What is truly disparaging about France’s rejection of the EU Constitution isn’t the act itself – it’s the way in which the French people rejected liberal market economics along with it. When the term “liberal” (and I mean classical liberalism, not modern American liberalism) is considered a pejorative, it’s clear that France is in deep, deep trouble.
Socialism does not work, and the more that France falls into the pit of embracing the failed ideologies of state socialism, the worse things will get for the French people. The doctrine of socialism twists the language of rights and turns them into a demands that the state provide everything for everyone. Rather than rejecting the EU Constitution as a document that creates a massive and intrusive bureaucracy, the French rejected it because it didn’t take them far enough down the road to serfdom.
As much as I’d love to celebrate failure of the French vote, it provides a very disturbing omen about the way in which Europe continues to slide towards economic and social collapse.
UPDATE: Austin Bay has some more cogent thoughts about the future of France and the EU:
It’s clear that a disgruntled and discombobulated French electorate expressed various types of outrage and enrage (an odd construction but given France’s constant straddling act, strikes me as appropirate). However, if the Communist Redshirts and Le Pen’s fascist Brownshirts are politically determinative in France –and that’s an argument one can make based on this plebiscite– then let’s recognize France as the politically sick society it truly is. If “sick†is a push word and too therapeutic for the pragmatic set, then call it the “lost†society.
Sadly, I’m inclined to agree. Bay also suggests adding Britain and the Netherlands into a new North Atlantic Free Trade Association — an idea I heartily endorse.
The unemployed in France have a higher standard of living than about one out of three Americans who work full time. When “Thatcherizing” inevitably leads to a loss of health insurance, vacation time, subsidized child care and retirement benefits for the majority of those who swallow the Kool-Aid, it’s hard to expect those who currently enjoy those benefits to quit drinking Tang.
The self-destructive tendencies of America’s clueless “values voters” are far less likely to succeed in a culture that doesn’t work itself into a red-faced frenzy over seeing Janet Jackson’s nipple, meaning free market ideologues in France will have to come up with an alternative to the crude bait-and-switches that have worked for America’s Republican Party.
Not even close:
Even if these figures are correct, it does nothing to discount my point that France’s unemployed live better than much of America’s working class. Per capita GDP in America is skewered by the extremities, with the top quintile owning a far higher percentage of the overall wealth than is the case in the rest of the civilized world, and the bottom two quintiles living paycheck to paycheck just barely getting by. Everyone I’ve ever talked to from Europe (even my friends from comparatively low-income Greece) have never seen the kind of poverty on their home continent that exists on the other side of every railroad track here in America. That’s the price a society has to pay if it chooses to embrace the Milton Friedman/Ronald Reagan economic model that Europe has wisely resisted.
Evidently you didn’t bother reading the report. The average standard of life in Europe is less than than the poorest American states. The “poor” in the United States have a better average standard of life than the average European does by nearly every measure.
The reason why France has double the unemployment and half the economic growth of the United States (and Germany is even worse) is because they’ve pursued the very same state-socialism than the left in this country would have us pursue – which is precisely why such policies are counterproductive and foolish.
Everyone I have ever talked to who has lived in both places say that the working classes and lower classes live far better in “Old Europe” than in America. Per capita income means nothing. Kuwait and Brunei would both likely be among the top-10 in per capita income on the globe, but a sizeable share of people in both nations would be living in dire poverty.
In the 1950s through the 1970s in America, labor costs were high are profits were smaller…..a scenario still largely intact in Europe. Does that mean lower per capita GDP than America’s present-day free-markets-gone-wild culture where gated communities and three-car garages full of BMW’s contrasts with 40% of the population spending their entire lives robbing Peter to pay Paul just to get by day to day? Perhaps so. But it’s a culture that cannot sustain itself indefinitely, as the French learned the hard way when a revolution was waged against their nobility.
There’s no perfect system, and Old Europe certainly has its problems. Nonetheless, there’s a good reason why the residents of every other civilized nation on the globe is resisting following America’s footsteps back to Gilded Age economic values, higher poverty rates and non-existent social safety nets.
Kuwait’s GDP would put it outside the top 30. Same with Brunei. Per-capita GDP is the primary way of measuring the economic health of a country. Only small and homgenous Luxembourg beats the US in per-capita GDP (and Luxembourg is a state about the size of Rhode Island).
That’s why the Democrats will keep losing elections. That’s why the middle class is increasingly Republican. America doesn’t even remotely look like that. Over 60% of people in the top income quintile moved up from a lower quntile. Two-thirds of those in the bottom quintile will advance to a higher one within 10 years. 80% of American millionaires are first-generation millionaires.
If you think France is such a great bastion of social equity, you’ve never been there. Go to the gated communities of Paris then spend five minutes in one of the concrete slums of the Parisian banlieues.
And because of the socialist policies of the French government, your chances of ever obtaining true class mobility is virtually zero. Nearly all French civil servants are graduates of the École National d’Administration – if you can’t afford to go there, you can’t get a high-paying governnent job. The ossified welfare state means that the level of unemployment is 10.2% and rising.
If you think America would be better with 10.2% unemployment and nearly 25% underemployment, then fine. That’s why the Democrats continue to lose elections.
The level of income at which party preferences switch from Democrat to Republican is only $21,500. A recent Pew survey has found that the Republicans are the party of optimistic entrepreneurs, and the Democrats are the party of pessimism and class warfare, providing empirical evidence for what has been obvious for some time.
The pessimism of the Democratic Party is precisely why they keep losing elections, and why they’ll continue to lose elections in the future.
I stand corrected on Kuwait and Brunei. The almanac statistics I read a decade ago indicated those nations were only slightly behind the United States in per capita income. Perhaps that has changed significantly since the mid-1990’s….or perhaps either my old numbers or your new numbers are flawed.
I have never been to France and have little doubt that poverty exists there. Nonetheless, every French person I’ve been in contact with on American soil (which is about a dozen, give or take) expresses disbelief at the grinding poverty that exists in the shadows of American prosperity. The same is true for expatriates and international students I’ve talked to from the developed world…and many from the undeveloped world.
Perhaps it’s true that two-thirds of Americans in the bottom quintile will rise to the next quintile within 10 years, but the second poorest quintile in America is far from a desirable place to be, and is becoming less desirable with every plant closing, every health insurance plan being erased, and every GOP assault on the safety net.
I recently ended a tenure in a small southwest Minnesota town, where I made approximately $24,000 per year. Living like a pauper for three years, my only expenses were student loans, car insurance, basic cable, rent, utilities, telephone, Internet, and $200 a month pocket money. I didn’t have a car payment, medical bills, credit card bills, daycare or any of the other bills associated with having a family. Nonetheless, I had about $250 per month left over on a good month. Contrast that with the rest of the community….where HOUSEHOLD income averaged $33,000 per year and has barely kept up with inflation since the mid-1980s. Interestingly, there are 25 Minnesota counties with smaller household incomes than the county I lived in. Suffice it to say the people in these communities (which represent a solid 25% of the Minnesota population) are in the bottom two quintiles and have little hope of upward mobility.
Unemployment is calculated differently in France than it is in the United States, with only people currently collecting unemployment benefits and/or actively pursuing new jobs are counted. Last summer, I heard the American unemployment rate would have been at about 8% if they counted the same way Europe does. As for underemployment, I have little doubt that America’s is 25% or higher. I guess it all depends on how you count underemployment. Globalization is shifting our job market to three distinct groups: white-collar professionals, retail/fast food workers, and blue-collar jobs in construction and food processing that would otherwise pay $19 an hour but are being filled by a revolving door of immigrants and are thus paying $9 an hour. While the professional class is likely to continue growing and fueling suburban prosperity post-globalization, the ranks of low-skill, low-wage and no-benefit immigrant workers, fry cooks and shelf stockers are likely to grow just as fast in urban and rural America. From what I’ve seen recently in the kinds of blue-collar communities where I’ve lived my whole life, an “underemployment” rate of 25% sounds like a step upward.
As for the “income line where party preferences switch”, you know that party affiliation has nothing to do with economics. The Republican Party has cleverly framed American politics in terms of social ideology, producing a blue Long Island and a red Hazard, Kentucky. Democrats are losing elections because they don’t talk enough about the economic woes of working-class America, instead trying to match the Republicans Bible passage for Bible passage and coming across as phonies.
The clear turning point came when Clinton signed NAFTA. Suddenly, social conservatives saw little reason to continue voting Democrat. Poll these $22,000-per-year Republicans and I expect you’ll find little enthusiasm for Bush priorities such as private Social Security accounts, rolling back workplace ergonomic standards and rubber-stamping the passage of every trade agreement that hits his desk. Lower-income Republicans express widespread opposition to Bush economic policy in poll after poll, but continue to pull the lever for him because abortion, gay marriage, the teaching of evolution in schools and Janet Jackson’s tit pisses them off more. As I said earlier, I highly doubt free-market ideologues in Europe will be successful in bringing the poor to their side over similar culture war riffraff, but I guess only time will tell.