Posted on 08/22/2002 1:04:49 PM PDT by Stultis
Lacking your professional status and inside knowledge, it does appear to me that unfreezing the labor market, and enabling corporate restructuring, is one of the key problems in Europe right now; and an area that is producing, and will continue to produce, the most public resistance and strife. Good for the Froggies if they've managed to make some progress here.
If I'm not taking too much of your time, I (and I'm sure others) would be interested in any further comments. For instance, how are things going in Italy? Rationalizing labor laws was a big priority for the new government, but then the Red Brigades emerged last spring from some 70's time warp and shot and killed the economist Mario Biagi who working on this. I think there was some other economist working on labor reform even before Biagi who was killed. What has the fallout been there?
The intellectual work that was done in this country by people like Milton Friedman and his TV series Free To Choose, not to mention Reagan's busting the unions has never happened in Europe (exception Thatcher who made Reagan look like a weakling with what she did in the UK and also some of the smaller countries esp. the Netherlands). They feel that if you make it easier to fire people that there will obviously be more people fired and therefore fewer people working. In other words, the average European doesn't "get it" and if any politician tries to say it he is immediately cast aside.
I always try to tell people that in America if you get fired you go out, have a beer, and start looking for a new job after you sleep it off. And usually you get a better job, one you're better suited to than the one you left. I've never understood why the Europeans thinkg starting a job at 18 when you know nothing, and then being stuck in that job for the next 40 years is preferable to getting laid off every 7 years, retooling and trying something new. I haven't been following the Italian labor reform as closely as I should. I think that they are doing some things, but it always has to be half measures, with softeners thrown in to cushion the blow.
God, I miss Ronnie and Maggie. As I've said elsewhere recently, I literally shudder to think where we (and I mean the entire world) might be now if they had not come to power when they did.
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