Over at WSJ Online, Nicolas Baverez out-pounds Pave in the pounding he administers to France.
PARIS August 3, 2005 (WSJ) - This will be the year that the decline of France came home to the French. ... The current president of the Republic, Jacques Chirac, is universally laughed at. His opportunism is transparent, as are his many failures, despite which no credible political alternative has emerged on the left.Growth is stuck at 1.5% per year while productivity and purchase power rise less than 1% yearly. Public debt is exploding from 58% to 68% of GDP between 2002 and 2007. The nanny-state saddles France with a €15 billion annual deficit, on average.
[T]he country has mass unemployment that has been affecting more than 10% of the population for the last quarter of the century (23.5 % among the youth), 15% of the population living below the poverty level (including 1 million children), a steady decline in social mobility since the 1990's and the state's chronic failure in integrating the growing and restless immigrant population.
In response, France's leaders indulge in demagogy, deny reality and turn others' successes into excuses for their failure to reform.
France rails against unemployment but sanctions the "social model" that causes it; calls for reform of the State yet continues to increase public expenditures (55% of GDP) and the number of civil servants (5 million, or 20% of the working population); signs on to the rules of the EU and euro yet repeatedly breaks them, invoking a French exception, and indulges in protectionism.
[All emphases added.]
No argument from us.
Read it all.
PFFT (What is this?): France's happy future 0 | Rayonnement français 0
