It's been called the greatest irony of the human tongue: Entrepeneur is a French word.

> the French at least get out in
> the streets and protest policies
> they disagree with -- while we
> Americans just sit home

Another irony, reading those words in Los Angeles this week. And it's bogus on it's face: The Americans aren't sitting at home, they're out at work. If the French protests are an example of their mutual concern, the expression is horridly backhanded. Better to be in the States and taking care of one's own beeswax.

Nonetheless, props to Tierney & Richard for saying it out loud.

It won't last - their attitudes will either change or wither and die on the vine, because the rest of the world isn't going to slow down and wait for them to catch up. Real free-market capitalism is so much like evolution in that way. Cry all you like, but if you want to survive you have to compete. It only sounds harsh ... all those people out there competing for customers, for jobs, and for resources are why we have nice things like the polio vaccine and access to so many different kinds of food. You know, Austria isn't too far away from those kids ... maybe a few of them can go enroll in a good economics program.

The point about France's sclerotic labor market is certainly valid, but I much prefer Emmanuelle's take to John Tierney's. Mostly, it's a question of tone. What is it about US conservatives that makes them feel they have a license to patronize the French so? It's not only annoying -- n'est-ce pas, Amy? -- it also detracts from the validity of the argument.

Unlike Tierney, I wouldn't want to imply that "la precarite" is a GOOD thing. I'd argue for a mix of job stability and job mobility myself. The point about the French mainstream is not that it is defending something that is indefensible, but rather that it is defending something that is no longer tenable. The refusal to stare reality in the face and deal with it is at the root of the French malaise. Emmanuelle's a realist; Tierney is too smarmy for his own culottes.

Moddy, what exactly is your complaint? That the conservatives are correct, and this hurts your feelings?

> Unlike Tierney, I wouldn't want
> to imply that "la precarite" is
> a GOOD thing

Golly, why not? Capitalism has problems, but the the core idea seems to be that in order to get by, you'll have to figure out how to be useful to somebody. Sane people are rightly embarassed by the inability of the young French to grasp this.

Speaking of smarmy...

> I'd argue for a mix of job stability
> and job mobility myself.

We know, and folks of your persuasion often do. But markets make their own demands, and it's an atmosphere of playful risk that best answers them. You aren't given a lifetime of security just for asking for it, even if you ask a pandering old politician in a good wool suit. Sorry...

> I'd argue for a mix of job stability
> and job mobility myself.

I think MOST people want a mix of job stability and job mobility - the question is WHICH mix? There are probably about a million different combinations suitable for different individuals. How convenient that there are about a million different occupations people can choose from.

Here's a question - How can we keep American kids from developing attitudes as unimaginative, risk-averse, and downright whiny as those of these French kids? How about starting with an educational system that isn't run by government bureaucracy?

PJ, the thing that comes to mind this morning when reading your comments in Los Angeles is that the young workers are eager and hispanic. A HALF A MILLION of them demonstrated downtown on Saturday.

There were zero arrests. This statistic is heartbreakingly poignant.

America is where you come when you want to work towards something better. Should the other kids be concerned about the competition?

Maybe....

These French kids think the world owes them a living. They don't look see that the desirable emergent property (high employment) is achieved by an apparently undesirable property (a relatively unregulated labour market). They are not the only country with this blind spot. The US's economic strength comes from being able to understand this one fact. How do you change a national mindset? I'd love to change Scotland's.

Here's what I mean about Tierney being smarmy:

"Close to a quarter of its young people are unemployed, but they're too busy burning cars to look for jobs."

How would you react if a French columnist wrote about the United States: "Close to a quarter of its young people are approached by military recruiters in high school and college, but despite the obvious attractions of butt-fucking Muslim prisoners with tire irons in Iraq and Afghanistan only a fraction actually enlist."

As for the employment question, there are really two arguments here. One is theoretical: how much do societies benefit from unregulated labor markets versus more regulated ones? The other is practical: how to respond to a world in which unregulated labor markets are becoming the norm, like it or not?

Before you dismiss the European model of the "social market" completely, it's worth remembering the flaws of the US approach -- huge rates of poverty and hardship, especially among the "working poor", shockingly poor access to health care, high cost of that health care, relatively poor quality of schools and other social services, etc etc etc.

In other words, sink-or-swim may indeed be a more dynamic approach, as some of you would no doubt argue, but the problem with it is that a lot of people will inevitably sink.

Moddy, I am afraid that those problems in the U.S. are more closely related to too MUCH regulation and government than not enough. Free markets aren't perfect, but they are the best alternative available.

What sucks about the quality of schools? Mostly the fact that the government runs them.

Poor access to/high cost of healthcare? Once again, you can trace a lot of the problem to direct government meddling. During the Depression, Uncle Sam imposed caps on the amount of salaries that companies could offer employees. Companies responded by offering health insurance instead, and now we are stuck with these hugely disproportionate gaps between group and individual rates. If the government had kept its hands off, we'd buy health insurance the same way we buy home or car insurance - it wouldn't be linked to our jobs.

The U.S. has some of the lowest rates of poverty and hardship in the world, so I don't know where you are coming up with that statement. Why on earth would millions of Mexicans be crossing our borders to get here, if we had "huge" levels of poverty and hardship? Seems to me that is what they are escaping.

There should always be laws to protect private property and to punish fraud and theft, but beyond that, the freer your markets are, the better they work. Even the "working poor" can afford DVD players and a balanced diet in the U.S.

There isn't much about European economic models that impresses me. Mostly I like some of their cultural aspects. France has nice wine and cheese, Great Britain comes up with some good music, Amsterdam has nice hash bars, Germany has good beer, and the Italians have great clothes. It would be nice if you could couple those strengths with a free economic model, but on my pessimistic days I imagine that between the U.S. and Europe we are simply adopting each other's worst traits. The U.S. forgets what makes it great and slides inexorably toward socialism, and the Europeans watch our stupid television shows.

The US sliding "inexorably toward socialism"? ROFL.

This is not the place to hash out the relationship between labor and capital in the 21st century, PJ. I'm not expecting you to agree with me, just hoping you can acknowledge the complexity of the question.

Some of your facts are wrong, btw, especially if you compare the United States with other industrialised countries, which is what I meant. On basic health stats like infant mortality, the US comes out looking very bad. It's simply not true the working poor can afford to eat -- read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickled and Dimed (okay, I know you won't, but that's one place to find the relevant stats; personally I've met plenty of families who, despite holding down multiple jobs, have to decide each month if they are going to pay the rent in full or eat 30 days out of 30).

As for your assertion that government is responsible for poor education in the United States, the government runs schools in France, and South Korea, and all sorts of other countries where academic achievement at the equivalent of K-12 level is markedly higher and acknowledged as such by US educators as well as their foreign counterparts. In California, the quality of education has plummeted ever since government funding went down in the wake of Prop. 13.

Again, I throw these things out with no expectation that you'll agree with me. I just hope you can see these issues are quite a bit more complicated than your free-markets-are-good mantra.

"Personally I've met plenty of families who, despite holding down multiple jobs, have to decide each month if they are going to pay the rent in full or eat 30 days out of 30."

Really? Now I'm curious. Do these people have kids? And more importantly, did they think about their ability to both pay rent and eat before having kids? People who repeatedly make dumb decisions usually wind up poor - capitalism is a superior economic model to socialism, but it isn't going to fix stupidity.

And how is the U.S. not sliding towards socialism? President Bush's latest round of agricultural subsidies took us a giant step away from free markets, as did his steel tariffs. And don't get me started on the boondoggle that is the new prescription drug plan.

Every time I go to SF, I'm struck by the number of French people I meet. The last time, I had a French cabdriver--he'd moved to SF for the dot.com boom, made and lost a semi-fortune,and now is driving a cab while he raises money for his next venture. Would he go back to France--what for? he could never start a business there. And if he did, he'd be taxed out of any profit.

And for this:
"Personally I've met plenty of families who, despite holding down multiple jobs, have to decide each month if they are going to pay the rent in full or eat 30 days out of 30."

How much education? How many kids? How's their English? Sure, plenty of illegal immigrants with no English and few marketable skills besides a strong back probably do work multiple jobs for little money--but they're here so their kids wiil do better.

PJ and Kate:

For some sobering stats on poverty in America, see for example this study from the Economic Policy Institute, published last September:

http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/bp165

This an update of a previous study written in 2001, whose findings included:

Almost 30 per cent of working families in America do not earn enough to meet their basic expenditures - rent, food, clothing, childcare and medical care.

Of this group, 70 per cent miss rent payments or have to resort to the emergency room for their medical care because they cannot afford normal doctor's visits.

About 30 per cent have it even tougher: regularly missing meals or facing eviction from their home.

EPI reports that things have not improved in the interim; in some respects they are in fact worse because of changes in the tax structure.

So, PJ, go ahead and call 30 per cent of American families stupid if you want; I'm sure plenty of French media commentators would jump all over that one.

I would not hesitate in the slightest to call 30 percent of American families stupid. I'd bet that it's a lot more than 30 percent. In my opinion, popping out kids is not a right. If you do not have the money to raise children without knowing you'll be able to provide them with a full belly every day and a roof over their heads, DON'T HAVE THEM.

Christina, that's no lie. When they come up with the 30% statistic representing these poor, oppressed families who don't have enough money to meet basic needs, why is "childcare" listed among them? Can it be that some people in the USA still do not see having children as a choice?

Hate to break this to you moddy, but I'd say that calling 30% of American families stupid would be considered an understatement.

Or, if you would wish to be more egalitarian, calling 30% of all humans stupid is an understatement.

Do you have any clue how many people make life decisions that are actively questionable, demeaning, disabling, and/or downright destructive? And no matter what you do, there is no magic pill to make things better. All of the intervention you would specify does nothing but aggravate the situation by shielding (in part or in whole) the individual in question from the consequences of their actions. Virtually every problem you claim as a fault against capitalism is actually the result of allowing people to avoid the consequences of their actions (suffering the consequences of one's actions is THE MOST effective method of education in the known universe).

The largely unfettered degree of competition and risk involved in the expression of the best ideals of capitalism does more to empower people than every single bit of well intentioned 'aid' and government intervention.

All of the french youths who truly want to improve their lot in life support the legislation in question, and are not wasting their time protesting the loss of their potential sugar daddy.

> How would you react if a
> French columnist wrote
> about the United States:

The saying of audacious things doesn't make them true. In such a hypothetical, I'd think he was full of shit. In real life I think most French commentary is full of shit anyway.

> Before you dismiss the
> European model of the
> "social market" completely...

Time is running out, buddy. Europe is collapsing. Some of us believe the socialist fantasy in Europe has been sustained by the gracious postwar American taxpayer, who promised these pissy nations that they'd never have to worry about invading Russians or war with each other. Thus insulated from economics and realistic thinking about nationalist intention, their imperial traditions have mutated into sickly reliance on technocracy and authority. Everywhere socialism has been tried life has turned to shit. If it's going to make a move in Europe, it needs to happen YESTERDAY. Or maybe twenty years ago. Because while Soviet hordes are no longer a threat, the future is not looking good, and America needs to take the 100,000 soldiers we have over there and put them to better use elsewhere... We're not going to keep them there as riot police.

> the problem with it is
> that a lot of people
> will inevitably sink.

Right. But rather than compare our lives against a socialist fantasy, let's compare them against every system that's ever been tried. Capitalism is undisputed champion for filling bellies and paving roads.

> academic achievement at
> the equivalent of K-12
> level is markedly higher
> and acknowledged as such
> by US educators

What do you know, educators are using statistics to demand spending for education! It would be fun to be an ambitious young genius with a high degree in France... But then you'd just have to move to the States or someplace, wouldn't you? In parlance, 'Doing a Laetita':

http://tinyurl.com/gqq88

The EPI numbers don't really explain why poor (yet enthusiastic) people continue to stream into the United States. Could you run that down for us?

Poverty is relative. Problems paying bills in the States is like regal wealth elsewhere. As P.J. O'rourke put it so well: I’d rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than king, queen and jack of all you Europeans"

So much hostility! -- Against children, against Europeans, against anything short of unfettered, unregulated capitalism.

Don't you think your viewpoints might carry more weight if you were a little less... angry about everything?

Here we have the incredibly rational idea that people should refrain from having children until they have the means to raise them with their basic needs being met. And this is anger against children?

It all depends whether you view children as a drain on society, or its lifeblood.

Part of the reason a lot of children are born into poverty in this country is precisely because of the notion that social mobility and labor-market flexibility hold out promise for the future. In other words, parents with dead-end jobs, lousy educations and few prospects will invest their hopes in the fortunes of their offspring. You might call that irresponsible; it seems pretty human to me.

It's your glorious all-American system that's fuelling the mindset, my friend -- one big reason why birth rates are much higher on this side of the Atlantic than they are in Europe.

For my part, I think that's a good thing. Societies that view children as the problem are societies that, sooner or later, are doomed. A society that spends more on incarcerating criminals, most of them petty drug offenders, than it does on public education is similarly doomed.

You rail against public education; why not against the absurdly over-inflated prison system?

> So much hostility!

No, you're responding to clarity, not aggression. Amy and almost every other commenter in this thread has acknowledged that what we're seeing in these French riots is an embarrassing, personal cowardice.

> if you were a little
> less... angry

Do you have to reach for the word? Be bold, son, we're all about candor here. Especially about feelings. And the feeling we're seeing in the French is an odious FEAR.

Struggling as we have been this week with our own immigrant labor crises, we don't like to see this fright in people who've clucked and tisked at us so frequently in recent years.

> one big reason why birth
> rates are much higher on
> this side of the Atlantic
> than they are in Europe.

Oh, that is just stupid.

http://tinyurl.com/qw58d

http://tinyurl.com/s5bhn

You say countries that treat children as badly as we do are doomed, yet ours is the one that's having the children. And at our borders, young mothers are risking life, limb and fetus to make sure their babies are born here.

Puh-leeze.

> You rail against public
> education; why not against
> the absurdly over-inflated
> prison system?

Perhaps because they're entirely different institutions with discontiguous issues? Just a thought.

> ...similarly doomed.

Sheesh, you are a beam of sunshine, aren'tcha?

"What is it about US conservatives that makes them feel they have a license to patronize the French so?"

The First Amendment.

"How would you react if a French columnist wrote about the United States: 'Close to a quarter of its young people are approached by military recruiters in high school and college, but despite the obvious attractions of butt-fucking Muslim prisoners with tire irons in Iraq and Afghanistan only a fraction actually enlist.'"

I'd react by saying under my breath, "What an awful writer," and finding something else to read.

"It all depends whether you view children as a drain on society, or its lifeblood."

Children are people just like everyone else - obviously some of them do grow up to be drains on society and others become its lifeblood. A lot of that depends on their parents.

"Part of the reason a lot of children are born into poverty in this country is precisely because of the notion that social mobility and labor-market flexibility hold out promise for the future."

Social mobility and labor-market flexibility DO hold out promise for the future, if you're willing to take some initiative, which makes it even less of an excuse for people to have children in poverty. Statistics going back to the 70's show that the strongest correlation to wealth in the USA is age, and that nearly everyone who started out in a low-income bracket at a young age moved into a higher one later on.

So why not wait until those effects kick in before you start breeding? Just because you are poor and have few marketable job skills at the age of 18 doesn't mean you have to stay that way. At that age you've got a LOT of time to have kids, so why not build up the resources you need in order to raise kids before having them?

There is a tendency among some people to look at the problems facing certain individuals and label them "societal" problems - usually right before advocating a government solution to it. But having children you can't afford is an individual problem, and those individuals themselves are the solution to the problem.

Thank you, thank you, Pirate Jo, for sticking up for us baby-haters. ;) If there's any anger involved, it's against the parents, who are supposed to be responsible adults and make choices that are best for the children they're considering having. But... that's probably giving people too much credit. Taking personal responsibility for your problems when you can just blame them on someone else? What a concept!

So much hostility! -- Against children, against Europeans, against anything short of unfettered, unregulated capitalism.

I'm only hostile to brain dead little morons who think that government regulation and intervention are the appropriate cure for all of the perceived ills of society. Government intervention is ALWAYS the worst solution to any problem, regardless of scope. Every solution to any problem that ever actually worked was implemented by individuals acting in the interest of themselves and other individuals, not by a beauracracy or a 'government'.

Every single government program that purports to aid the 'underpriviledged' has done the exact opposite, cloaked in the fabric of abrogation of personal responsibility and the idea that someone else is always at fault when some individual fucks up their life.

As I mentioned earlier, it is necessary and ESSENTIAL that people be put in the position of suffering the immediate consequences of their actions, and to not be buffered from those consequences by well meaning schmucks. People who are insulated by society or government from the consequences of their actions are little more than pets, as they have had all humanity sucked from them by those who think they know better.

Overlooking for a moment, Dale, the fact that you can't spell (another government program, education, that proved horribly inefficient, at least in your case) and clearly suffer from the very hostility and rage I was alluding to (or is "brain dead little moron" meant as a term of endearment?), let me ask you this:

What if I were to pull out a gun and shoot you in the head? Would government intervention -- ie the police arresting me, putting me on trial and getting me sent away to prevent any further attempts on the lives of contributors to this blog who happened to piss me off -- be the worst solution to THAT problem too?

So if I refuse to pay someone else's bills after they drop out of high school, refuse to get a job, spend all their money on bling or lose it gambling, or pop out a litter of kids they can't afford to support, that's the equivalent of shooting them in the head?

It is pretty clear that the government is protecting my rights by throwing someone in jail who tries to kill me. The government is violating my rights when it confiscates the fruit of my labor and gives it to someone who didn't earn it. Since when is a person "hostile" just because he doesn't want to be used as a doormat?

Oh my god, you caught my misspelling of bureaucracy, I guess that means you win the argument, despite the fact that your position is untenable and actively harmful. Apparently, in your world, I'm now required to slink off to the corner in abject humiliation at your superior rhetorical skills.

If you honestly believe that using government largesse to make perpetual dependents of people is a good thing (or that it somehow is analogous to being shot in the head), then you ARE a brain dead little moron, and all of your protestations about hostility are merely projection.

You see, you (deliberately, I imagine) specifically failed to address the central issue, the FACT that your precious government intervention not only does not actually address the issue it purports to address, it actively undermines the integrity of the people it claims to help.

BTW, I *may* have managed to misspell another word somewhere, so feel free to latch onto that in lieu of a response with actual content.

Government intervention is ALWAYS the worst solution to any problem, regardless of scope. Every solution to any problem that ever actually worked was implemented by individuals acting in the interest of themselves and other individuals, not by a beauracracy or a 'government'.

You think private individuals could come up with a better solution than Federal Prisons, the FAA, lighthouses, public libraries, FDIC, rural electrification, the interstate highway system, Guaranteed Student Loans, the military, and a slew of other government programs that actually solved problems?

> Government intervention is ALWAYS
> the worst solution to any problem

While agreeing in general, we have to admit that Patrick has a point. The moon shots worked out pretty well. On the other hand, Drudge says NASA was raided for kiddie porn this morning.

Also, IIRC our public libraries grew out of private initiative.

I agree, Crid. Also I note that nearly every example Patrick gave was one where everyone paying taxes for the service stood to benefit. As opposed to most government programs, which really just transfer funds from one party to another. If you have something (like a Constitution, for example) that rigidly limits the functions of the federal government, and don't let the political forces of vote-buying take over, you can end up with a minarchist system that generally works.

Patrick and Crid,

I basically agree, although, except for the military, an argument could be made for a private sector solution to the solutions you mention that could be as good or better than the government solution.

My primary premise (although not stated clearly enough) is that government intervention is nearly alway the worst solution to the kind of social problems exemplified in the parent article.

The problem is not so much the government program, but the bureaucracy that comes with it. The bureaucracy ultimately becomes more interested in continuing it's own existence than in accomplishing the goal for which it was ostensibly created.

While I'm willing to accept that there are some situations where the substantial resources of a government entity are the best option for some situations, government intrusion into social ills has NEVER managed to improve the problem (and often, makes the problem worse).