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"France is constructing a nuclear reactor, its first in 10 years, in Flamanville, but the country already has 58 operating reactors." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 6) FLAMANVILLE, France -- It looks like an ordinary building site, but for the two massive, rounded concrete shells looming above the ocean, like dusty mushrooms.

Here on the Normandy coast, France is building its newest nuclear reactor, the first in 10 years, costing $5.1 billion. But already, President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced that France will build another like it.

. . .

Nuclear power provides 77 percent of France's electricity, according to the government, and relatively few public doubts are expressed in a country with little coal, oil or natural gas.

With the wildly fluctuating cost of oil, anxiety over global warming from burning fossil fuels and new concerns about the impact of biofuels on the price of food for the poor, nuclear energy is getting a second look in countries like the United States and Britain. Even Germany, committed to phasing out nuclear power by 2021, is debating whether to change its mind.

For the full story, see:

STEVEN ERLANGER. "France Reaffirms Its Faith in Future of Nuclear Power." The New York Times, First Section (Sun., August 17, 2008): 6. (Also on p. 6 of the NY edition)

(Note: ellipsis added.)

Source of map: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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(p. A19) Much of the resentment felt by citizens toward the massive investment companies . . . stems from the perception that capitalism is rigged toward the most powerful. When the owner of a small retail outlet or medium-sized service firm gets into financial trouble -- who steps in to help? Why are the rules to start a business so onerous, why is the bureaucratic process so lengthy, why are the requirements for hiring employees so burdensome? When does the entrepreneur receive the respect and cooperation he deserves for making a genuine contribution to the productive capacity of the economy? Equal access to credit is sacrificed to the overwhelming appetite of big business -- especially when government skews the terms in favor of its friends. It is time to pay deference to the real economic heroes of capitalism: the self-made entrepreneurs who have the courage to start a business from scratch, the fidelity to pay their taxes, and the dedication to provide real goods and services to their fellow man.

. . .

Who would have guessed that it would take a Frenchman to remind us that hope is the limitless source of power that drives the human spirit to create, to improve, to achieve its dreams; it is the greatest civilizing influence in our culture. Yet it was Mr. Sarkozy, speaking before Congress last November, who offered the most profound assessment of our nation's gift to the world. "What made America great was her ability to transform her own dream into hope for all mankind," he said. "America did not tell the millions of men and women who came from every country in the world and who -- with their hands, their intelligence and their heart -- built the greatest nation in the world: 'Come, and everything will be given to you.' She said: 'Come, and the only limits to what you'll be able to achieve will be your own courage and your own talent.'"

For the full commentary, see:

JUDY SHELTON. "A Capitalist Manifesto; Markets remain our best hope for a better future." The Wall Street Journal (Mon., OCTOBER 13, 2008): A19.

(Note: ellipses added.)

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"Gianluca Pompei, Francesca Di Pietro and son, Mario, 2, shopping in Rome. They have cut spending on entertainment." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. C1) LES ULIS, France -- When their local bakery in this town south of Paris raised the price of a baguette for the third time in six months, Anne-Laure Renard and Guy Talpot bought a bread maker. When gasoline became their biggest single expense, they sold one of their two cars.

Their combined annual income of 40,000 euros, about $62,500, lands Ms. Renard, a teacher, and Mr. Talpot, a postal worker, smack in the middle of France's middle class. And over the last year, prices in France have risen four times as fast as their salaries.

At the end of every month, they blow past their bank account's $900 overdraft limit, plunging themselves deeper into a spiral of greater resourcefulness and regret.

"In France, when you can't afford a baguette anymore, you know you're in trouble," Ms. Renard said one recent evening in her kitchen, as her partner measured powdered milk for their 13-month-old son, Vincent. "The French Revolution started with bread riots."

The European dream is under assault, as the wave of inflation sweeping the globe mixes with this continent's long-stagnant wages. Families that once enjoyed Europe's vaunted quality of life are pinching pennies to buy necessities, and cutting back on extras like movies and vacations abroad.

Potentially more disturbing -- especially to the political and social order -- are the millions across the continent grappling with the realization that they may have lives worse, not better, than their parents.

For the full story, see:

CARTER DOUGHERTY and KATRIN BENNHOLD. "Squeezed in Europe; For Middle-Class, Stagnant Wages and a Stunted Lifestyle." The New York Times (Thurs., May 1, 2008): C1 & C8.

(Note: the online version of the title is "For Europe's Middle-Class, Stagnant Wages Stunt Lifestyle." )

"Anne-Laure Renard, a teacher, and Guy Talpot, a postal worker, sold one car and bought a bread maker to cut expenses. Prices have risen four times as fast as salaries in France in the last year." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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   Lang on left; Sarkozy on right.  Source of photo:  online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A3)  In the heat of the presidential campaign early this year, Jack Lang, a popular icon of the French left, accused Nicolas Sarkozy of ''trickery at the highest level,'' ''anti-republican behavior'' and -- perhaps most cutting of all -- being a ''Bush adapted for France.''

Now Mr. Lang, a former culture minister and education minister who served as campaign spokesman for the defeated Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal, is the latest leading Socialist to defect to the Sarkozy camp.

. . .

''Human relations have deteriorated in the Socialist Party,'' Mr. Lang told the left-leaning daily Libération last week. ''Today I don't feel happy in this house.''

He accused the party of self-destruction, by casting out those who choose to work outside its structure. ''I am liberated,'' he said of his decision to leave the party leadership. ''They have helped me by allowing me to make a decision I should have made long ago. Long live liberty! Long live life.''

For the full story, see: 

ELAINE SCIOLINO.  "Socialist Quits French Left To Join Right."  The New York Times  (Thurs., July 19, 2007):  A3. 

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

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  Sarkozy (on left) runs.  Source of photo:  online version of the NYT article cited below.

(p. 1)  In proposing a tax-cut law last week, Finance Minister Christine Lagarde bluntly advised the French people to abandon their “old national habit.”

“France is a country that thinks,” she told the National Assembly. “There is hardly an ideology that we haven’t turned into a theory. We have in our libraries enough to talk about for centuries to come. This is why I would like to tell you: Enough thinking, already. Roll up your sleeves.”

Citing Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” she said the French should work harder, earn more and be rewarded with lower taxes if they get rich.

. . .

(p. 9)  The government’s call to work is crucial to its ambitious campaign to revitalize the French economy by increasing both employment and consumer buying power. Somehow Mr. Sarkozy and his team hope to persuade the French that it is in their interest to abandon what some commentators call a nationwide “laziness” and to work longer and harder, and maybe even get rich.

France’s legally mandated 35-hour work week gives workers a lot of leisure time but not necessarily the means to enjoy it. Taxes on high-wage earners are so burdensome that hordes have fled abroad. (Mr. Sarkozy cites the case of one of his stepdaughters, who works in an investment-banking firm in London.)

In her National Assembly speech, Ms. Lagarde said that there should be no shame in personal wealth and that the country needed tax breaks to lure the rich back.

. . .

“We are seeing an important cultural change,” said Eric Chaney, chief economist for Europe for Morgan Stanley. “Working families in France want to be richer. Wealth is no longer a taboo. There’s a strong sentiment in France that people think prices are too high and need more money. It’s not a question of thinking or not thinking.”  

For the full story, see: 

ELAINE SCIOLINO.  "New Leaders Say Pensive French Think Too Much."  The New York Times, Section 1  (Sun., July 22, 2007):  1 & 9.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

  Mitterrand walked.  Source of photo:  online version of the NYT article cited above.

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   Source of table:  "World Publics Welcome Global Trade -- But Not Immigration." Pew Global Attitudes Project, a project of the PewResearchCenter. Released: 10.04.07 dowloaded from: http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=258

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 — Buoyed and battered by globalization, people around the world strongly view international trade as a good thing but harbor growing concerns about its side effects: threats to their cultures, damage to the environment and the challenges posed by immigration, a new survey indicates.

In the Pew Global Attitudes Project survey of people in 46 countries and the Palestinian territories, large majorities everywhere said that trade was a good thing. In countries like Argentina, which recently experienced trade-based growth, the attitude toward trade has become more positive.

But support for trade has decreased in recent years in advanced Western countries, including Germany, Britain, France and Italy — and most sharply in the United States. The number of Americans saying trade is good for the country has dropped by 19 percentage points since 2002, to 59 percent.

“G.D.P. growth hasn’t been as dramatic in these places as in Latin America or Eastern Europe,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, referring to gross domestic product, the total value of the goods and services produced in a country. “But worldwide, even though some people are rich and some are poor, support for the basic tenet of capitalism is pretty strong.”

For the full story, see: 

BRIAN KNOWLTON. "Globalization, According to the World, Is a Good Thing. Sort Of."  The New York Times   (Fri., October 5, 2007):  A10. 

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   Source of book graphic:  http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/ADBCAP.html

Rawi Abdelal, a Harvard Business School professor, has advanced a novel theory in "Capital Rules: The Construction of Global Finance." Drawing on extensive documentary evidence, as well as dozens of interviews with high-level finance officials and midlevel bureaucrats, he tells a fascinating (and largely unknown) tale: how a clutch of French socialists helped to upend economic orthodoxy and lead the charge for lifting restrictions on capital flows within Europe and throughout the world.

. . .

Mr. Abdelal's story heats up with the election of Francois Mitterrand in 1981. The new president, together with his majority Socialist Party, set out to storm the Bastille of the economy. He announced plans to nationalize the banks and restrict cross-border capital flows to such a degree that French citizens could take the equivalent of only $427 with them for leisure travel outside France (and were prohibited from using credit cards during such travel). Rather than create a socialist Shangri-La, the moves led to economic chaos. The French had to devalue the franc three times in two short years. Mitterrand then made what the French would elegantly refer to as a tournant but we may bluntly call a U-turn.

This painful episode provided a powerful lesson to a number of senior French officials. Said one: "We recognized, at last, that in an age of interdependence capital would find a way to free itself, and we were obliged to liberate the rest." And so in a Nixon-goes-to-China move, an unlikely collection of French socialists set out to liberalize the country's controls on cross-border capital flows with a determination that gave new meaning to laissez-faire.

. . .

Mr. Abdelal is unequivocal about the value of Europe's action: "Global financial markets are global primarily because the process of European financial integration became open and uniformly liberal." He also highlights how free capital flows got a boost from the two primary credit-rating agencies, Standard & Poor's and Moody's. In the 1990s, both began to give higher ratings to government-backed debt when the country in question had an open capital account.

For the full review, see: 

MATTHEW REES.  "Business Bookshelf:  Why Money Can Now Make Its Way Around the World."  The Wall Street Journal (Weds., February 14, 2007):  D12.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

Boof reference: 

Rawi Abdelal.  CAPITAL RULES.  Harvard University Press, 304 pages, $49.95.

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The story below provides further evidence that those who are working hard to make English the mandatory language of the United States, should find themselves a real problem to worry about.

PARIS, April 7 — When economics students returned this winter to the elite École Normale Supérieure here, copies of a simple one-page petition were posted in the corridors demanding an unlikely privilege: French as a teaching language.

“We understand that economics is a discipline, like most scientific fields, where the research is published in English,” the petition read, in apologetic tones. But it declared that it was unacceptable for a native French professor to teach standard courses to French-speaking students in the adopted tongue of English.

In the shifting universe of global academia, English is becoming as commonplace as creeping ivy and mortarboards. In the last five years, the world’s top business schools and universities have been pushing to make English the teaching tongue in a calculated strategy to raise revenues by attracting more international students and as a way to respond to globalization.

Business universities are driving the trend, partly because changes in international accreditation standards in the late 1990s required them to include English-language components. But English is also spreading to the undergraduate level, with some South Korean universities offering up to 30 percent of their courses in the language. The former president of Korea University in Seoul sought to raise that share to 60 percent, but ultimately was not re-elected to his post in December.

In Madrid, business students can take their admissions test in English for the elite Instituto de Empresa and enroll in core courses for a master’s degree in business administration in the same language. The Lille School of Management in France stopped considering English a foreign language in 1999, and now half the postgraduate programs are taught in English to accommodate a rising number of international students.

Over the last three years, the number of master’s programs offered in English at universities with another host language has more than doubled, to 3,300 programs at 1,700 universities, according to David A. Wilson, chief executive of the Graduate Management Admission Council, an international organization of leading business schools that is based in McLean, Va.

“We are shifting to English. Why?” said Laurent Bibard, the dean of M.B.A. programs at Essec, a top French business school in a suburb of Paris that is a fertile breeding ground for chief executives.

“It’s the language for international teaching,” he said. “English allows students to be able to come from anyplace in the world and for our students — the French ones — to go everywhere.”

For the full story, see: 

DOREEN CARVAJAL.  "English as Language of Global Education."  The New York Times  (Weds., April 11, 2007):  A21.

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   Source of graphic:  online version of the NYT article cited below.

FROM issues of crime and punishment to the proper domain of the spiritual and temporal powers, Americans and Europeans have long cast a skeptical eye at one another across the Atlantic.

Perhaps nowhere has the gaze been more jaundiced than in the area of work. From the perspective of Western Europe, American employers have a relatively free hand to hire and fire, coupled with meager and short-lived unemployment benefits. America’s deregulated labor markets seem to provide hardly any safety net when it comes to economic dislocations of workers.

Americans, by contrast, have found it hard to resist a touch of schadenfreude at the joblessness stoked by European governments’ intervention in labor markets, with rules on everything from wages to layoffs, on top of generous unemployment benefits.

For the full commentary, see: 

EDUARDO PORTER.  "Economic View; A Bridge Over the Atlantic, in Labor Policy."  The New York Times, Section 3  (Sun., April 1, 2007):  5.

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   A snow-white llama that has not yet been symbolically sacrificed by Bolivian President Evo Morales.  Source of the photo:  http://www.staff.stir.ac.uk/f.r.wheater/images/25%20Llama%205_8_04.JPG

Picture it, in President Evo Morales' Bolivia:  a peaceful, innocent-looking, snow-white llama slaughtered in homage to a barbaric mystical ritual, and in celebration of the slaughter, through nationalization, of private property and economic growth.  And afterwards, one imagines the visitng French brass band played on. 

VINTO, Bolivia: The ritual sacrifice of a snow-white llama provided a symbolic completion Friday to President Evo Morales' nationalization of Bolivia's lone operating tin smelter.

Swiss mining giant Glencore International AG owned the plant until last week and has threatened to seek compensation through international arbitration. Morales still says his government will not compensate Glencore for the Feb. 9 nationalization of the Vinto plant, located on a high Andean plain 180 kilometers (110 miles) southeast of the capital of La Paz.

. . .

After the ceremony, Morales hosted plant workers, a troupe of Andean pipers and a visiting French brass band to an outdoor supper of fried chicken and chuno, a traditional Bolivian dish of dehydrated potatoes.

While the nationalization retained all but a handful of smelter employees, workers remained divided over the change in management. Some rushed to greet "Companero Evo" as he toured the plant; others hung back and wondered about the future.

"Anywhere in the world they'll tell you the government can't be a good administrator," said plant employee Oscar Leyton. "But we'll just have to wait and see how they do it. If they screw up here, they'll screw up the whole country."

For the full story, see: 

"In Bolivia, llama sacrifice completes Morales' tin smelter nationalization."  International Herald Tribune  February 16, 2007.

(Note:  ellipsis added.) 

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   French rock icon Johnny Hallyday.  Source of photo: http://hosted.ap.org/photos/6/6b7deb53-a318-477d-90b7-fb5abe488774-big.jpg

In the dark of winter, the French rock 'n' roll icon Johnny Hallyday has abandoned France to settle in a snow-dusted mountain chalet, joining a scattered flock of superrich tax refugees in serene Switzerland.

Numbering about 3,700, according to Swiss statistics, these millionaire and billionaire exiles are variously coveted and resented in Switzerland, where local governments are competing in what critics scorn as a fierce race to the bottom to lure wealthy foreigners with individually negotiated tax breaks.

''I'm sick of paying, that's all,'' Mr. Hallyday, 63, said in a rebellious outburst to the celebrity magazine Paris Match, which devoted eight pages to his departure. ''I believe that after all the work I have done over nearly 50 years, my family should be able to live in some serenity. But 70 percent of everything I earn goes to taxes.''

The notion of a French symbol decamping to a newly renovated refuge in the town of Gstaad had an incendiary effect on French politics, prompting President Jacques Chirac to express restrained regrets about the rocker's actions.

For the full story, see: 

DOREEN CARVAJAL.  "Swiss Tax Deals Lure the Superrich, but Are They Fair?"  The New York Times, Section 1  (Sun., January 14, 2007):   - B11.

    Hallyday's chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland.  Source of photo: http://www.20minutes.fr/articles/2006/12/20/20061220-people-A-Gstaad-le-chalet-de-Johnny-fait-etrique-pour-une-rock-star.php

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Source of book image: http://www.harpercollins.com/harperimages/isbn/large/8/9780060841638.jpg

At lunchtime today (11/27/06) I heard part of a C-Span broadcast of a Heritage Foundation event in which Carl J. Schramm gave a presentation based on his new book (see above). It sounded as though Schramm has some useful thoughts about the impact of entrepreneurship, and on how the institutions of higher education are very unentrepreneurial.

I smiled when Schramm mentioned that George W. Bush had once said that: "The problem with the French is that they don't know the meaning of the word "entrepreneur." To those who don't "get" the joke: it is another of those Bush-is-stupid jokes, based on the word "entrepreneur" being of French origins.

A web site devoted to "urban legends" identifies the Bush quote as one of these legends:

Yet another "George W. Bush is dumb" story has been taken up by those who like their caricatures drawn in stark, bold lines.  According to scuttlebutt that emerged in the British press in July 2002, President Bush, Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, and France's President Jacques Chirac were discussing economics and, in particular, the decline of the French economy.  "The problem with the French," Bush afterwards confided in Blair, "is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur."  

The source was Shirley Williams, also known as the Baroness Williams of Crosby, who claimed "my good friend Tony Blair" had recently regaled her with this anecdote in Brighton.

Lloyd Grove of The Washington Post was unable to reach Baroness Williams to gain her confirmation of the tale, but he did receive a call from Alastair Campbell, Blair's director of communications and strategy.  "I can tell you that the prime minister never heard George Bush say that, and he certainly never told Shirley Williams that President Bush did say it," Campbell told The Post.  "If she put this in a speech, it must have been a joke."

The main reference relied on by the Urban Legend web site for this entry, was: 

Grove, Lloyd. "The Reliable Source." The Washington Post. 10 July 2002 (p. C3).

The most obvious interpretation of the joke is that it is ridiculing W.  But, more subtly, it could be taken to be giving just a bit of a jab to the French too.  (Just because the French invented the word, doesn't mean that they couldn't have forgotten its meaning, through lack of use.)

The reference on the Schramm book is: 

Schramm, Carl J. The Entrepreneurial Imperative: How America's Economic Miracle Will Reshape the World (and Change Your Life). New York: Collins, 2006.

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  Source of book image:  http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/imageviewer.asp?ean=9780156334600

If, like Mr. Laar, you are only going to read one book in economics, Milton Friedman's Free to Choose, is not too bad a choice:

(p. A23) Philippe Benoit du Rey is not one of those gloomy Frenchmen who frets about the threat to Gallic civilization from McDonald's and Microsoft.  He thinks international competition is good for his countrymen.  He's confident France will flourish in a global economy -- eventually.

But for now, he has left the Loire Valley for Tallinn, the capital of Estonia and the economic model for New Europe.  It's a boomtown with a beautifully preserved medieval quarter along with new skyscrapers, gleaming malls and sprawling housing developments:  Prague meets Houston, except that Houston's economy is cool by comparison.

Economists call Estonia the Baltic tiger, the sequel to the Celtic tiger as Europe's success story, and its policies are more radical than Ireland's.  On this year's State of World Liberty Index, a ranking of countries by their economic and political freedom, Estonia is in first place, just ahead of Ireland and seven places ahead of the U.S. (North Korea comes in last at 159th.)

It transformed itself from an isolated, impoverished part of the Soviet Union thanks to a former prime minister, Mart Laar, a history teacher who took office not long after Estonia was liberated.  He was 32 years old and had read just one book on economics:  ''Free to Choose,'' by Milton Friedman, which he liked especially because he knew Friedman was despised by the Soviets.

Laar was politically naïve enough to put the theories into practice.  Instead of worrying about winning trade wars, he unilaterally disarmed by abolishing almost all tariffs.  He welcomed foreign investors and privatized most government functions (with the help of a privatization czar who had formerly been the manager of the Swedish pop group Abba).  He drastically cut taxes on businesses and individuals, instituting a simple flat income tax of 26 percent.

For the full commentary, see:

JOHN TIERNEY.  "New Europe's Boomtown."  The New York Times  (Tues., September 5, 2006):  A23.

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THE French take pride in their revolutions, which are usually hard to miss -- mass uprisings, heads rolling and such.  So, with the scent of tear gas in the air this past month from the giant protests against a youth labor law, it was easy to overlook the French National Assembly's approval of a bill that would require Apple Computer to crack open the software codes of its iTunes music store and let the files work on players other than the iPod.  While seemingly minor, the move is actually rather startling and has left many experts wondering (as ever):  What has possessed the French?

. . .  

If the French gave away the codes, Apple would lose much of its rationale for improving iTunes.  Right now, after the royalty payment to the label (around 65 cents) and the processing fee to the credit card company (as high as 23 cents), not to mention other costs, Apple's margin on 99-cent music is thin.  Yet it continues to add free features to iTunes because it helps sell iPods.

Opening the codes threatens that link.  Apple would need to pay for iTunes features with profits from iTunes itself.  Prices would rise.  Innovation would slow.

Even worse, sharing the codes could make it easier for hackers to unravel Apple's FairPlay software.  Without strong copy protection, labels would not supply as much new music.

For the full commentary, see:

Austan Goolsbee.  "ECONOMIC SCENE; In iTunes War, France Has Met the Enemy. Perhaps It Is France."  The New York Times  (Thurs., April 27, 2006):  C3.

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Coombs and VanderHam on the April 3, 2006 extreme ski run, in which they both died.  Source of caption information, and of photo:  online version of the first NYT article cited below.

Some seem to seek risk:

(p. A1)  ''La Grave goes from tranquil to frightening and mad, and it's so exhilarating to be in those moods,'' Mrs. Coombs said in a telephone interview last week.  Her husband, she said, ''never found anything more perfect.''

Last month, Mr. Coombs slipped off a cliff and fell 490 feet to his death.  He was 48. He was trying to rescue Chad VanderHam, his 31-year-old protégé and skiing partner from the United States.  Mr. VanderHam had gone over the same cliff moments earlier.  He also died.

Their accident, during a recreational outing, has focused attention on extreme skiing and on this remote destination, high in the Alps about 50 miles east of Grenoble.

For the full story, see:

NATHANIEL VINTON.  "Skiing Beyond Safety's Edge Once Too Often."  The New York Times (Wednesday, May 17, 2006):   A1 & C23.

Others seem to fear risk:

PARIS, April 8 - Standing amid the chaos of the protests here this week, Omar Sylla, 22, tried to explain why the French are so angry about what seems to many people like such a small thing: the French government's attempt to loosen labor laws a bit by allowing employers the right to fire young workers without cause during a trial period on the job.

Even after President Jacques Chirac promised to shorten the period to one year from two, the protests continued, and French students and unions have vowed to keep demonstrating until the law is repealed.

''We need less precariousness, not more,'' said Mr. Sylla, the son of immigrants from Ivory Coast, who still lives with his parents in a government-subsidized apartment in a working-class suburb of Paris.

Mr. Sylla said he had searched for years for a job before finding work about a month ago as a baggage handler at Charles de Gaulle International Airport.  Even then, he said, he only got the job because his sister works at the airport and pulled strings on his behalf.

For the full story, see:

CRAIG S. SMITH. "French Unrest Reflects Old Faith in Quasi-Socialist Ideals." The New York Times, Section 1  (Sunday, April 9, 2006):   8.

Economists have long puzzled at how the same person can both buy insurance and gamble in a casino.  The first seems an act of risk-aversion, and the second of risk-seeking.  (Milton Friedman, and others, have tried to explain the paradox.)

But I am puzzled by something else.  When risks are taken, why are they so often taken in arenas such as rioting in the streets, or extreme skiing, where they achieve no noble purpose?  Whatever risks one is going to take, why not take them in the arena of innovation and entrepreneurship, where the potential benefits to the innovator and to human progress, are huge?

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  Source of graphic:  online version of the WSJ article cited below.

(p. A1)  The so-called Doha round of talks, which began in 2001, were designed to boost developing nations; among other things, they want lower barriers to their agricultural exports.  France has vowed to veto any deal that doesn't protect its farmers.  A pivotal missed deadline April 30 has led to predictions the talks could die by summer if countries including France don't change their stance.

The standoff shows how cultural and emotional factors can combine with politics to stifle free-trade goals that most economists believe would provide a net benefit to the world.  The tariff cuts envisioned by Doha would not only help developing countries sell their minerals and food products, but would also lower barriers to the industrialized world's exports of goods and services.  The World Bank calculates that Doha would boost the global economy by around $100 billion.

Overall, France itself likely would be a major economic gainer from a global (p. A10) deal.  Though it's the world's second-largest agriculture exporter after the U.S., farming accounts for just 2.5% of the French economy.  World-class manufacturing and service companies, such as car maker Renault SA and insurer AXA SA, are larger engines of the French economy.  France could gain more income than it would lose in opening its agricultural markets to budding farm superpowers like Brazil.

Even in agriculture, France can be a formidable competitor, notably in products such as wine and cheese.  Its brand is well-known the world over.  And its farms are increasingly home to capital-intensive agribusiness companies, not just small family producers.  Most of the $11.5 billion in European Union subsidies that France receives each year goes to the largest, most commercially viable farms.

WTO chief Pascal Lamy, a Frenchman, says he doesn't understand France's position.  "As an efficient farm producer, the strategy should be to reduce subsidies and prices, because others won't be able to compete with you," he said in a recent interview.

. . .

The French rural tradition, however, is changing.  Between 1993 and 2004, the number of arable farms fell by nearly a third.  Wide swaths of neglected land are now home to unsightly scrub, and the farms people see as they drive down France's immaculate highways are often parts of major business enterprises.  Oxfam says as much as 60% of subsidies went to the richest 15% of French farmers in 2004, the latest figures available.

Oxfam believes the EU's tariffs and farm subsidies, which total over €40 billion annually, are harmful to the world's poorest countries.  High customs duties keep products from poor nations out of the wealthy EU market.  At the same time, EU farmers overproduction is dumped cheaply abroad, driving down global prices and harming farmers in the developing world.

For the full story, see:

SCOTT MILLER.  "Food Fight; French Resistance To Trade Accord Has Cultural Roots; WTO Talks Promise Benefits But Farmers Retain Hold On the Nation's Stomach; 'Politicians Are Frightened'."  The Wall Street Journal  (Tues., May 16, 2006):  A1 & A10.

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"France is definitely behind," says William Keylor, professor of International Relations and history at Boston University. "If France were to create a more-flexible labor market it would eventually increase productivity and prosperity, but the short-term transition would be difficult and people just aren't thinking long term."

There have been labor changes across continental Europe recently. Denmark's measures to liberalize hiring and firing have helped the country cut its unemployment rate in half from about 10% in the early 1990s to under 5%. Spain, too, has introduced short-term employment contracts which have helped cut its unemployment rate by more than half from 20% a decade ago.

But elsewhere, attempts at change have met with staunch opposition, often resulting in watered-down measures. Italy passed changes to its labor laws in 2004, introducing an extension of temporary-work contracts that were introduced in 1997 and were credited with helping cut Italy's overall unemployment rate to 7.1% from 12% when the contracts began. Yet many economists say Italy, which recorded zero growth last year, hasn't gone far enough.

In Germany, where unemployment stands at 11%, a coalition government headed by conservative leader Angela Merkel has promised to reduce unemployment by introducing similar measures to those hotly debated in France. The government had to settle on compromise measures that can extend a current probation period for workers to 24 months, from the current six. But companies don't have the right to terminate contracts within those two years without giving just cause. Other, more difficult, provisions, are still on hold.

The new measures that will be introduced in Parliament as early as today are targeted at "disadvantaged" youths, which refer to people between 18 and 25 who have left school without any qualifications and who are unemployed. The provisions include increasing financial incentives to employers to hire people under 26 who face the most difficulties.

It would apply to some 160,000 young people currently hired under government-subsidized job contracts, according to an interview with Employment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo in an interview with Le Monde newspaper. The cost to the government would be around €150 million ($180 million) in the second half of 2006, Mr. Borloo was quoted as saying.

But economists said the change of tack was a bad signal. "The real problem is that the results obtained by opponents of the new law...show that it is very difficult to introduce reforms in France," Dominique Barbet, economist at BNP Paribas, wrote in a research note. "This will give opponents of reform confidence for future actions."

For the full story, see:

ALESSANDRA GALLONI. "Bowing to Protesters, Chirac Abandons Youth-Labor Law; Reversal Highlights Europe's Difficulties With Painful Reforms." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., April 11, 2006): A3 & A10.

(Note: the title and version of the article quoted here are from the online version. The title and content of the version in the printed paper was a little different in a couple of places.)

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Source of image: http://www.lesoir.be/rubriques/monde/page_5715_419028.shtml

PARIS, April 4 — Waves of demonstrations, strikes and violence hit France again on Tuesday as Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, weakened but defiant, refused to bend to the demand that the government scrap a disputed youth labor law.

It was the fifth nationwide protest since February against a modest initiative that was aimed at encouraging the hiring of young people but that has provoked an improvised, open-ended campaign against the French government itself.

. . .

But, in a sure sign that this was not a country paralyzed, the Paris Métro and bus system ran on a normal schedule. Mail and many newspapers were delivered. Only 18 percent of railroad workers were on strike, compared with 28 percent a week ago. Fifteen percent of domestic flights were canceled, half the percentage of last week. The Education Ministry reported that 23 percent of its workers were absent, compared with 36 percent last week.

In the National Assembly, Mr. de Villepin faced savage criticism from the opposition.

"Mr. Prime Minister, who is governing France today?" asked Jean-Marc Ayrault, the leader of the Socialist party bloc in the Assembly. At another point he said: "You govern no more. You hold the appearance of power, but you no longer exercise it."

Mr. Ayrault said France was mired in a "crisis of regime with two prime ministers," apparently referring to the active role that Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has played in trying to open a dialogue with the unions.

In reply, Mr. de Villepin vowed, "The government will not give in." Despite predictions that the law is doomed, he insisted: "What we want is a victory against unemployment. This is a victory for France."

For the full story, see:

ELAINE SCIOLINO and CRAIG S. SMITH. "French Premier Refuses to Bow to Protests by Angry Youths." The New York Times (Weds., April 5, 2006): A8.

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"Prime Minister Andrus Ansip of Estonia in the cabinet room, which is equipped with a computer for each minister." Source of caption and photo: online version of NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A4) TALLINN, Estonia - Estonia, one realizes after a few days in the abiding twilight of a Baltic winter, is not like other European countries.

The first tip-off is the government's cabinet room, outfitted less like a ceremonial chamber than a control center. Each minister has a flat-screen computer to transmit votes during debates. Then there is Estonia's idea of an intellectual hero: Steve Forbes, the American publishing scion, two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and tireless evangelist for the flat tax.

Fired with a free-market fervor and hurtling into the high-tech future, Estonia feels more like a Baltic outpost of Silicon Valley than of Europe. Nineteen months after it achieved its cherished goal of joining the European Union, one might even characterize Estonia as the un-Europe.

"I must say Steve Forbes was a genius," Prime Minister Andrus Ansip declared during an interview in his hilltop office. "I'm sure he still is," he added hastily.

The subject was the flat tax, which Mr. Forbes never succeeded in selling in the United States. Here in the polar reaches of Europe it is an article of faith. Estonia became the first country to adopt it in 1994, as part of a broader strategy to transform itself from an obscure Soviet republic into a plugged-in member of the global information economy.

By all accounts, the plan is working. Estonia's economic growth was nearly 11 percent in the last quarter - the second fastest in Europe, after Latvia, and an increase more reminiscent of China or India than Germany or France.

People call this place E-stonia, and the cyber-intoxication is palpable in Tallinn's cafes and bars, which are universally equipped with wireless connections, and in local success stories like Skype, designed by Estonian developers and now offering free calls over the Internet to millions.

. . .

Germans showed how allergic they were to the idea when Angela Merkel chose a flat tax advocate as her economic adviser. Antipathy toward him was so intense that political analysts say it probably cost Chancellor Merkel's party a clear majority in the German Parliament.

Yet the concept has caught on in this part of Europe. Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia all have a flat tax, while the Czech Republic and Slovenia have considered one. Tax policy, not support for the American-led war in Iraq, is the bright line that separates the so-called old Europe from the new.

For the full article, see:

MARK LANDLER. "Letter From Estonia: A Land of Northern Lights, Cybercafes and the Flat Tax." The New York Times (Weds., December 21, 2005): A4.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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The choice of nuclear power dates back to the end of World War II.  With insufficient fossil fuel reserves, our country very early on invested in energy alternatives.  The two oil crises of the '70s convinced us to accelerate the construction of facilities to produce safe and economically profitable nuclear energy.  That strategy paid off:  In 30 years, France's energy independence has risen from 30% to 50%.  While turning toward nuclear energy might have seemed unusual 60 years ago, I believe that it was an especially visionary choice.  The development of nuclear energy enabled us to meet several objectives:  energy independence and security of supply, and competitive, stable energy prices.  This nuclear option is also an economic and commercial asset for our country, whose capabilities in this cutting-edge area are world-renowned.  (p. A20)

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