Riots in France

I truely do believe that the CPE labour law will drastically undermine the job security of young employees/workers - and open the door for similar cuts re others.

As one student put it on Monday: "These measures affect everyone. But our forces - students in schools and universities, salaried workers, casual workers, the unemployed - can make the government back down.
And that's what we are going to do."

I don't think, the conservative government will last very long.
And I don't believe, the next French president will be a conservative again
.... and male.

Oh, I don't doubt the likelihood of DeV being thrown out--but, he's taking a suicidal position on the principle that he believes it is a part of the solution to the recent unrest in France.

I have to admire that.

Most people will react in their own short-term self-interests. I think if they (the students) win this one, they are in for long-term regret--in their lifetimes.

But, opinions....

Right - and my opinion is based on own experience, personal as well as of others ... :wink:

We never had serfdom (except for a bit of slavery, now extinguished). However our legal concept for employment is that it is "at wil'". i.e., a condition that results from the mutual will of employer and employee. Either party has the right to end the agreement "at will". The only constraints on the employer are those that may arise from any contract he has made with the employee, or those that arise from laws prohibiting discrimination against groups of people. I think most Americans would not wish to have a government that required a priori reasons or explainations for their actions as free people. It seems to me that Europeans have merely put the chains around different wrists. This is not freedom.

Depends on your definition of freedom.

Is it freedom to starve? Is it freedom to live in poverty? Or does freedom mean freedom from starvation? Does freedom mean freedom from poverty?

Is somebody who is living in poverty really free? Sure he can, in theory, work his way out of poverty. Working two or three jobs, if necessary. However, would that be called "freedom"? If you spend 7 days a week, 14 hours a day commuting and working, just to pay for a living, would that be called "freedom"?

The official poverty rate in the United States in 2004 was 12.7 percent. In 2004, 37 million Americans were living in poverty. Thirteen million of those in poverty were kids under 18 years old. American children represent a disproportionate share of the poor. They are 25 percent of the total population, but 35 percent of the poor population.

It seems to me that Americans have merely put the chains around different wrists. This is not freedom.

They don't have poverty in Europe....?

In addition to the oppressive employment regulations that suppress hiring young...(really pissed off) people?

Yes, there is poverty in Europe. However, it is generally seen as the responsibility of society as a whole to fight poverty and social exclusion.

We do that, too. Individually.

Yeah - society as a whole, but individually.

Yes.

That's exactly what I'm talking about - individual freedom vs. collective responsibility. This is from an article that put it quite well....:




(interesting article, by the way...)

You should try the anarchy of individualism.

It works well, and it's empowering.

Except when it fails...

(bad apples, I know)

Interesting and provocative questions. I believe freedom primarily means the absence (or minimization) of restrictions on the choices people make and the actions they take in pursuit of them. Inescapably that means that society must tolerate the consequences of bad or unwise actions or choices on the part of their free members. That does indeed mean the 'freedom to be poor'.

As a practical matter there are few successful examples of the elimination of poverty by the actions of government or society. The Soviet socialist experiment yielded uniform poverty, worsened by corruption among the elites who ran things. The Social Democrat Governments in Europe are increasingly unable to sustain the cost of the benefits their citizens so quickly learn to consider as rights. The government-to-government aid to African nations so favored by Europeans have yielded no demonstrable improvements in the general welfare of the people of the recipient nations. Indeed one could argue that they have been severely harmed by the kleptocracies that in part evolved from that aid. (I believe we would do better to eliminate the aid and open our markets to their products.) The indignant students in France are in fact the victims of the over-regulated labor market in that country. It is ironic in the extreme to see them agitating for more of the very thing that has harmed them. This does not seem to me to be a system that - in this area at least - sends the right feedback signals to its members.

Is one who is poor truly free? An appealing question, but one that in my view contains more emotional than rational weight, at least with respect to the types of "poverty" one encounters in Europe and The United States.

I believe the analysis you quoted in a later post, concerning the different historical patterns of continental Europe and the United States, and the different expectations of government that resulted, goes a long way to explain how Europeans and Americans so frequently talk past each other on these issues without achieving much mutual understanding.

Yes, the author of the article quite nicely points out some of the historical reasons that led to the different cultures of American and European societies. I've said before that we often, wrongly, assume that European and American culture (as in values, society, etc.) are identical, and therefore are trying to analyze current events in the light of a wrong pretext. People should pay attention to that more often.

However, it would be the same mistake to lump up Central European countries (i.e. their forms of government, of social democratic states) with the former East bloc nations. Of course, from the perspective of what both political parties in the US stand for, virtually every other Western democracy appears to be a socialist one.

What I find quite interesting is how American society relies on some "truths" that appear to be generally accepted - at least when people are discussing these issues with foreigners, no matter what their stance might be in terms of leaning left or right in the spectrum of American politics. One of these truths is that there is no country that is as free as the United States are. Another one is that you anyone can become a millionaire, if he only works hard enough. And, along with that goes the "capitalism is good" mantra.

No matter how things appear in reality - ranging from restrictions on free trade (like protective tariffs for steel, agriculture or, lately, restrictions in the name of national security) to billion-dollar-subsidies (albeit apparently more often cross-financings or covert subsidies, especially in the military sector) to all kinds of restrictions on personal freedom to, finally, a steadily decreasing vertical mobility.

Yes, people here (no matter their political leaning, except for the fringes) believe dogmatically in a social state - and to you that may appear as in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. However, the same is true for the States, and maybe that's where American and European cultures are really not that different.

I am not able to usefully comment on whether the United States is more or less free than (say) Germany or France. Perhaps the appropriate conclusion here is that the differences today are not in themselves significant. However I do believe that the fact that the United States has been relatively free for a much longer time than even modern Western European states is indeed significant and relevant.

Moreover our perceptions of Europe are a composite of impressions gathered over the past two centuries or so, and are as well, shaped by the viewpoints of the successive waves if immigrants; German, Scandanavian. Irish, Czech, Slovak, Pole, Russian & Polish Jews, Italian, Greek, etc. who came here generally during troubled times in "the old country". The common environment for the children of European immigrants (I am one) was of nostalga for the "old country" but a fierce belief that things are better here. I believe the same is true of the Korean, Vietnamese, Hindi, Central American, and other immigrants of today.

The familiar comments of European posters here about American restrictions on free trade - steel tariffs, agricultural subsidies and (most outrageously) subsidies for defense industry, always amaze me. Perhaps a more exhaustive analysis would prove me wrong, but my very strong impression is that we are far less involved in such overt and hidden forms of protectionism than are the states of the EU. European agricultural subsidies are far more pervasive and far more significant in their economic value. Moreover the EU opposition to GM (or modern hybrid crop strains has done real harm to developing countries which sorely need them. (Remember that starvation in India was ended by hybrid rice developed in this country and exported freely.) European defense firms are the property of the respective governments -- what could possibly be more protectionist than that? The U.S. has opened its markets to the products of other countries far more than has Europe and we have the trade imbalance to prove it.

"A steadily decreasing vertical mobility..." This has become a common enough description of contemporary American life. However I believe it is a myth. The explosive growth of a Black middle class and the continued rapid assimilation of large numbers of legal and illegal immigrants - in my view at least - gives the lie to this popular, but highly erroneous perception. The economic gap between the top and bottom deciles is certainly greater here than in other developed countries, but the flow up and down this ladder is also much greater - and is propelled by the greater economic gradient.

In the end, I believe the decisive issue will be our relative adaptabilities to the competitive challenges of the contemporary world - one in which India and China will, in the brief span of a generation, become great economic powers. I certainly can't prove it, but I do believe the Social Democrat traditions of the EU countries will not survive this challenge.

I think, George and Old Europe pointed correctly the two various views.

I just want to underline what OE said: the European situation dreives from a continious develpment, starting at about the times of High Medieval Ages and sourcing in a strong Christian tradition.

Eveb if your (=American) interpretation and ideas would be better - it's takes a long time to cut such "beliefs".

In fact, when told that in the US one can be fired when getting severely ill (or for no reason at all - "at will", at which point the health insurance coverage is also lost, Germans are puzzledly "But how can people live like that?"

We want security AND freedom. (And we want the freedom of speech at the workplace as well :wink: )

Walter,

I agree that as individuals we are all more or less prisoners of our personalities, and as nations or cultures, of our respective histories.

As a matter of interest, when one is laid off from employment here he can - by law - keep his health insurance for a year or so after he leaves the company - he must pay the insurance premiums himself, but only at the same cost as applies to employees. Moreover a company that deliberately laid off an employee who became chronically ill would quickly lose the loyalty of the remaining employees. What is done voluntarily by American companies usually exceeds the minimum legal requirements by a very wide margin. Companies compete for both customers and good employees in an unregulated economy, and a wise company management creates positive incentives for creativity, loyalty, and hard work. The lower unemployment rate here generally means that the competition for good employees is real and important to employers. The system is far from perfect, but it works much better, and with far more consideration for the individual, than I think the prejudgements of worried Europeans generally accept.

That might well be and I'm rather sure, the "European system" (in general, with all country-specific abnormalities will come closer to yours sooner or later.

I suppose, there's generally a much higher level [of optimism and] risk tolerance in America than here.

But still some of your "traditons" sound pretty incredible to the average European as well as vice versa.

I suspect we both are the victims of our flawed misperceptions of each other. (I, of course, am the exception. I understand Europeans perfectly. :wink: )

I think another difference, perhaps related to your observation about the long, continuous history of Europe, is that we have relatively little in the way of permanent class differences and class struggle here. I don't mean to imply that we are immune to such things, but rather that we haven't had the time and the stability in our history for such static structures to evolve, I don't suppose that such things are at all pervasive in the Eurrope of today, but I do suspect that the cultural memory of it lives on in law and tradition. That too may account for some of our different perceptions.