In France, the masses are protesting a mild liberalization of the economy, one that might make a trivial dent in the 22% unemployment rate for younger workers (over 50% in some of the poorer immigrant neighborhoods).
The long term effect will be to continue the decline of France into a stagnant Third World backwater, where tourists go to take pictures of themselves against the backdrop of the ruins of a formerly great civilization.
Denis Boyles has a nice summary in NRO:
“… the new employment law that would allow businesses in France to fire employees who are under 26 within their first two years on the job — won’t mean much. Almost a quarter of French people under the age of 26 are jobless already. They’ve been fired by a lousy economy.”
And as their lousy economy gets worse….
Update: Barbara Ehrenreich is busy attempting to put lipstick on the pig that is the French economy. It’s an interesting and well written column, but fundamentally ignorant of the relevant economics.
I suspect that, deep down, even Ms. Ehrenreich understands that you can’t continuously increase the costs associated with employment without having an effect on how many jobs are available. After all, everyone realizes that the government can’t effectively mandate increases in real wages. Err…, let’s back up a bit; that’s probably assuming a trifle too much economic sophistication. Let’s try: everyone recognizes that at some point, raising the minimum wage, for example, to $1,000 an hour or so would not simply work. Back to Ms. Ehrenreich:
“What corporations call “flexibility”—the right to dispose of workers at will—is what workers experience as disposability, not to mention insecurity and poverty. The French students who were tossing Molotov cocktails didn’t want to become what they call “a Kleenex generation”—used and tossed away when the employer decides he needs a fresh one.”
As Boyles notes above, the facts are that the French economy effectively treats 20 some percent of the youth population as not even worthy of being disposed of. In the poorer inner city areas, this figure is around 50%.
So, these people have a tremendously difficult time getting work, period. Without a reduction in the high costs of the risk associated with bringing on permanent hires, there’s not likely to be much available in the way of opportunity.
Even more interesting is her take on the American worker:
“But in America, at least, the worse things get, the harder it becomes to even imagine any kind of resistance. The fact that you can be fired “at will”—the will of the employer, that is—freezes employees into terrified obedience. Add to that the fact that job loss is accompanied by a loss of access to health care,
and you get a kind of captive mentality bordering on the kinkily masochistic: Beat me, insult me, double my workload, but please don’t set me free!”
Glad to know that we’re all spiritless drudges, who would never think about looking for another job. Probably due to our Marxist false consciousness. Or, more realistically, the fact that you can always leave your job anytime you want, and get another. Unemployment rates in the US continue to fall (4.7% - what was that French number again?), and even at “recession” levels is usually less than Europe ought to say something.
But then again, sometimes, if you’re a ‘progressive’, the only real requirement is that you sound like you care about the poor, even if implementing your actual policies would make a lot more of them.
HT: Jonah Goldberg
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