From where I sit, it does seem that Sarkozy has a bit of a mandate to noodle around with labor market regulations, but I am not a France expert. As I said and others have noted, Sarko didn’t campaign on reducing paid vacation. Ex ante, more flexibility could look appealing. After the fact, perhaps not so much. We’ll see how far he tries to go.
The numbers on productivity do not require one to be a France expert, however. They are straightforward. I provided sources. I don’t know of any source for M. Silvay’s comment about ‘make-work’ jobs. Sounds like merde to me.
It’s true an oil-producing country’s resource rents will show up in GDP and productivity, but there are other countries on the list with no oil. Note I am not trying to argue anybody is more productive than the U.S., only that they are comparable so the argument about socialist economic failure is bogus.
rhino — you say nanny, I say promote the general welfare, like it says in the Constitution. No I don’t want the Gov to prescribe, I would like to see mandated minimums for time off with pay. As for economic superpower, as the numbers show, it just isn’t so. Dreams die hard.
