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November 25, 2002
There they go again...
File this in the "Oh, please" category. Excerpted from the New York Times...
Truckers Lift Roadblocks in France By ELAINE SCIOLINOARIS, Nov. 25 — It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas here, and it's not just the decorations. This is the season of the strike, and it sometimes seems as if just about everyone has walked off the job.
Truckers seeking more pay set up dozens of roadblocks with trucks and cars across the country today, but lifted them this evening. The truckers claim that their profits have plummeted because of tough competition and cheap labor from central Europe. Among other things, the truckers are demanding a 13th month of pay, a common practice that serves as a kind of bonus in Europe.
On Tuesday tens of thousands of public sector workers plan to take to the streets to defend public services and to express opposition to the government's move toward privatization.
Subway and bus workers, railroad conductors and air traffic controllers, meanwhile, will stay home on Tuesday to protest what they consider inadequate salaries and benefits. British Airways has already canceled more than 60 flights and much wider disruption of air travel is expected.
Not to be outdone, organizers for the telecommunications union said today that half of the 146,000 workers of France Telecom, may strike in front of the Finance Ministry on Tuesday to protest the call by the company's new management for job cuts and sales of assets to reduce its debt. ...
Beautiful. For Christmas, Santa is bringing the French marginalization and irrelevancy.
Of course, France is the country where (and this is really not a joke: I promise) the unemployed often strike in sympathy with a striking union.
However, I feel constrained to point out that the French simply feel differently about these things. To an American, the idea of striking because you are uncompetitive just sounds ridiculous. The French often cheerfully admit that an industry is uncompetitive--and that the government should subsidize it any way, in order to protect a way of life. See, French agriculture.
Of course, one does ask: Where is the money to come from? What French industries are competitive enough to pay for all of this? Or will remain competitive with such heavy taxes. Snail farmers, perhaps
I agree that the French have, stangely to most Americans, chosen high unemployment and high job security over the reverse. Most continential Europeans seem to agree. I feel that eventually European economic power will follow the course of their military power--down the road to irrelevance.
I used to agree: But Europe has become more economically competitive since the 1970s, not less so. In a number of industries--automobiles, airlines, luxury goods, etc.--they seem to compete on quality. And those industries subsidize the rest of their economies. Never forget, the average standard of living in many European countries is actually higher than the standard of living in the US, if you take into account the cost of health care and education. This is an unpalatable truth that American "conservatives" are profoundly embarrassed by.
In other words, there is a middle ground between socialism on the one hand and "Anglo-Saxon Liberalism" (by which the French mean laissez-faire capitalism) on the other.
Jason
How much of Europe's wealth has come from their massive amounts of investments in the US? And how much money do their governments save (and pour into social programs) because their defense has been subsidized by the US? Europe continues to trail the US economically, and the gap is getting bigger, not smaller. Finally, you can't "take into account the cost of health care and education" (ie consider this costs that people don't have to pay for) without taking into account who is covering those costs. As Milton Friedman says, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and just because the costs are picked up elsewhere, doesn't mean they don't exist. Also, you can't ignore quality. Healthcare in Europe is dramatically worse than in the US. (And where would the French health be without the US, British, and Swiss drug industries?) Education is probably better in Europe on average, but the problem there isn't less state intervention, but the government enforced education monopoly in this country.
I am an American conservative (free markets, free people) and I am in no way - profoundly or otherwise - embarrassed by the European's "quality of life." I envy their cafe culture and the way they seem to enjoy food and wine more than we do, but every time I jump the pond for more than a week, I find myself yearning for service with a smile and competency without attitude. Their quality of life is better only if you like socialism and don't mind mass inefficencies in everyday life. While it's fun (a la schadenfreude) to watch European's descent into irrelevancy on the business front, it's shallow humor because as strong EU benefits us all. Further, it will be distinctly unpleasant to watch their fabled "quality of life" disintegrate under the weight of 0% population growth (exacerbated by continuous anti-immigration sentiment) and 35% of the population over 65. Will America have to bail them out yet again? Perhaps, but I hope they get their act together before then (doubtful).
Accept then, too, that when Europeans visit and live in America, they are impressed by the convenience and services that are common in this country, but are appalled by the lack of what you call "cafe culture"--which is much, much more than that dismissive term would suggest.
To Europeans, life in the US, particularly in the suburbs, seems just an empty round of commuting in a car, to an airconditioned, homogenous office, and then returning to an idenitkit sururban home, identical to a million others, and an endless round of mindless consumerism.
Really, to a European, it's not a life at all.
Jason