The 100-day government of Dom got busy talking about getting busy and announced itself "taboo free":
Government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope, giving an account of the meeting, said Villepin told ministers that their "absolute priority" must be the battle against unemployment."We are not the first government to mobilize for employment, but I want us to be the first government that consecrates all its energy, without taboos, to mobilizing the whole nation" against unemployment, he was quoted as saying.
Francois Hollande, the leader of the opposition Socialist party, mocked the 100-days promise, saying that the government has had 1,100 days since its election to "discover that employment is the first priority."
Hollande said he was more than willing to wait another 100 days for a solution, but warned, "if the solution is to call into cause [sic: à une remise en cause | to call into question] the labour code, the socialist party will be fundamentally hostile" to it.
"If the government imagines that the answer to the country's social malaise is to create more insecurity, then it has completely blown it. ... If breaking taboos means destroying what we've got and putting nothing back - then we don't want it," said Francois Chereque of the CFDT union.
But surely the inviolacy of the labor code is the premier taboo Dom will have to challenge.
A "yes" supporter, Rick van der Ploeg, with the sharp and impartial-sounding credentials of being a former Dutch cabinet member, Dutch Labor Party loyalist, and economics professor at the European University in Florence, [bluntly laid the situation out] over the weekend.
"The lethargic giants, France and Germany, have to reform their labor markets immediately."
The second taboo to overcome, warming up to "Anglo-Saxon liberalism":
FRENCH WANT BRITISH 'MIRACLE' AS A MODEL FOR CHANGE
May 25, 2005 (Guardian) - The daily newspaper Figaro recently said: "The British 'miracle' should be a model for us."Unemployment [in France] is 10.2%, more than double Britain's 4.7%. Almost a quarter of young French people, including graduates, are out of work. Britain has a record 75% of its adult population in jobs; France has 62%.
Average earnings in France over the past decade have only just kept up with inflation, meaning the French have not got any wealthier. In Britain, earnings growth has comfortably outstripped inflation. Britain is getting richer but France is not; Britain is affording more spending on public services while France is cutting back. The British are buying homes in France.
Rod Mitchell, a Briton who has lived in France for 20 years and set up a mortgage broking business five years ago, says France is in decline.
"There's not a work culture any more. People have become too dependent on the state. There would be a leisure culture but people don't even have the money to enjoy their leisure. This country used to be wealthy but will soon be bankrupt."
The fundamental change France needs, say [Raymond Torres, a labour market specialist at the OECD, which recently outlined France's poor economic performance] and Professor Richard Layard of the London School of Economics, is to reform its unemployment system radically so that it encourages people back into the job market with a carrot-and-stick approach.
"The longer you pay people for doing nothing, the longer they will do just that," says Prof Layard.
You don't say.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1501615,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1502371,00.html
Here is the "Gallic Genius" plan to save France.
1. Politically and Economically Attack the USA
2. Listen to the squeeky Islamofascist wheel, apply ample grease
3. Estrogen tablets for all French men over 10
4. Work 30 hours per week max
5. Unionize everything
6. Tax your people and businesses so heavily that both child bearing and job creation become prohibitively expensive
7. Repeatedly refuse reforms while your best and brightest leave for better opportunities abroad
8. Wait for low birth rate to eliminate remaining "Gallic" people
8. Leave angry Muslims immigrants alone in a crappy, economically devastated land just like their old countries in the Middle East used to be.
I think it is safe to say that the French Revolution has been a failure. I thank my ancestors for escaping from that statist fly-trap so many generations ago.
DH,
The secret is out. Too good to leave this here.
DGB
