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, two 20th-century French pioneers of Europe's path to a single market. But another portion is named for Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-83). On behalf of Louis XIV, Colbert practiced mercantilism, using subsidies, tariffs, price controls and other regulations to manage the economy. The French tradition of dirigisme -- pervasive state intervention in the economy and society -- lives.
Two years ago Le Figaro newspaper inveighed against "the American ogre" Pepsi, which was interested in buying Danone, the yogurt and bottled water (Evian) company. Practicing "patriotisme economique," Sarkozy, then a Cabinet minister, urged mobilization of Danone shareholders to block the sale.
Such "patriotism" aggravates France's social sclerosis, and is inimical to Europe's project for burying its "terrible past." In 1951, war-weary Europe, groping toward transcendence of nationality and hence the furies of nationalism, created the European Coal and Steel Community, an attempt to weaken control by nations of two primary commodities for their war machineries. This was the tentative first step toward today's European Union, which limits -- although not nearly enough -- the ways states can intervene in markets.
These limitations serve Lagarde's project of prying the fingers of politics off vast swaths of the economy. She favors slashing inheritance taxes and preventing any person from paying more than 40 percent of income in total taxation. One index of her success would be decreased emigration by young college graduates, driven abroad by the fact that French unemployment has not been below 8 percent in 25 years. Since, that is, 1982, when President Francois Mitterrand, a socialist, was keeping his 1981 campaign promise to "break with the logic of profitability."
Another French citizen with deep understanding of America warned about France's "regulating, restrictive administration which seeks to anticipate everything, take charge of everything, always knowing better than those it administers what is in their interests." So wrote Alexis de Tocqueville 150 years ago, defining France's problem and Lagarde's challenge.
How about some Welfare Reform. We did it in the USA, and in most states it is working very well.
Can we trade her for Hillary? I'd even be willing to toss in the Ohio senator of their choice.
Wow!
” The government, preoccupied with propitiating dependent groups that it wants to proliferate, is big but weak.’
Propitiating proliferating preoccupations.
It’s unrelenting alliteration as George’s caffine crosses the blood-brain barrier.
How about some Welfare Reform. We did it in the USA, and in most states it is working very well.
In this context, the phrase "welfare state" does not mean unemployed people getting welfare checks for not working at all.
In this context, the phrase "welfare state" means that that the average middle class working French citizens demand and expect the Government to provide them cradle to grave social services and mothering that bankrupts the Government, sucks up most of the workers income in taxes and infantilizes the working Frenchman.
The "welfare state" means a French Government that ensures that Frenchmen do not work longer than 35 hours a week since children and Frenchmen must be protected from themselves.
"Lagarde has undertaken to subvert the 35-hour restriction, which has been enforced by government agents snooping in companies' parking lots for evidence of antisocial industriousness."
As a partner in a Chicago law firm, Lagarde saw American law firm associates working 70-80 hours weeks to get ahead while, in France, it is illegal to work 36 hours a week whether you want to or not.
The current French attitude of: "Gee, Ward, a boy needs his rest and we need to tell Beaver that we won't allow him to rake Mrs. Cooper's yard on Saturday" is the Mommy attitude that now permeates France and is what is called the "welfare state".
Lagarde has lived and worked in the U.S. and wants France to adopt the Ward Cleaver American attitude of: "June, Beaver will do just fine. He is no longer a baby and you need to allow him to grow up. Work is good for a boy and raking Mrs. Cooper's yard on Saturday will be good for him."
The French language is the language of philosophy if there is such a language. Aside from that, there is little that needs doing in France. Gardening, designing odd little cars: that's about it.
It’s very simple really:
Far less of them work than people in the anglo-saxon world do:
Unemployment rate - France 8.7%, US 4.8%, UK 2.9%.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/lab_une_rat-labor-unemployment-rate
And when they do, they do far fewer hours than the anglo-saxon world
Hours worked - France 1453 hours, US 1792 hours, UK 1673 hours.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/lab_hou_wor-labor-hours-worked
“Unemployment rate ... US 4.8%, UK 2.9%”
Wow. How did THAT happen? More yobs with jobs than one would expect given what one reads.
‘Wow. How did THAT happen? More yobs with jobs than one would expect given what one reads.’
That figure did surprise me a little - in the year to June it hovered between 4.8 and 5.4. The stats did say latest figures available, but don’t specify when exactly. UK unemployment levels usually mirror US ones, but maybe they know something I don’t!
I guess being a yob in Britain doesn’t pay as well as being a gang member in the US does, so our undesirables have to get a job! :)
I’ve been told I should read “Democracy in America” by Alexis de Tocqueville.
btt
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