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Making America More Like France Won’t Lead to Prosperity
Europe’s sclerotic economies should serve as a warning to President Obama about the perils of big government. (Also read Claudia Rosett: Click Here for Central Planning)
President Obama’s so-called stimulus is a dark cloud for the American economy. It will increase the burden of government spending by nearly $800 billion over a ten-year time period. At least that is what we are told. But if you include interest on all the additional debt, the cost will rise to more than $1 trillion. And if you realistically assume that the supposedly temporary spending increases will become permanent, then the cost climbs to around $3 trillion.
To make matters even worse, all this new spending will be added to the “baseline” growth of government. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the pre-stimulus federal budget was projected to climb from $3.54 trillion this year to $4.74 trillion ten years from now. Thanks to all the new spending just enacted, a more realistic guess is that spending will top the $5 trillion mark by 2019.
Obama promised change in Washington, but making government bigger is hardly a new path since spending other people’s money is the favorite pastime of the inside-the-beltway crowd. The Bush administration, for instance, expanded the federal government from $1.86 trillion in 2001 to $3.54 trillion in 2009 (and the majority of the new spending was for non-defense purposes). Now Obama has grabbed the baton and is racing in the same direction.
This ongoing expansion of government has important implications for short-term and long-term economic performance. Much of the recent debate about fiscal policy has focused on the “Keynesian” assertion that more spending somehow increases economic growth in the short run. This is an important discussion, but it is perhaps even more vital to focus on the long-run economic effect of bigger government (interested parties can click here for an explanation of why Keynesianism is misguided and here for a critique of Obama’s so-called stimulus).
Before jumping into the long-run discussion, it is worth noting that it is quite possible to be a Keynesian who believes in small government. Indeed, that seems to have been the view of John Maynard Keynes. Writing to another British economist in the 1940s, Keynes identified “25 percent [of GDP] as the maximum tolerable proportion of taxation.” Small-government Keynesians are on the endangered species list in Washington, however, if not already extinct. The politicians who voted for the so-called stimulus are the same ones who routinely vote for permanently larger government.
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Dan Mitchell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and co-author of Global Tax Revolution: The Rise of Tax Competition and the Battle to Defend It
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48 Comments
1. AlexinCT:But it sure as hell will lead to one party political domination. Guess which party that is? The same one pushing to make us a clone of France instead of America.
Feb 21, 2009 - 9:42 am 2. fred:We can reverse course from this. I am not sold on the idea in the above comment that we are now headed for one party domination. Like AlexinCT, I am a New Englander from New Hampshire and I have seen my state dramatically change from being solidly Republican to solidly Democrat. Much of it is driven by demographic changes, and that’s an entirely separate topic from this one. The point I am trying to get at: I do not share AlexinCT’s pessimism. My generation “got” the Jimmy Carter lesson and reversed course in 1980. And I think these four years will painfully impart the needed lesson on GenYers and GenXers who did not get that lesson. Who knows? Maybe even a New England state or two will reject The Messiah in four years. I’m sure a lot of those in the Middle Muddle who got suckered by The One’s false centrism during the general campaign will not be fooled again. The Left-of-Center collectivists will vote for him again, based on “good intentions” and not good results. I still think the collectivists are only about 20-25% of voters. And I’m willing to bet that maybe half of the kids who voted for Obonga will learn from the real world.
Even during a period of economic expansion unemployment in France is high and structural – about 8.8%. This is unacceptable to us. I predict we will reverse course. In the future, given a change in the composition of Congress and who sits in the White House we can repudiate what has just been done. Nothing is permanent.
Prove to me that what has been done cannot be undone.
Feb 21, 2009 - 10:26 am 3. Marc Malone:fred – It may or may not be undone. There are systemic obstacles in place, now. Reagan reversed the course for awhile, but is there another Great Leader on the horizon? I think not.
The Dems and their Media will continue to blame it all on Bush, and weak-minded, higher-ed-indoctrinated younger voters will continue to miss the truth. It could be too late by the time these sheeple awaken, if they ever do.
Feb 21, 2009 - 11:18 am 4. Marie Claude:OK France again as the conter exemple, umm, don’t gargle yourself, you’re a state sponsored economy too !!!
Yet, while we have about the same external debt percentage, our private debt is in much better situation, and it allows that our external debt is mostly franco-french financed, while CHINA OWNS the US, and that there is no private sparings to escape from this fate ; think about too, if the Saudi decided to get paid with euros, the US will go full bankrupted.
As far as being a state centered economy, this is not new for us, since more tan 2 centuries we’ve been ruled so. Now, that our state holds a transparent comptability, we know where it hurts : too many civil servants and its gradually changing …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_debt
http://www.indexmundi.com/map/?v=94
interesting article in french that explains my dires :
http://www.autisme-economie.org/article48.html?lang=fr
Feb 21, 2009 - 11:56 am 5. TurfMonster:A lot of good points in this article. Perhaps one more would be to make a graph of the per capita income versus year of France, Germany, and the US (and any other country that might be worth looking at here). The last I looked, we’re at about $48,000 while France is somewhere in the low $30,000 range. Rather stark difference and it is one that I suspect widen from the Reagan tax cut years to 2008.
And fred, I hope you’re right. I’d like to see a 1980-like turnaround throughout the country like happened in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, I fear Alex will be right until we find a way to counteract the way the Dems have to get their message out – and that especially includes our educational system.
Feb 21, 2009 - 12:05 pm 6. Kyle:Not sure of the answer for all of this spending, but for education the answer is definitely school choice. Join us at http://www.vouchersystem.org.
Feb 21, 2009 - 1:04 pm 7. Eric R.:It is too late to reverse the NE and the West Coast. They are lost to the far-left Socialists for good. Just look at how stupid and blind the voters are in those states — no matter how high the taxes, no matter how corrupt the government, the brainwashed sheeple in those states will always, always, always vote Democrat.
They would vote Democrat if the Dems took away their homes, their cars, their kids, and made them go to the polls naked.
Red State America will probably only survive in the end by seceding. And this time, they will have most of the military on their side, and they would win.
Feb 21, 2009 - 1:27 pm 8. Eric R.:And I might add, I live in a deep Blue State, and see this religious fanaticism (and that’s what it is) first hand.
Feb 21, 2009 - 1:28 pm 9. empire:Obama is slip shot!
Feb 21, 2009 - 1:38 pm 10. fred:Impeach Obama now!
Marc,
While I did not get the lesson at the time (Fall of 1980)because I was a committed Marxist, MOST of my classmates at the time voted for Reagan, not Carter in that election (I didn’t break with Marxism until 1987). A lot of us younger cohort of Boomers went conservative, when we saw unemployment and inflation creeping upwards, and more foreign policy blunders than you could shake a stick at.
So, you’re suggesting that these kids are not as smart as we were (well, not I at the time)? I recall a lot of professors back then in the late Seventies were Leftists. Even in the economics’ department at the University of New Hampshire (where I was). I think the diminution of job opportunities and the hard times facing the private sector can be explained in a manner in which they can understand. If they refuse to listen to it, or believe it, then it means that what they have embraced is a kind of cultish, religious faith. Not uncommon among the collectivist warrens. Big difference, I suppose, is that back then when I eventually put all the pieces together I believed the evidence of history and left the Left.
Feb 21, 2009 - 1:44 pm 11. whyyeseyec:Tell that to John Kerry
Feb 21, 2009 - 2:12 pm 12. SM:Martin from CNN is a racist, write to CNN and complain, who cares about teh monkey picture, Obama is a monkey, he chatters all dam day, swinging from one place to another, wanting free housing…..he is the biggest racist of all
Feb 21, 2009 - 4:07 pm 13. David S:Based on the Rahn curve, it seems like it is safer to err on the side of larger government – the economic penalty of small government seems to be more severe.
Unless one can say with certainty where we are on this curve, and where the optimum is, why would slashing government be the rational action? It seems that increased government spending is less likely to lead to economic collapse than a reduction.
Peace.
DS
Feb 21, 2009 - 4:16 pm 14. SAF:Obama thinks France is a success. That’s why he wants to drive us there.
Feb 21, 2009 - 4:32 pm 15. Marie Claude:SAF, Obama is conducting you towards CHINA, you’e on the way to bend allegeance there !
uh, we are not enough intelligent for you on wathever side you stand, we are FRENCH LMAO
“Sully” on Pat Dollard’s
“Oh your difficulty getting “the right accord” isn’t a language issue Frog… it’s an intelligence barrier. You’re just not smart enough to realize it.”
Feb 21, 2009 - 5:16 pm 16. kywrite:We could take one lesson from France, though. Build more nuclear power plants. They are nearly energy independent and supply much of Italy’s energy as well. Let’s become more like France in THAT way.
Feb 21, 2009 - 6:06 pm 17. SAF:@16 Kywrite: The Japanese have done the same.
Obama’s liberal base won’t let him build more nukes.
I would settle for unpasteurized cheese as they have in France.
Feb 21, 2009 - 7:28 pm 18. Ed:This just in!
Obama won the election, a majority of Americans support the stimulus package, the GOP is a party of failed ideas and no direction and its followers are just that: blind tools who don’t realize that they consistently vote for a party that does nothing on their behalf.
The GOP: Palin, Bachmann and Rash Limbo.
Wow. What a testament to crazy!
Feb 21, 2009 - 8:16 pm 19. Toads:Since America and the entire Western world is in civilizational decline, you can whine about it, or instead relocate to a civilization that is in ascending mode.
Why did lower-class Europeans leave and come to America at great personal risk. Isn’t that the same reason to move to Asia today? It is easier to relocate to China, Singapore, India, etc. today than it was to get on a leaky boat to Ellis Island 100 years ago, and do hard labor for years.
Feb 21, 2009 - 8:47 pm 20. ic:The French have seen the abyss and are climbing back to reality. Unfortunately, we are trying to out race France going down instead of learning from their mistakes.
Marie Claude: Americans are not Chinese. The Chinese still believe in working hard for their rewards. Americans were like that too before they realized that it’s better to be “rescued” by Washington politicians than to work for their own livings.
Feb 21, 2009 - 8:52 pm 21. Toads:The Democrats are a very ‘third world’ party. They want to organize America to be identical to most third-world banana republics, where a powerful elite is at the top (and does not pay taxes or follow laws), happily supported by an enslaved, misinformed underclass. The fact that blacks vote 90-95% Democrat proves this.
There is no middle class.
Conservatism was the only means through which the middle class could be sustained. In the absence of it, Democrats will turn America into a third-world equivalent two-tiered society.
Feb 21, 2009 - 8:56 pm 22. Marc Malone:Allo, Mme. Claude. I knew you would be chiming in here. We won’t be going China’s way. They, too, are suffering.
Feb 21, 2009 - 9:25 pm 23. Aaron:The GOP needs to prepare some systemic advantages for themselves if they ever regain power.
1. No with-holding taxes. Citizens pay them twice a year, once in April and once in October. (Ideally, I’d have them pay them the day before the election.)
2. Tax Credit,if refundable, should be re-labeled as “Public Subsidy” – this includes those for corporations as well as citizens. This prevents Obama style “tax cuts” which are actually transfer payments.
3. Get rid of McCain-Feingold.
I am sure there are more than this, but the idea is to create systemic advantages for anti-government parties…
Feb 21, 2009 - 9:58 pm 24. Marie Claude:Marc : “Allo Mme Claude”, I was thinking that I could indicate you one of mes best educated and nice looking escort girls,
(uh that was Mme Claude’s capitalism in a parallel world, not mine)
Feb 22, 2009 - 1:11 am 25. Marie Claude:Marc, “We won’t be going China’s way. They, too, are suffering”
of course, they do, though they don’t complain, they “move on” without “crawling backward” and would never hesitate to cut off heads ; they don’t think as individuals but as an entier nation.
what I ment by “going chinese”, is that the economy of your both nations is interdependant, if you fall down, they will fall down too, your country owes them to still “governing”, also that your economy won’t become one of the european model, your country is too big for that, but rather it would imitate the chinese state allowed, sponsored and centralised capitalism
Feb 22, 2009 - 1:54 am 26. frenchie:please don’t follow us, we are a crap country.
Feb 22, 2009 - 3:04 am 27. class clown:knowing usa ; of course nothing is black and white, but
be proud to be an american, keep this in your head.
and don’t compare PER 30000 to 48000, this means nothing
my salary is maybe less than a us man at the same level
but i don’t have to save money for retirement health 401 or ira, it’s include by the state.
we are the most pigheaded country of the world, and difficult to understand, please don’t follow the way we live, if i could i would like to live to the USA.
I have lived in France, and speak the language well enough to hear from them firsthand, rather than through the media. There are a lot of wonderful people there, but on the whole, they are a depressed and lost people, who feel cast about by fate and by powers beyond their control, and who know that their future already belongs to the Arab immigrants who hate them.
I love France, but this is the last country in the western world that we want to emulate. In half a generation, they may well no longer even be part of the “western world”.
Feb 22, 2009 - 3:59 am 28. Marie Claude:frenchie you’re a hoax, I wonder why you did’nt tried to use my nic this time ??? I already have seen you idiot !!!!!!!!!
Feb 22, 2009 - 4:07 am 29. Marie Claude:woah, the clowns are making their circus LMAO
Feb 22, 2009 - 4:10 am 30. KOOL AID PROOF:yes but who crafted the pile of doo. Obama’s plan… hardly look to Speaker of the Mouse Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, this pork reeks of their BBQ. My art say’s it best…
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/moredetails.aspx?showBleed=false&ProductNo=360388557&colorNo=0&pr=F
Feb 22, 2009 - 5:20 am 31. Marie Claude:http://shop.cafepress.com/obama =
“running with the hare and hunt with the hounds”
Feb 22, 2009 - 6:57 am 32. Oh God... here we go again:Oh my God, here we go again, another francophobic rant…
Let me get this as clear as I can because it seems that some people in the American right are very thick and slow:
there is nothing wrong about defending free-market ideology, conservative options etc. This is part of freedom of speech, great, even if (as in this article) the whole thing is poorly argumented and not fact-based.
Now, not getting facts straight is an issue, and I am expecting better from pajamamedia bloggers, seriously.
The GDP per capita in France and the US is COMPARABLE (figures below in dollars, nominal, for 2008).
France: 46,489, US: 47,165
Source: CIA
I think it is really time that French-bashing stops in the US.
To all French-bashers around: by dividing the West you are REALLY destroying our civilization and common values. Who cares about a little bit or more or less state, France and the US are two well-developed, market-oriented democracies, allied in NATO and SHOULD WORK TOGETHER (sorry to use caps, but it seems that some brains around here don’t listen)…
So, bottom, if you want the West to fail, keep bashing France.
Feb 22, 2009 - 9:19 am 33. he:This …
Feb 22, 2009 - 10:12 am 34. Marie Claude:http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1843168,00.html
… is much more fun than the depressed outlook of conservative America for whom even an ounce of social justice has always been equivalent to communism.
yeah, how do you say “soupe populaire” where, soon, the “smart” opinionists will be happy to pick some food, unless they saved some money in the Caimans, though, I heard that they are going to be in the colimator of the capitalist states, ie France, EU, US, China… the G20 !!!!
Feb 22, 2009 - 11:05 am 35. view from afar:Marie Claude, economics in France is socio-economics, il y a toujours le part de socialism qui domine dans l’économie francaise…votre article en plus viens direct des professeurs de ce meme discipline, donc bien sur il vont soutenir leur façon de penser…par contre, la plus part des Americains dans ce site resemble plus les français dans leurs habitudes, pas depenser tout votre argent, et garder un peu de côté pour les jours pluvieux … ét vous avez raison que les Americains sont trop vivre pour le moment, mais aussi, cést pourquoi il y a plus des pics et vallées dans notre economy comparer à la France, surtout que la France aujourd’hui est entrein de vivre avec les exces du passé (Mitterand, à qui on peut très facilement comparer Obama, enfin comparer dns le bon sens). Il y a des grandes differences, mais le point dans cette article, cést que les Americains sont sur le meme chemin des français dans les années 1980-1990…
Feb 22, 2009 - 12:02 pm 36. Marie Claude:http://asg.unige.ch/SES/master/intro.html
It seems weird to me that you’re are isolating “economy” from “social”, as economy defines the exchanges and richnesses of a given society, and without society, no economy, no sciences !
so the term “socio-economy”, globally, concerns the sciences that studie all possible given facts that witness of an alive society
may-be you would say “social philosophy”, or “philosophy of sciences”…
by us “philosophy” has a lesser scale of domains :
“La philosophie est une discipline intellectuelle qui utilise des méthodes qui se veulent rationnelles et critiques. Elle travaille avec des concepts abstraits et tente de définir de grands principes généraux et de répondre aux questions fondamentales de la vie et de la mort, du sens de l’existence, des valeurs individuelles et sociales, de la nature du langage ou de la connaissance et du rapport que nous avons avec les choses elles-mêmes.”
So I refute your dires : there are always a part of socialism that overlead the french economy
Also, there aren’t 36 ways of teaching “SCIENCES” economiques et sociales”, but scientifiguement one can have opinions about the french economy, but not in the discipline “sciences economiques et sociales”
Like in the US, our teachers are allowed to have blogs or sites, to make conferences, to go on TV to express THEIR opinion
I, though, agree with your last sentence, what the people mostly fear is the socialism à la Mitterand of the early 80ies, but as Ms Clinton already orientated your “socio-econmy” towards China, so you’re gonna have some chinese tea potion in your economy, sorry, the french wine was more appetising
Feb 22, 2009 - 1:03 pm 37. Jonesy55:“The only good news, at least relatively speaking, is that other nations are in even worse shape. With the exception of Switzerland and a handful of other examples, nations in Europe are burdened by public sectors that consume up to 50 percent of economic output.”
Ironically, Switzerland has been one of the worst performing economies in Europe over the past two decades. Overall tax levels are just one part of the picture, how those taxes are levied, what they are spent on, the regulatory systems and other factors are at least as influential.
Feb 23, 2009 - 1:24 am 38. Jonesy55:“A lot of good points in this article. Perhaps one more would be to make a graph of the per capita income versus year of France, Germany, and the US (and any other country that might be worth looking at here). The last I looked, we’re at about $48,000 while France is somewhere in the low $30,000 range. Rather stark difference and it is one that I suspect widen from the Reagan tax cut years to 2008.”
The US has had higher GDP per capita than almost all of Europe since the late 19th century, that’s nothing new. A vast continent of untapped mineral wealth and other natural resources with not too many people to spread that wealth around combined with relatively enlightened governance and insulation from war and conflict in the rest of the world enabled this. Together with a little hard work from the inhabitants
According to the World Bank the 2007 GNI per capita figures were USA = $45,850 and France = $33,600. The nominal figures posted above were due to the very weak dollar at that time and don’t take into account the difference in cost of living in the two countries.
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/DATASTATISTICS/0,,contentMDK:20399244~menuPK:1192694~pagePK:64133150~piPK:64133175~theSitePK:239419~isCURL:Y,00.html
It’s incorrect to paint all European countries as ’sclerotic’ economies whose standards of living are all rapidly falling away relative to other parts of the world as many US commentators do though, unless you also think that the US is sclerotic because many Euro countries have actually seen more rapid growth of per capita income than the US over the recent past.
Looking again at those World Bank data, this was the state of GNI per capita in Europe and the world’s other developed nations in 1992 (using the USA = 100).
Luxembourg 136.3
Switzerland 107.4
United States 100.0
Austria 88.7
Iceland 85.9
Japan 85.8
Germany 85.5
Belgium 84.3
Singapore 83.8
Denmark 81.3
Norway 80.8
Hong Kong 80.1
Canada 79.2
France 79.1
Netherlands 78.7
Sweden 78.0
Italy 77.3
Australia 69.5
United Kingdom 68.5
Greece 67.3
Finland 65.9
Cyprus 60.9
Spain 59.5
New Zealand 56.6
Israel 56.5
Ireland 53.9
Portugal 49.2
Slovenia 43.7
Czech Rep 43.5
South Korea 40.7
Hungary 31.7
Slovakia 26.7
Croatia 26.3
Poland 22.2
Romania 20.1
Latvia 19.5
This was how the picture had changed by 2007.
Luxembourg 138.7
Norway 116.3
Singapore 105.8
United States 100.0
Hong Kong 96.1
Switzerland 95.7
Netherlands 85.7
Austria 83.2
Ireland 80.9
Sweden 79.8
Denmark 79.2
Canada 77.0
Belgium 75.9
Japan 75.5
Finland 75.4
Iceland 74.1
United Kingdom 73.7
France 73.3
Germany 73.1
Australia 72.7
Greece 70.5
Spain 67.2
Italy 65.1
Slovenia 58.1
Cyprus 57.5
New Zealand 57.4
Israel 56.6
South Korea 54.0
Czech Rep 48.0
Portugal 45.6
Slovakia 42.2
Hungary 37.5
Latvia 36.8
Poland 33.4
Croatia 32.8
Romania 23.9
and this is how countries had changed relative to the USA over that period. +/- percentage points 2007 relative to 1992.
Norway +35.5
Ireland +27.0
Singapore +22.0
Latvia +17.3
Hong Kong +16.0
Slovakia +15.5
Slovenia +14.4
South Korea +13.3
Poland +11.2
Finland +9.5
Spain +7.7
Netherlands +7.0
Croatia +6.5
Hungary +5.8
United Kingdom +5.2
Czech Rep +4.5
Romania +3.9
Greece +3.2
Australia +3.2
Luxembourg +2.4
Sweden +1.9
New Zealand +0.8
Israel +0.1
United States Nil
Denmark -2.1
Canada -2.2
Cyprus -3.4
Portugal -3.6
Austria -5.5
France -5.8
Belgium -8.4
Japan -10.3
Switzerland -11.7
Iceland -11.8
Italy -12.2
Germany -12.4
As you can see, the three major economies of continental Europe (Germany, France and Italy) did indeed do pretty badly over that period along with a few others notably including low-taxing Japan and Switzerland. But many other European countries did pretty well including very high taxing Sweden and Norway.
Feb 23, 2009 - 2:13 am 39. Marie Claude:woah, Johnny, it took much of your anglo-saxon “spirit” to demonstrate that you’re still the “w-h-inners in EU
uh, this article doesn’t say so :
France now £70bn richer than Britain, overtaking us in World rich listBy SIMON McGEE
Last updated at 00:30 13 janvier 2008
Add to My Stories Britain has sunk from fifth to sixth place in the ‘rich list’ of world economies – and, to add insult to injury, it is France that has overtaken us.
The often sluggish French economy is now worth £70billion more than the UK’s, following the dramatic fall of sterling against the euro.
It slips into fifth place behind the US, Japan, Germany and China – all had larger outputs than the UK in the final quarter of last year, according to new figures from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR).
Projections also suggest that France’s gross domestic product (GDP) will grow by 2 per cent in 2008, compared to 1.9 per cent in Britain.
Scroll down for more
The often sluggish French economy is now worth £70billion more than the UK’s
Radical labour reforms proposed by President Nicolas Sarkozy to boost productivity are set to further challenge the UK economy as it struggles with the impact of the “credit crunch” sparked by the American subprime home loans crisis.
Although Britain’s GDP is still marginally larger than France’s, it is the falling value of the pound against the euro that is immediately responsible for the place swap.
Sterling’s fall from an average of ?1.47 in 2006 to around ?1.32 in the past six months means the UK economy has gone from being 6.7 per cent larger than France’s to 4 per cent smaller.
The fall coincided with a fresh assault by Shadow Chancellor George Osborne on Labour’s stewardship of the economy, accusing Prime Minister Gordon Brown of “economic incompetence and fiscal incontinence”.
He said: “The system of financial oversight he personally insisted on left Britain as the only country facing a run on the bank. His taxes and regulations have left the British economy more inflexible and less competitive.”
Labour, however, insisted the Conservatives had a “black hole” in their spending and tax plans.
NIESR director Martin Weale claimed the new figures represented a looming “political economic cataclysm” which would hit incomes first, although he admitted there would be no immediate effect on living standards.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-507916/France-70bn-richer-Britain-overtaking-World-rich-list.html
Also :
The fact is that the English are constantly in denial about their own identity, and the French show us what we really are – or could be if we let ourselves go. They’re a kind of sibling, cast in the same mould as us, but showing how the same genes can express themselves in alternative ways.
Given this common background, the English, in spite of themselves, tend to give way to what Freud called “the narcissism of minor differences”. We make a great deal of what distinguishes us from the French, for fear of seeing our prized identity lose its uniqueness by being revealed as just another set of shared human traits
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4363962.stm
Feb 23, 2009 - 5:51 am 40. Marie Claude:“rates” are what ones want to see, the fact is that they differ, they pick different basis according to what ones want to demonstrate, so evidently, in this topic, French economy is the socialist nightmare
Feb 23, 2009 - 6:02 am 41. Jonesy55:uh, Marie Claude, if I was trying to prove that the ‘anglo-saxons’ were the ‘winners in the EU’, I would have missed off Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and Finland who are all richer than us by those 2007 figures.
France recently overtaking us again (an advantage France also had over us from the early 60s until the late 90s) in terms of the total size of our economy (Italy was also bigger for a month or so over Christmas when the pound was worth less than 1.10 Euros) is a product of the 25% decline of sterling over the past 18 months. That’s not what these figures are measuring though, they use Purchasing Power Parity which adjusts for the cost of living in each country and is not affected by currency fluctuations in the same way as nominal figures. They are also per capita figures and France (inc. non-metro France) has 4m more people than the UK
On that measure the UK was (very) slightly ahead of France in 2007; in 2009 it may be different and France may be slightly ahead, I don’t really care as I’m not trying to boast about my country relative to yours, just pointing out that while some European countries have been underperforming recently compared to the USA, others have not and overall Europe is pretty much where it was 15 years ago in terms of a cross-atlantic comparison.
Feb 23, 2009 - 7:01 am 42. Marie Claude:Jonesy55,
it’s so unusual that a British is humble
Feb 23, 2009 - 1:39 pm 43. Marc Malone:#24 Marie Claude – Oh, cherie, are you bragging about your beauty and brains AGAIN? Humilite, ma petite chou. Humilite.
Feb 24, 2009 - 2:24 am 44. Denis Chazelle est une sombre merde:“”class clown
I have lived in France, and speak the language well enough to hear from them firsthand, rather than through the media. There are a lot of wonderful people there, but on the whole, they are a depressed and lost people, who feel cast about by fate and by powers beyond their control, and who know that their future already belongs to the Arab immigrants who hate them.
I love France, but this is the last country in the western world that we want to emulate. In half a generation, they may well no longer even be part of the “western world”.”"
One lie per sentence. Not bad.
Feb 24, 2009 - 5:19 am 45. Marie Claude:And Newsflash; The US is more socialist than France.
No 700$ billion of taxpayer’s money bail out plan for France. The bail out plan is only 30$ billion in France.
Marc, yes, “I am an arrogant Chick, just sayin, it’s better than being a modest pigeon”
Feb 24, 2009 - 6:38 am 46. whyyeseyec:Making America more like France won`t lead to prosperity but it will make us more like France…………
Feb 24, 2009 - 10:57 am 47. Gene Lalor:How To Catch Wild Pigs: A Parable for Our Time
“You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place.
When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat. You slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.
Suddenly, the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves so they accept their captivity.
That is exactly what is happening to America. . . .
(Read the rest of this parable at http://genelalor.com/.)
Feb 24, 2009 - 1:26 pm 48. typos_R_us:“Prove to me that what has been done cannot be undone.”
What would you consider proof? Are you here;
http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/index.html
Or would any plausible scenario do?
Democratic control of both houses as well as most states allows the 22 Amendment to be repealed. That removes the 2 term limit on POTUS. Then he rigs some more elections and presto, we have a President for life. FDR was old and crippled. The Usurper isn’t. 10 or 12 terms isn’t impossible with a little help from ACORN and the right Diabold machines.
Think the election wasn’t rigged?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNygQMIj3TA
And if you have a problem with that, these guys will come and see you;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcGI9OTtnjg&feature=related
As Bugs would say, “What a bunch of Bozo’s!” They catch you unarmed and alone and you will have a problem. Think the Usurper won’t use them?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEnNYN8sKbQ
You may not take the Usurper seriously, but you should.
America has narrowly missed having a Tyrant a few times already.
Burr was on his way until that duel went down. Booth, Americas greatest Hero, stopped one Tyrant, Old age and Polio got another. You can’t expect America to get lucky every time. Don’t know if you would consider any of this evidence. I see it as clues. I think that the Usurper will not leave the Oval office willfully. With luck a civil disobedience campaign will remove him. If it doesn’t, there will be a civil war, which is as ugly as ugly gets.
Feb 25, 2009 - 1:32 am