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Triple Play | 88 comments (88 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Triple Play (none / 1)
This is getting boring and pointless, but that's what blogging is all about, right?

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Wed Mar 22nd, 2006 at 07:28:12 PM EST
Re: Triple Play (none / 1)
worth the effort. REally it is. The sorts of tropes repeated endlessly are precisely the tripe one gets from colleagues, students, policy-makers etc. Having a resource to direct them is actually I think quite valuable, in the long run.
by desmoulins (gsb6@lycos.com) on Wed Mar 22nd, 2006 at 07:31:58 PM EST
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Re: Triple Play (none / 1)
Ahhh Jérôme's deconstruction diaries in the Spring, full of panache and élan :)) (another good entry, Jérôme)

I just received an email from my buddy working on that Paramount pictures cartoon in Orange County (I mentioned him a while back), and he says that most of his colleagues at work now believe there are riots in France again), because this is what the news on TV is showing.

So when it's not lazy frogs, it's rioting frogs. No mention of the smiling legions of parents out for a nice walk with their kids (and for their kids' future), like my pics of the Toulouse demonstration shows were there.

However we must accept that it works both ways, ie. here in French news, when it's not those barbarous Iraq-invading Americans, it's those damn capitalistic Anglo-Saxons!

When will it all stop??

by Alex in Toulouse on Wed Mar 22nd, 2006 at 07:35:47 PM EST
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Re: Triple Play (none / 1)
Are you going to submit a LTE, or maybe even a responding article to any of these papers? You could include the productivity and labor cost data from your previous diaries. You could blow the hell out of the "less equitable" argument.
by TGeraghty on Wed Mar 22nd, 2006 at 08:58:47 PM EST
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Re: Triple Play (none / 1)
And don't forget about the France vs US job creation numbers.
by TGeraghty on Wed Mar 22nd, 2006 at 09:17:45 PM EST
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Re: Triple Play (none / 0)
Would you write such letters?

Methinks a letter from an American would get more hearing...

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 04:16:33 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (none / 1)
Yes, I am going to put one together and send it to the Post or Times.
by TGeraghty on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 10:44:36 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (4.00 / 5)
Here's the text of the lte I sent to the Post in response to the Pealstein piece:

The French Economy: Productive and Equitable

According to Post columnist Steven Pearlstein, the French "are well on their way to creating not only one of the least vibrant economies in the industrialized world, but also one of the least equitable."

Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. As Paul Krugman pointed out in the New York Times last July, the main difference between Anglo-American market capitalism and the French social model is priorities, not performance.

Take the issue of jobs. Between 1994 and 2004, the number of jobs in flexible, market-friendly Britain grew by 11%. Over the same period, the number of jobs in sclerotic France grew by . . . 14%. Youth unemployment? In France it is a modest 7.8% once you account for the many French youth who are in college and not active in the labor force. Labor costs? French labor costs are actually 4.4% lower than those in the United States, according to a recent KPMG study, while labor productivity in France is some 7% higher than the American level according to the OECD.

What about the alleged inequity of the French economy? This is nonsense: the United States has the highest levels of wealth and income inequality in the industrialized world. Not only that, but Europeans find it much easier to climb the economic ladder than do Americans, according to a recent study by Britain's Sutton Trust and the LSE. Europe (and France) also outdoes the United States in terms of indicators of health, educational attainment, stress levels, and environmental sustainability.

So the idea that the French social model is headed for history's junkheap is a myth.

by TGeraghty on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 12:01:07 PM EST
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Re: Triple Play (none / 0)
Perfect!

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 02:47:13 PM EST
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Re: Triple Play (4.00 / 4)
No, it's not boring and pointless. Without your viewpoint I'd be swigging back the US/US economic liberal "kool-aid" (as our cousins would put it) and internalising the Will Hutton views you so gracefully trashed on Sunday.

Keep at it.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 05:26:23 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (none / 0)
Not at all pointless.  I learn a lot from these and greatly enjoy them.  I get very little news on France outside of the occasional NYT article and on the very rare occasion that I buy a copy of the WSJ with an equally-rare article on France.  Usually the WSJ has no stories on the country.  (Their reporters stick to the EU, as a whole, or, now and then, Britain and Germany.)  The morons on the editorial board are usually the only ones to bring the subject up, and you know how they are.  (I swear, I read their editorials, and I've got to believe that the board consists of a bunch of academic-wannabe losers who never got laid in college.  Such an angry group.)  But, hey, what can you expect from a paper owned by Dow Jones?

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.
by Drew J Jones (pedobear@pennstatefootball.com) on Fri Mar 24th, 2006 at 02:56:33 PM EST
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Triple Play | 88 comments (88 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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