Adrian,

"But I fully agree with you about the gap in safety and welfare state which in Europe we usually take for granted instead of appreciating it for its real value."

Indeed. Just think about losing your health insurance if you lose your job! This is what Americans experience. Europeans do not have to worry about that.

The intellectuals don't appreciate the forest because they're busy figuring how to make a profit on the trees.

The best things in life truly are free, but our accumulated environmental toxins are poisoning everyone out of existence, all because of governmentally driven need to grow economies at the expense of the people who pay their way.

I agree with the French. Work less, earn less, spend less, consume less, waste less, worry less, and pay less in taxes.

Dear ODDHOGNE,

"Touché". I can't mention substantiating facts on the US progress in the last decade.

The timeframe I had in mind is much longer : 50 years, after WWII.

The American society has shown a great deal of energy and progress in this time period.

But I fully agree with you about the gap in safety and welfare state which in Europe we usually take for granted instead of appreciating it for its real value.

Hi,Adrian
If you could just mention a couple of facts to bolster your claim that the US has shown progress and improvement the last decade.
Of course,I mean progress and improvement for the american people and not for the wall street crowd.
Health service,freedoms,education,rise in pay,crime,habeus corpus,life ecpectancy,national debt,pension and generally a social safety network should be some of the standards of which a civilization is judged.Not by their ability to impose their will on others.
The EU approach with accepting new members that is volunteering to embrace a new set of standards and to some degree values,has in my opinion proved to be a lot more effective.

HI again

I believe it is not a question of quality of life.

My concern is that France is a society that lacks energy to reinvent itself, it has lost the energy it had in 1779 when the society uprising destroyed the Ancient Régime. It is complacent.

The US and other societies like China show a level of energy and ambition to progress and improve that I personally envy and miss around Europe (only new EU members like Spain in the last decade or the Eastern European countries are showing that social muscle)

The question is whether one should value quality of life, as the French still try to do , or worship at the altar of "the economy". The US economy grows by leaps and bounds while its poor suffer increasingly desperate lives and the middle class suffers through ever longer work weeks (for show purposes as pointed out above) and ever increasing insecurity and anxiety. Yes, we in the US may be able to outproduce, outmanipulate, and underprice others, but the benefits go to the Exxons, the Halliburtons, the Cheneys, the Bushes, the Ken Lays and the rest of that crowd. Viva la France!

France suffers from a rigid labor market and endemic unemployment, BUT not poor productivity.

Look at the reports -- www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2002/06/art4full.pdf. They show that French labor productivity has been increasing FASTER than in the US and most other major economies. It is not surprising. If government policies make hiring individuals expensive, business leaders will find ways to make their labor more productive. French capitalists do well given their environment. the question is if France wishes to continue making labor so expensive.

As long as logic and reason continues to be the foundations of the the french republic,I am not worried.Some labour reform is definitely needed,and allowing people to work is imperative.
My french friend has worked abroad for 6 years because she can not find work in France.She says that foreign experience is not valued in France.Nevertheless she just moved back with her parents because she misses the country.
My american friend has 2 weeks vacation a year,no wonder he seldom gets to know anything about the rest of the world.His interest in world affaires is limited to Iraq,and even here he has narrow knowledge. Here in Norway,I have a friend with no college degree working at a fish-feed factory.He works shifts so he gets extra time off in addition to his five weeks mandatory.Since newyear he has been 2 weeks in Thailand,taken the ferry to England.Joined me for a trip to Latvia and we are going to Amsterdam to visit my brother next week.European economy has just turned a corner and more good times are sure to come.
If we could unhinge from the coming recession in the US things would be even better.My american friend is still convinced that he lives in the greatest country in the world though and I am not telling him any different.

I long for such a decline. Unfortunately, here in the United States, it is unlikely. We don't have the intellectual rigor to sustain it.

I think it is amusing how Americans criticize the 35 hour work week of because they in general have a 40 hour work week and in some cases put in 50 to 60 hour work weeks regularly. I am at numerous clients’ offices quite often and I can assure you that if someone is putting in 50 to 60 hour weeks they are only working 35 hours of that. I don’t care how many hours one puts in. I want to know how much they got done in the hours they put in. I would much rather take that 15 to 25 hours of doing nothing at work that the 50 to 60 hour people have and use it to do something I like to do. Most of these excess hours are for show, to kiss up to the boss, at least in the “white collar” world. Unfortunately it works in many cases.

Mr. Gil,

Great portrait of the attitude of French intellectuals which has been contagious to the political class and the population.

It is a fine paradox that there is national consensus about their falling "gloire" and at the same time there is national consensus also about doing nothing to curb it !

The French economy has gone nose-diving for at least the last decade and still nobody has the guts to implement serious reforms.

I was recently at a conference from Nobel Price awarded economist, Mr. Edmund Phelps, and he (with irony) naively expressed his surprise about the French sticking to the electoralist 35-hour working weeks law while the country economy is bleeding from poor productivity.

I know no candidate will commit "electoral" suicide talking about cancelling this law. I personally do not like Sarkozy, he seems too egocentric and potentially dangereous for the general public interests.
But I just hope that at least Sarkozy will have the guts to implement liberal economic reforms France needs and will be strong enough to face the overwhelmingly powerfull trade unions (CGT, etc), shaped around the XIX century trade union design of battle of classes.... instead of supporting and pushing innovation and productivity improvements