Barry,
The French can afford their level of benefits (they have higher taxes for one thing). The US could afford correspondingly higher benefits than the French if it chose, but it doesn’t. Its a matter of political choices, rather than economics. Although the French have higher public borrowing than they are currently happy with, its not nearly as high as that of the US. And unlike the US, they don’t have a trade deficit, but a healthy trade surplus (with among other countries, the US) – so in a sense they are saving for tommorow. The US (and UK) also have more disguised unemployment than the French (in the UK a lot of people are on disability benefit, and the US and UK also lock up a lot more people), so comparisons are difficult. The French youth in the banlieus might be unhappy, but in the US they’d be far more likely to be in prison (or high on crack).
ParisParamus: I have really no idea how you might measure entrepreneurialism. These days the main R&D labs seem to be Japan, Germany, Scandinavia, SE Asia and northern Italy. The US is innovative in some areas, but its marginal in most. The exceptions are software (though Europe is rapidly catching up), pharmaceuticals, biotech and aeronautics (where Europe is at about parity). In other high tech areas the US has been left behind, including areas where it assumes dominance (like the internet). The US still has the universities, but increasingly the students are from SE Asia and are choosing to return after their doctoral work.
