Dear “crazy”,
“…nations that make a social choice in favor of shorter work weeks and longer vacations…”
Placing this same phrase in my handy dandy Orwellian Dynamic Deconstruction (ODD) translation module, I get this:
“…Committees Overseeing Mankind (“Commies” for short) who impose restrictive anti-capitalist handcuffs on their citizens in order to force socialist boondoggles for the greater good of the collective…”
“Squirrelly” indeed.
How interesting that Max, “an economist at the Economic Policy Institute” chooses to cheerlead for the failing communist French Model.
He even cites, in a dishonest attempt to show how skewed these statistics may be, a“Guardian columnist” (read “revanchist Communist apologist”), who proposes a zany formula to make French unemployment SEEM less horrid than it actually is. My question is: “Why?”
In order to reveal the true dimensions of the falsity of French claims of unemployment, wouldn’t it make more sense to compare apples with apples, rather than proposing cheap Stalinist methodologies to conceal the truth?
Isn’t it more accurate to say the following: Since France MANDATES more jobs and more workers to accomplish roughly the same amount of productivity as fewer Americans with fewer jobs, that France’s unemployment numbers are even more unfairly skewed than stated?
Clearly they’re spreading more work among more people in the best communist tradition, and getting far less productivity in the bargain. Isn’t this extremely wasteful, both in terms of raw resources, but also in terms of their human potential? Isn’t this amoral on some dimension? Isn’t this a most profound difference between our system and theirs? One well worth discussing?
And doesn’t Max deal with this huge matter in a rather glib and cavalier manner, reducing it as he does to a matter of mere “work week hours”, and in terms of vacation “choices” and “social choices”?
He’s proposing a restictive policy driven approach, one which severly limits real choices, and mandates a narrow set of rules as determined by some elite central planning committee – one filled with Marxist engineers similar to himself.
I how odd I find it that this economist finds “discussions of obsession with Gross Domestic Product in economic commentary to be odd”!!!
No wonder our policies are sometimes so muddled — we have full blown Francophilic communists “advising” our government, it would appear.
Well — here’s a choice for Max: Move to your beloved France. Subject yourself to their failing economic system — see what kind of country you bequeath to you daughter in 30-40 years. From where I’m sitting, France looks like it will join the long list of failed Islamic nations within a few decades. “Get bilingual”. Knock yourself out. But stop “advising” our government, PLEASE! You obviously are very confused!
Comprenez vous?
Sincerement,
Mort
