France must undertake a radical overhaul of its labor market or face irreversible economic stagnation, Michel Camdessus, former head of the International Monetary Fund, has said in a report.
The French may be waking—up to the fact that their economic policies are suicidally misguided. But don't count on any meaningful change.
"We've had reports like that for 20 years, and for 20 years they've been put in the drawer," said Marc Touati, chief economist at Natexis Banque Populaire in Paris.
"The problem is that politicians want to win elections in the short term and real reform takes longer than that."
For a time, the French police were being dispatched to factories and offices, to make certain that no one was laboring more than the legal limit on work hours — in the low 30s per week. Such zeal betrays a Soviet—style collectivist mentality, obsessed with the fear that some may do better than others by dint of their own hard work and talent. With anti—Semitism rampant, the Berber ghettos full of roaming gangs, and street crime in Paris well above the levels of New York City, the French police should have had other priorities than stifling the hardest workers among them.
Even if France reforms its labor regulations, it will still be left with high taxes and an interventionist government deciding which investments its leading private firms should make.
The French are an extraordinarily talented and intelligent people, who, unfortunately, are captivated by a narcissistic obsession with the glories of the past. They alkso place too much faith in the merit of their intellectual elites, who are given far too much sway over society, merely because they are well—spoken and facile.
I am part—French, and have known a number of fine French people who choke on their own country's elitism and stagnation—producing statism. I would encourage them to do what my ancestors did, and emigrate to these shores. They can give free reign to their genius in the land of the free and home of the brave.
Hat tip: Ed Lasky
Thomas Lifson 10 20 04
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