Early Morning, April 4

Thirty-eight years ago, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. That night, there were riots in over 60 U.S. cities. Some of the riots lasted for days. In many cities, the white population quickly left, taking the tax base with them. That started a vicious cycle of deteriorating schools and services which led to even more migration. By 1975, New York City nearly went bankrupt.
Today in France, either hundreds of thousands or millions of demonstrators protested the government’s new labor law. The law, which President Chirac plans on signing, would make it easier for French businesses to fire younger workers.
The differences between the job market in France and the U.S. are striking. In this case, quite literally. Since 1968, American has created 67 million jobs, approximately 67 million more than France. The unemployment rate for young people in France is close to 40%. What’s sad is that today’s protestors are demanding the status quo.
In America, one of the problems for urban communities is that too many people want to live there, and the real estate market has priced lower-income residents out of the market. In fact, the recent protests in the United States were done by immigrants who have come here to find jobs.
France has erected an elaborate social welfare state which may have been built on wonderful high-minded ideals, but it thrived due to a very base fact—demographics. As long as there are more young people than old people, the social-welfare state can hum along. Eight weeks of paid leave? No problem.
But now France, and other countries in Europe, has a major problem. The birthrate has plunged. So Europeans have turned to another source for young people—immigration.
Since French workers have much more time off than American workers, the economy has less demand for service type jobs that immigrants do in the United States. White collar workers in the U.S. learn to write “BASURA” on the office garbage, often to the amusement of Russian or Asian cleaning crews.
They don’t have that in France. But they do have a generation of angry young people with nothing to do. That’s an unpleasant thought for any April 4.
That’s not all that’s going on in France today. A smaller story, which is related more than you might think. According to the AP:

The European Commission sent a formal warning to France on Tuesday, saying a takeover law that creates extra hurdles for foreign firms could break EU law.
France wants to give the government a veto on takeovers in 11 sectors deemed sensitive to national security — from biotechnology to data security and arms manufacturing.
The EU said the new rules could discriminate against foreign companies by requiring them to get special clearance before they can buy into one of the affected industries.

There law grew out of last year’s uproar over rumors that Pepsi was interested in buying Danone. Le Figaro described Pepsi as “the American Ogre.” Thierry Breton, the finance minister, warned Pepsi that “this is not the Wild West.” Wild West? For the record, Pepsi is based in Purchase, NY, which is neither Wild nor West.
The prime minister and sometimes poet, Dominique de Villepin called Danone, “a flower of our industry.” It turns out that Danone was actually started in Spain. The company only became a French flower due to a series of takeover, which I think may be ironic. I’m really not sure.

Posted by on April 4th, 2006 at 2:19 pm


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