I am perhaps betraying my bias here, but I realized that we need to clearly identify what are the most important basic facets of a social safety net. Well...here's my list:
    I would want to know that any health care issues are completely covered, like in France. In this, I would include mental health services, like being free to have 52 counseling or psychotherapy sessions a year if desired (and this has proven by the American Psychological Association to be a HUGE benefit for people, and often keeps people more happily/healthily at work, as a consequence).
    And I would want to make sure that education is completely paid for, though perhaps there should be some grade point requirements (or something), so that there is an incentive to participate and perform.
    Also there should be paid training, for those who are more into trade type careers
    I also strongly feel that the young should have some assurance that they will have jobs when they get out of school (this is a big issue here in east Switzerland, where the unemployment in 18-24 year olders is very high...which I feel isn't right.).
    I think there should be a liveable unemployment wage, and should include opportunity for counseling and retraining.
    I also feel that there should be a decent pension plan for the elderly, so they can live decent lives, and this would include medications being paid for.
    I also lie the French and swiss policies of paying money for children, in order to support parents being home with their children (rather than both parents havng to work jobs, just to cover bills, like in the US).
    A sensible immigration policy should be in place, so that those people who come to our countries seeking a better life, shouldn't be penalized just for being outsiders. There are many, many good citizens who want to contribute to our societies, and just want the opportunity. Perhaps we could look at what "good citizenship" is and be supportive of this. We might want to encourage/require participation in courses about the new society, to truly encourage integration into the new society...but also for the new society to learn about, appreciate and utilize their strengths and qualities too. Perhaps we look at dual citizenship, to encourage new citizens investing in our society too (not just sending money home).
    Well, needless to say, I really like the European 4-6 weeks of holiday a year...keep that one!!

What am I leaving out?


"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia

But a few things jump out to me in this piece.  Not addressing, comparing, and learning from the unemployment issue would seem to diminish the value of this effort, as well as open it to significant credibility issues from the right.  Specifically I'm addressing from above: "The US does not use unemployment numbers the same way that European countries do, nor does the US unemployment offer the kind of protective, so don't compare ourselves to them"

the ability to work at a job to sustain yourself and your family is critical to most people, I think everywhere.  One of the Buddha's 8 principles was "right work".  And in such a strong work ethic culture as America, it just wouldn't fly.  And isn't unemployment one of the top political issues in France today?  

Now getting apples to apples numbers, as best as that can be done, or making people more aware of the differences in the numbers--that is clearly of value.

But I don't think those people in Europe or America that want jobs and can't get them would tell you they are leading a satisfied life of high quality.

I thought one of the points in the earlier pieces was to introduce more metrics that might get at quality of life issues, rather than to reduce existing and accepted measures.  

"--    Focus productivity towards increasing efficiency

--    Maybe not focus only on increasing the productivity of labor, but rather on increasing the productivity of capital, and even more the productivity of "rent", i.e. of natural resources or other such "free" value provided by our environment"

I believe productivity actually is a measure of effeciency.  So for example, thinking in microeconomic terms, and carrying that down to the level of business, measures for work groups or production lines in manufacturing might be good units produced per hour--ex. 800 units produced in an 8 hour shift would give the productivity, or efficiency measure, of 100 units per hour.  Similar measures exist for machines.

When you get to the level of the business enterprise, measures such as sales per employee are attempts to aggregate and measure employee productivity.  Measure such as return on assets and return on equity are attempts to measure the return on capital, and compare the effectiveness of different businesses in using money invested in the business.

When you aggregate to the business, you obviously lose a lot of meaningfulness, particularly in measures like sales per employee.  Clearly these measures obfuscate if the productivity improvement is due to increased captial investment, or improved knowledge and skill of employees.  And I haven't ever really looked at these numbers at a national level--which is of course where your comments are focused.

But I wonder if in your first point you are intending to say, focus productivity discussions around producing the same output with less resources?  I'm not sure.

The second point on the measurement of the use of natural resources is a very interesting one.  I haven't seen attempts to do this before, but they must exist.  

Productivity measures at a national level, I believe, tend to aggregate labor and capital, and just provide one productivity measure.  The improvements could be due to improvements in labor, in capital or in systematic combination of the two.  I don't know if productivity measures at a national level attempt to measure return on capital and return on labor--are you aware of literature on these points?

I think however that the national productivity numbers receive a fair amount of focus, because they are a key driver of the ability of real wages to rise over time.  If productivity rises, the returns of that efficiency improvement comes to labor, and to the owners of capital--theoretically anyway.

That government be investing (heavily) in new and clean technologies, especially energy related

Speaking from the scientific community, an irk I've been noticing is centred about innovation. Particularly, it is centred around the implementation of innovation. We won't get very far by investing alone; something of a culture change seems needed, at least here in this country (Netherlands).

The key problem: the implementation of a new idea or the execution of test-runs demands one thing: taking chances. Right now, I observe that people rather play safe than take a shot at something new. Far too often an innovative and potential successful idea gets struck down by political bean-counters by saying it wouldn't work well enough or that it would be too expensive.

An anecdote to illustrate. A geochemist professor I know suggested the following idea: instead of building monstrous wind turbines in the sea with their foundation on the sea floor (as is done in Denmark), create an artificial ring dike out of the shore and build the wind turbines on top of that. Production costs are "only" 100 million euros higher, yet the risk that the turbines experience down-time by heavy winds (as happens in Denmark!) are severely reduced. When he approached a think-tank of several ministries with the idea, the answer was "they thought it would be too expensive" and was not even considered. Another one of his ideas was to transform toilets into "struvinoirs". By collecting the urine within a tank to which an all-around chemical compound was added, urine would automatically precipitate as a phosphate mineral (struvite) which can be directly used for agriculture purposes. The response to that idea was that "it didn't fit the policy."

I couldn't agree more to his response: "Sir, if it is policy, it isn't innovation." It isn't just a case of sour plums, the examples are endless.

Don't get me wrong, innovation in areas such as new energies and energy conservation isn't completely stagnant around here. A lot of is picked up by commercial companies and doing good work. I think in all modesty, though, that the pace of new innovation could pick up considerably if the government would actually step up, create a funds especially designed to take risks for innovative suggestions run by a board that includes actual experts instead of managers.