Yes, but Americans fuck more often
This bit in the Bee today is a bit ho-hum, BTDT.
Yes, the French get more vacation and have great health care, but they also have middle and blue-collar classes and don't have the chronic illness and crap food that we have here in the states.
Yes, their roads are better and less-traveled, but their city infrastructures are totally antithetical to the way we sprawl out here in Cali.
Then Schrag criticizes the labor unions, which is the reason a lot of things are better in France (education, transit, etc). I just don't get it.
"The French infringe on the civil liberties of minorities in ways that wouldn't be tolerated here," he writes. I find this difficult to believe. Here in Sacramento, segregation is rampant; that's not how it was in a city of comparable size, like Grenoble, where I once lived.
His conclusion is spot on, however: "Judicious regulation that fosters competition." Agreed, but that's because France, especially at the municipal level, has proportional represenation. Shit, in some incorporated neighborhoods in Grenoble, a liberal city, there were Trotskyists on the council. People would burn McDonalds and McDs would just leave town. Hell, in Grenoble, there were only three fast-food restaurants in the city proper that I can recall: two McDs and one Quick.
OK, I'm done with my Frenchy rant. No snarky remarks, please.
2 comments:
RE: your point about French labor unions.
I think it is still an open question as to what brand of european socialism is better: the Scandinavian brand (largely unfettered free-trade economy, including labor markets, combined with a generous social safety net) or the traditional (i.e., French) brand: (a unionized labor force, protected industries). Schrag is perhaps making his points about the upsides to French socialism with that debate in mind.
The USA could probably adopt a Scandinavian-like model of socialism, if it could dump the South (oh yeah, and drop our ambitions to world Empire). Stupid Lincoln.
I think the Scandinavian model is the only reasonable fix for here in the states, but obviously the French model is preferred, IMO.
Of course, if we took the trillions of dollars we spend annually on military-industrial spending and put that into a safety net and some form of international "reparations," the the French model is not an impossibility (OK, I'll take my head out of my ass).
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