Saturday, April 30, 2005

The Other France

The French are a people of contradictions. I think it’s a mix of realizing that in order to do well in the global economy they need to work hard while at the same time pursuing the European Dream of free money. Forget two Americas, but there really are two Frances: one wants to work hard, the other wants to fall asleep drinking wine.

In a recent poll, 56% of the French thinks they don’t work enough. This consensus is reached while they protest adding another day of effort to their work year. The vacation day that’s being proposed to be scraped didn’t even exist two years ago.

This attitude is typical of most crowds. Like many environmentalists, socialists, democrats, republicans, industry leaders, NGOs and a myriad of other special interest groups, they want a better society but they’ll be damned if it means they have to pay for it. You really have to work to be this inconsistent.

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