La France is convulsed by riots due to student opposition to a law designed to encourage employers to hire inexperienced youths, which allows employers to fire new hires after a two-year trial, instead of rolling the dice by hiring someone that they are then stuck for life with--for better or worse, in sickness and in health, etc. Economist Larry Kudlow offers metrics on French economics and regulation that show the non-Kosher pickle France finds itself in.
There are a pair of bright spots: France's unrivaled nuclear energy position and a strong, growing broadband sector. As two excellent Wall Street Journal articles today note, in these vital areas France easily outstrips, among others, America. Whereas France gets 78 percent of its electric power via nuclear energy, Germany is a distant second at 28 percent and the US a far back fifth at 19 percent. Yet France's nuclear program provides only 20 percent versus 49 percent for oil, of total energy consumption, and they spent $120 billion to build it--in US per capita terms, $600 billion. Regarding broadband, OECD figures as of June 2005 show France, at 12.5 percent household broadband penetration, trailing the US's 14.5 percent and world leader Korea's 25.5 percent. (There are more than 10 countries between the US and Korean figures, but that lies outside the scope of this posting.) Where French broadband shines is in its quality; 24 megabit speed, 16 times the US norm of 1.5 megabits, for $36 per month. France's faster broadband enables services like remote health monitoring, not doable at US speeds.
Returning to the riots, put simply, France is toying with the novel idea that giving someone a job does not constitute a shotgun marriage for life. John Tierney, in a gentle ribbing, suggests that America help its floundering "ally" by exporting to France the American self-help industry, as the French, with low self-esteem, need it more than a relatively more confident US. The once culturally confident country for which my generation had nothing but admiration--who with a spark of joie de vivre objected to brie & Brigitte?--is now a whimpering, self-absorbed welfare haven, ripe for taking by an exploding (in more ways than one) Muslim population. (France still does produce jolie femmes; as for its cheeses, US import rules make it hard to get decent ones here.)
Tierney gets it half-right: we should export of self-help promoters. But his choice of importer is wrong. Leave us export our self-help folks not to France, but to Muslim lands, which badly need a dose of "can-do" self-0help promoters. As for France, leave us stick with our real allies (UK, Australia, etc.) while we tell the French, per The Donald: "You're fired!"
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