I'm sure everybody is aware of the riots in france over the proposed changes to employment laws. In Friday's Telegraph Jeff Randall made a well reasoned arguement for why the French students reaction is misguided. Although I know it's not fashionable to celebrate Thatcher's achievements I believe by her deregulation of business and through her battles with the Unions we are in some ways all her beneficiaries.
Sorbonne needs a lesson in basic A-level economics
Jeff Randall
The Telegraph
7 comments:
Dalrymple makes the same point as Randall (indeed the byline is French students should go back to class to learn some economics), but then goes on to make some interesting comments about how Britain has no right to feel superior, we have our own economic comeuppance on the way.
The striking idiocy of youth
Theodore Dalrymple
The Times
March 30, 2006
We like to think of France as having a deplorably statist and centrally controlled economy, while the French like to think of Britain as a land of savage liberalism (in French parlance, the two words are as inseparable as Siamese twins), divided unequally between plutocrats and beggars. In fact, the two countries differ far less than is often supposed. While it is true that there remain some differences — despite Gordon Brown’s best efforts, the British labour market is still more flexible than the French — the similarities grow daily more striking (as it were).
The ultimate cause of the demonstrations and strikes in the two countries is the same: the State has made promises that it is increasingly unable to keep. It has pursued policies that were bound in the end to produce not just cracks but fissures that could no longer be papered over. The main difference is that while Dominque de Villepin is tentatively dragging France, albeit kicking and screaming, and with every likelihood of failure, in the right direction, Mr Brown is still stuck on the royal road to disaster, for which the British people, but not of course Mr Brown, will ultimately pay very dearly. When the crash comes, the social dislocation in Britain will make French disaffection seem positively genteel.
...
We have no reason to condescend to the French, however, for the British are in fundamentally the same boat, with a few extra problems of our own. The vast and fraudulent expansion of tertiary education, which leaves students indebted for their own useless education, is merely a means by which the Government disguises youth unemployment and keeps young people off the streets. Contrary to government propaganda, unemployment is not low in Britain: but it is now called sickness.
Our economy is corruptly creating public service jobs — endless co-ordinators of facilitation and facilitators of co-ordination — but not many in the private sector, the only true measure of economic health and growth. Any fool can create public sector jobs, and Mr Brown has done so: but not even the most brilliant man can make them economically productive in the long term. The British economy has all the brilliance of a fish rotting by moonlight, and eventually — to change the metaphor slightly — the bill will come in. And since so large a proportion of the population is now dependent, wholly or partly, on the State, the bill will be a large one, not only in financial terms but in social terms as well.
It can’t be said either that we won’t deserve what we get. It is we, after all, who have listened to the urgings of demagogic confidence tricksters, and believed their promises of irreconcilable goods. We should have paid attention instead to the wise words of Benjamin Franklin that apply as much to economics as to politics. He who gives up freedom for security, he said, will end up with neither.
Mark Steyn comments on the French riots in an article on Europe:
Wake up, Europe. It may already be too late.
'The trap the French political class are caught in is summed up by the twin pincers of the fall and spring riot seasons. The fall 2005 rioters were "youths" (i.e. Muslims from the suburbs), supposedly alienated by lack of economic opportunity. The spring 2006 rioters are "youths" (i.e. pampered Sorbonne deadbeats), protesting a new law that would enable employers to terminate the contracts of employees under the age of 26 in their first jobs, after two years.
To which the response of most North Americans is: you mean, you can't right now? No, you can't. If you hire a 20-year-old and take a dislike to his work three months in, tough: chances are you're stuck with him till mid-century. In France's immobilized economy, it's all but impossible to get fired. Which is why it's all but impossible to get hired. Especially if you belong to that first category of "youths" from the Muslim ghettos, where unemployment is around 40 to 50 per cent. The second group of "youths" -- the Sorbonne set -- protesting the proposed new, more flexible labour law ought to be able to understand that it's both necessary to the nation and, indeed, in their own self-interest: they are after all their nation's elite. Yet they're like lemmings striking over the right to a steeper cliff.
When most of us on this side of the Atlantic think of "welfare queens," our mind's eye conjures some teenage crack whore with three kids by different men in a housing project. But France illustrates how absolute welfare corrupts absolutely. These Sorbonne welfare queens are Marie Antoinettes: unemployment rates for immigrants? Let 'em eat cake, as long as our pampered existence is undisturbed.'
Chirac to scrap employment law.
Oh well, looks like Sarkozy is France's best hope now. (According to The Spectator, Sarkozy is an economic liberal in the Thatcher mold, pro America, pro Israel, hates Chirac and was critical of Villepin's employment law for being too limited).
Not sure about this (after all there are lies, damned lies and statistics), but this chappy has a different take on the whole French CPE situation. (The first comment in the thread, does, however, point out that statistics are notoriously bad at showing the whole pitcure.)
(For my part, I still think liberalising some of their employment laws would be a good idea, but that the whole thing was spectacularly mishandled by Villepin.)
This bit of Dan's last post interested me:
At the end of the day, France has a labour market participation rate way below that of the UK, but a GDP per capita almost exactly the same. If you were a recently-arrived Martian and saw two economies with roughly the same population and roughly the same output, but one of them had much more of the population working in order to achieve it, would you definitely say the one achieving the same results with less labour was the one that had the problem?
The guy is making a good point that French productivity levels must be higher than that of the UK. But one of the commentators on the article writes:
France is not a happy place at the moment. The unemployment amongst racial minorities is extremely high. There is tremendous unrest and deep unhappiness in all sections of the population.
Could it be in the paradoxical situation that the less liberal economy is both more efficent in raw economic terms AND produces less social contentment? Would be very counter-intuitive if true.
I'd agree that a less liberal economy provides less social contentment but I'm not convinced that it is more efficent in economic terms. Comparing countries economies is always tricky. However, there are a couple of explanations I'd offer as to why France has a lower labour market participation rate than the UK but more or less the same GDP per capita: (in no particular order) 1. they benefit far more than Britain from high EU agricultural subsidies (11bn Euros) 2. France is the most popular tourist destination in the world 3. their adoption of nuclear power (80% of electricity) makes them more efficient than the still fossil fuel dependent UK (80%).
Sarkosy has won the French presidency. Excellent, excellent news. That isn't to say that things won't be tough, but in my opinion Sarkosy was the only candidate who offered the right solutions to France's economic and social problems.
Sarkosy promises to get France back to work with some radical policies. Blogger Andrew Ian Dodge is a fan:
"Sarkosy, like Mrs Thatcher, is disliked by a certain section of his own party. To give an idea of his reforming zeal, Mr Sarkozy has not only said that he will abolish the 35 hour week, but will make the earnings for work done in excess of the 35 hours tax free. The equivalent in British politics would be for David Cameron to cut the top rate of income tax from 40% to nil."
I expect to see many of the French who left France for better job opportunities abroad start to return.
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