First, every single article I see in the English-language media agrees that France has a serious problem with underutilization of her youth. OECD reports, FT articles, Economist editorials, Guardian writeups--all start with the understanding that the French unemployment rate, particularly among minority youth, is out of line with the rest of Europe.
I see your extracts from charts and tables "proving" that this is not the case, but they don't move me. It's way too easy to fall into the "lying with statistics" swamp by extracting numbers one at a time and analyzing them point by point. There must be some source that examines an issue like employment, deeply and thoroughly and with minimal bias, and arrives at a summary that can be used as a starting point. In the technical areas I'm familiar with there are a thousand different ways that you can read the numbers, but in the end a non-expert simply must trust the judgement of one who has spent a lifetime studying the topic. I would simply like to see you quote some experts on French employment who agree with your argument.
Now I can understand that there is undoubtably bias (partly because they're in English and partly because mainstream economic writing tends be capitalistic) in my news sources, but when you start saying things like "the supposedly leftwing Guardian" then your argument starts to appear somewhat Quixotic. The Guardian IS a leftwing newspaper, and when one accuses it of not being left wing enough, one is positioning oneself on the extreme left--or out in left field. Obviously the Economist is going to have an unacceptable editorial slant, but your claim that there is NOT an "international consensus" on this issue is not supported by any more citations than the Guardian's statement that there is. If there's not an international consensus on the French unemployment situation, then where are the citations of MSM articles to support the claim?
From what I can see on this side of the pond, the current student demonstrations, coming on the heels of recent riots by underprivileged NON-students, appear to be more like this: French university students, realizing that there is a system set up over many years to protect their professional jobs when they get out, are concerned that this system is under risk of being dismantled. They want things to be like they were for their parents: Get a university education and then be safe for life.
This does not appear to be a shining moment for the socialist movement. There is a broad concensus that there is a problem, with minority demonstrations and economists' statistics to support that belief. The problem is largely on the backs of poor youth, who should be the core of the socialist movement. Instead, it appears that the "socialist" elite youth are pushing hard to maintain a system that protects them while doing nothing for the poor.
I'm not trying to be an obnoxious American here; this is an internal French issue and not something that either America or the UN or anybody else is going to be able to do anything about. But it sure does appear that these protests are all based on a desire to continue a system where an educated elite makes all sorts of noises about how they are on the left, singing La Marseillaise and supporting the students on the barricades, while uncounted unemployed minority youths continue to be stuck without options.
The student turmoil does not bear any resemblance to the `68 incidents, since it does not have any utopist undertones. They are worried about their future prospects. The problem is in France itself. France is in a terrible situation. The leftists, which protest the government today with students, and syndicates, also did not bring any solutions to these problems. http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&trh=20060319&hn=31062
Youth joblessness stands at 23 per cent in France, and at 50 per cent among impoverished young people. The lack of work was blamed in part for the riots that shook France's depressed suburbs during the fall. http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&a mp;cid=1142722231908&call_pageid=970599119419
Villepin looked set to stand firm, believing the law could significantly reduce unemployment, the top social issue, before presidential elections in 2007. Unemployment is the top political issue in France, where the national average is 9.6 percent and youth joblessness is double that. The rate rises to 40-50 percent in some of the poor suburbs hit by several weeks of youth rioting last autumn. http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2006/03/19/french_government_set_to_stand_firm_desp ite_protests/
In many of the country's most deprived areas the rate is as high as 40-50 percent. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/fran-m17.shtml
It will do nothing to reduce the 23 percent youth unemployment rate, or the average of 8 to 11 years it takes to get permanent employment. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/fran-f06.shtml
Hicham, another student from the university, also spoke with the WSWS. "The CPE will soon affect me, as I will soon be exposed as a job seeker. With the CPE, the boss can fire you at any moment without giving a reason. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/fran-m18.shtml
But how many of these papers and sources have people on the ground, and how many rely on the main sources of English language news on France: UK-based papers or press agencies, or UK or US journalists based in Paris, which, as we've been pointing out, all write the same false drivel? In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Well, as I have tried to explain, the "unemployment rate" is high, but the number of youth unemployed is not that different to that in other countries, at 7-8%.
The difference is in the employment rate - those that have a job. As the graph above show, a high number of French youth are still studying. Are they doing this because they cannot find work, or because there is more of a focus on education, or it takes a long time in France, or because there is a difference in methodology (i.e. students that work part time are not counted in France but counted elsewhere), I am not sure.
But it's not immediately obvious that having young people studying rather than working is necessarily a bad thing.
If there's problem of underutilisation, it's actually that of the seniors... France has over-used the system of early retirement in the 80s (to help the restructuration of old industries like steel), and their employment rate has dropped significantly. But that's another issue.
I take some exception with that, as I specifically provide the whole set of data: how many youth there are, how many are employed, unemployed. It's the "other side" that's always focusing on one signle number without ever looking at the bigger picture - and worse, they are (ignorantly or wilfully) distorting that number in a highly contentious way. Saying that the unemployment rate is 22% is transformed into 22% of French youth are unemployed, which triples the size of the problem and makes finding radical solutions to solve that problem appear a lot more indispensable.
If you started saying everywhere that France has 7.8% of its youth unemployed, vs 7.4% in the UK, it would take out a lot of the urgency, don't you think?
Well, does it look like what's written in that article remotely sounds like anything from the left wing? That's just a sign of how far the "center" has moved rightwards in the past 25 years, just like in the USA.
As to the issue of the "international consensus", I agree that it exists, but I argue that it is not based on facts. You read us regularly, we've provided enough hard numbers that show that some of the things that are part of this "international consensus" (like 'France is unable to create jobs', or 'energy prices are lower in deregulated markets') are simply false - and I am using sources form the Economist or the Financial Times or the OECD or other similarly respectable places all the time.
I am saying that this "international consensus" is based on the permanent repetition of talking points with little regard for facts. That should sound familiar to you in the USA...
From what I can see on this side of the pond, the current student demonstrations, coming on the heels of recent riots by underprivileged NON-students, appear to be more like this: French university students, realizing that there is a system set up over many years to protect their professional jobs when they get out, are concerned that this system is under risk of being dismantled. They want things to be like they were for their parents: Get a university education and then be safe for life. This does not appear to be a shining moment for the socialist movement. There is a broad concensus that there is a problem, with minority demonstrations and economists' statistics to support that belief. The problem is largely on the backs of poor youth, who should be the core of the socialist movement. Instead, it appears that the "socialist" elite youth are pushing hard to maintain a system that protects them while doing nothing for the poor.
Two things here: that law does not make people in the system less protected - it only makes the under-26 less protected. Then they can get into the system as well. The other is that the youth form the suburbs are overwhelmingly against this new contract because they know they will be its first victims: thye will be even more easily discriminated against than before, as employers will not even have to have cause to get rid of them.
No, I thank you for your questions, which can only reflect the kind of information you have. The first victimes of the new law will be the minority youths, not the elite - and both know it well, and it's actually one of the welcome things in this movement that the two are getting closer. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
The anglo-saxon press is full of rubbish when they write about France. Not a suprise. (They're also, and surprisingly, full of rubbish when they weite about Hollywood.) Mind you, I find the French press full of rubbish when they write about the US. IMHO.
That's why we need people like Jerome to write articles in both. :-)
When I see graphs and tables, my eyes glaze over; I don't have a clue about the stuff you write about. But I like the fact that the French are protesting. I'll take activism, even if ill-based, over passive acceptance (as is the case in the US) any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
In the end, I can't help thinking that all this is pretty moot. Other, greater forces such as peak oil and the $9.8 billion the US is spending EVERY MONTH on Iraq will be much greater devils than the ones we're presently worrying about.
There was a general strike in France in early May 1938. Somehow what happened next wasn't much affected by it.
