I like Neil Cavuto. He's not a stuffed shirt reporter rolling out tired cliche's about the economy. Check out his latest column.

And right about now, the Europeans are the last ones who should be lecturing anyone on things economic. Trust me, our economy ain't exactly firing on all cylinders. But at least it's firing on some. The French and Germans would be lucky to have it firing on any!

But here's the kicker: these guys are telling us to start stimulating job growth. Last time I checked, France was looking at 9.5 percent unemployment. The Germans are at 10.6 percent, Italy's at 8.9 percent, and Spain's battling a jobless rate of more than 11 percent. These aren't exactly the kind of folks who should be lecturing anyone on anything having to do with jobs.

Unemployment? I thought one of the joys of socialism was that no one was without a job. I mean, is't France the best available worker's paradise ever since the end of the USSR? There goes my day.

OT/ but pertenant
Jacques Chirac’s right-hand man Maurice Gourdault-Montagne has told Isreali ambassador to France Nissim Zvilli there is no proof Hamas and Islamic Jihad are terror groups.
Link

Of course, Hamas only kills jews! When has france ever had a problem with that?

The only way the "workers paradise" that is France can reduce unemployment is by adding onto its already disturbling HUGE bureacracy..didn't they hire 31,000 more gov. workers last month? I mean isn't that the way these people work to reduce unemployment, hire more bureaucrats and then ravage the private sector to pay for these new hirees salarys?
And yes Cavut does rock!

Unfortunately Cavuto does not disclose his source. Who told us to start stimulating job growth ? A german politician ? A french journalist ? A spanish financial analyst ? An italian housewife ?

Hey Alassandro,
Those figures are known economic data. They can be found anywhere. The thing is Europe should stop importing Arabs, Turk etc. to do jobs that the average Eurotrash wouldn't do. If Europe is such a classless society why doesn't Pierre take the garbage out? Or drive a cab?

You seem having lot of good ideas Cozmogirl :

The thing is Europe should stop importing Arabs, Turk etc.

This is the simple solution... claimed over and over by a "famous" polytical figure in France called Jean Marie Le Pen.
This guy and his party called "Front national" can be considered as Neo-Nazi by their hatred calls against all foreiners, holocaust denying or minimizing. He made big noise telling "I don't tell that gas chambers did not exist, I just tell that IF THEY HAVE EXISTED, it should be a detail in WW2 story".

This bloody guy was for long time just considered as a "troll" until, last yrar he got qualified for second turn in presidential elections... Chirac was first with 19%, Le Pen second with 17% and Jospin (the former prime misnister) 3rd.
The second turn gave Chirac elected with 83% and Le Pen keeping 17% of valid votes.

If Europe is such a classless society why doesn't Pierre take the garbage out? Or drive a cab?

Just for your information, Europe society is anything you like but not "classless". Social divisions here are way more hermetic than what you know in US. May be, just for this it is NECESSARY in Europe to have more social laws to make a balance.

So why don't I take the garbage out? Or drive a cab?

I never drove taxis but I was truck driver for several years from the dirty local delivery to the way more interesting international transport. I don't drive trucks now since almost 20 years.

Why ?
Simple, because I have a better job (software enginer). I don't have it from my "social class" but just because, 20 yers ago, by hobby I got found of electronic and computing, wanted to create softwares and learned to do so. Not in 4 weeks during hollidays, but in 7 years. 3 years in remote coarses from my truck to reach the level to be admited in one year full time classes to get technician. Then, 3 years in evening classes to get enginer.

This is why I CANNOT and will NEVER dismiss state run social actions added to natural capitalist economy. It would be spiting in my soup ! Evening classes are payed by social founds, I got one year full time classes payed 90% of my previous salary by social action. I was not payed to live without working but to learn what was necessary to get better qualification.
In return I pay with cotisations and taxes all kind of state run social actions.

What is wrong with that ? About what in such a deal should I or anyone else complain ? For me it is simply a good balance between personnal efforts and social help.

Off course it can and must be improved to be more efficient, mor fair, follow the economic and technologic evolution. But certainly not just broken for beeing a "socialist" sysem.

Cozmogirl: you putrid mouth is infected with Le Penist, racist, populist phraseology. Please get a life somewhere. Urgently !

******

UNEMPLOYMENT

Don't forget two things:

1/ The REAL unemployment rate in the UK is far more than 5 or 6 % once you consider some "jobs" that are considered a valid employment in the UK. French & Germany are much more ambitious countries: some forms of human exploitation are forbidden (working 80 hours a week with on single 20-mn pause per day, and 6 days non stop to get something like 600 euros per month as GROSS income). This kind of job is strictly forbidden on the Continent. In the UK this is seen as a formidable job opportunity & the official stats forged by Phoney Bliar & co are more than happy to remove such cases from unemployment's real figures.

2/ The UK (wrongly) believes it has the best unemployment rate, but it surely has the worst poverty rate. Figures available on simple request. They show that the UK is an underdeveloping country with no other prospect than exploiting its own people.

WOW!!!!
I am a putrid racist? I take your words as compliments Pierre! Now about racism, your pure unadulterated loathing of Americans, Jews and anyone who isn't a socialist French man screaming for the Kinds head is racism as well. You have no idea what your talking about when you call us Cowboys. Fool, we admire Cowboys here in the states. Its part of who we are.
We don't like terrorists or the dictators who help them. We don't live on the Government dole like you all do in Frogland. And we sure as heck don't need and insecure little viper like you nipping at our heels because that is what you are Pierre and insecure effeminate little man with nothing but a mouth to recommend him!

Illegitimate President

[What followed was a long off-topic cut-and-pasted screed. It has been deleted. Do not weep for the loss. If you must see it, it can be found here in its entirety.

The Management]

Please don't make me retype the facts about the so-called stolen election again! However, to make a short point, the recount done by the papers afterword showed that Bush one. Then let's talk about all of the Military Abseentee ballots thrown out, according to memos circulated by the old Democratic Party. Count every vote? Riiiiight!

Point 2- I see some one has taken their "Illuminati" card game a little too seriously. Were the saucer people involved? How about the Mad Scientist for a Better Tomorrow. The MIB? However, I'm sure that you have a lovely non-falsible theory to explain that.

Everybody will recall this famous -and sad- study that showed that MORE THAN 30 % (!!!) of US people don't actually know that the Earth orbits the Sun...

So your "study" consists of a humor book called Disorder in the Court: Legal Laughs, Court Jests and Just Jokes Culled from the Nation's Justice System.

Nifty, though it means you were either ignorant of your own source or purposefully misrepresented it, or were either too lazy or too stupid to do a simple Google search. Which is it? I'm betting you purposefully misrepresented it since doing google searches and cutting and pasting leftist websites seems to be something you're good at.

You and Oussama Ben Bush should get together since you both seem to be so good at plagarizing other people's rants without acknowledging their true authorship. Unless Oussama Ben Bush is actually Marc Perkel who wrote Ben Bush's rant.

C'mon, go read a book and write according to the knowledge YOU gain rather than regurgitating someone else's work as your own.

Kal

Ah, a defender of the French using a Nazi-reference. I'm not surprised.

You forgot about the unemployment numbers and the lines of people on the dole -- the crumbling health care systems, too.

Will France Scrap Christmas? Government Mulls Abolishing a Holiday to Finance Elderly Care
By John Leicester Associated Press Writer
Published: Aug 27, 2003

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PARIS (AP) - France, a country where leisure time is sacrosanct, is mulling a radical plan for financing health care after a heat wave estimated to have killed thousands: Make people work on a national holiday.
The idea, which the government floated Wednesday, immediately split opinion and provoked one main question - which of France's 11 national holidays should go? Labor Day, perhaps, or a religious festival?

At least two ministers said Christmas should not be touched.

Ever wary of angering France's powerful unions, the government insisted it still hadn't made a decision. But even considering the idea shows how seriously the government is taking calls to improve care for the elderly, who made up most of the victims from the record temperatures that baked Europe this month.

Hamlaoui Mekachera, secretary of state for war veterans, told The Associated Press that if the plan is adopted, social taxes from the extra workday could help finance elderly care.

But most of all, abolishing a holiday would signal that France is ready to make sacrifices to better care for the vulnerable, he said.

"It's a very important, very strong symbol," Mekachera said in an interview. "The gesture of solidarity is more important than the financial gesture ... so that we never witness again what we saw."

Thousands died in the heat, the government has estimated, many of them elderly and living alone. The deaths focused attention on France's struggle to care for an aging population and prompted a storm of criticism that the center-right government reacted too slowly.

Secretary of State for the Elderly Hubert Falco noted that Germany has made people work the Day of Penance and Prayer in November to finance care for the aged since 1995.

"It's one of the possibilities, among many others," Falco said after a Cabinet meeting. "It would be, as is the case in Germany, a holiday that would be worked to the advantage of national solidarity."

At first blush, the idea seemed fraught with risk. Many French, long connoisseurs of fine living, appreciate the extra time off granted by a law passed by the previous Socialist government that restricted the working week for many to 35 hours.

There are also religious and historical sensibilities.

Transport Secretary Dominique Bussereau said he opposed abolishing a May 8 holiday that celebrates the end of World War II in Europe, or Christmas, or Armistice Day on Nov. 11, when fighting stopped in World War I.

"Definitely not May 8, because it left quite a few memories; not December 25 because I want Christmas presents," he said.

On the political left, there was outrage.

"There's no question of touching holidays," thundered Communist lawmaker Alain Bocquet. "There's no question of erasing May 8 and the memory of victory over Nazi barbarity and fascism!"

Jean-Claude Mailly, a leader of the Workers' Force trade union, said a wealthy country like France should not have to make workers labor longer to finance health care. The union, he warned, would not take kindly to the abolition of the May 1 Labor Day holiday.

"It's enforced charity, totally unacceptable," he said in an interview.

But Ernest-Antoine Seilliere, president of MEDEF, France's leading business federation, said one less holiday would be "fantastic."

"The idea that we can solve problems by working more is a big first for our country," he said on Europe-1 radio. "We all know that the time has passed for the illusion that we can be more united and make the French system function, eyeing leisure time all the while."

AP-ES-08-27-03 1514EDT

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. Blue,

Do not waste your typing trying to explain anything to Oussama Ben Bush (I believe the illiterate douchebag means Osama bin Bush). This man is stupid. Do not, I repeat, do not waste your time on stupid people. You cannot fix stupid. He is a Darwin Award winner who has yet to claim his prize. Until he does allow him to wallow in his bitterness and drool the drool of the incoherent left. Some people just don't deseve freedom, they got it, but they sure's hell don't deserve it.

To quote James Lileks, "Thank God for the autonomous nervous system, because some people are too stupid to remember to breath."

Good Iman,
I do appreciate a challange. I hope that maybe one of these trolls will use logic instead of emotion, look at real history instead of revisionist farie tails, and give up their beleif in the neo-faschism or khymerism that drives the left these days. A thankless and impossible task...