After years of econo-racist put downs about France from wild-eyed libertarian, nutcases, a country with a great quality of life and a degree of balance, gets its revenge. France has narrowly avoided recession this quarter with the only growing GDP in Europe, outstripping both the UK and Germany.
Sure setting up a company is a nightmare in France, and it is living in its past, culturally. But it is not exactly Communist, with the word’s largest retail chain after Walmart, and living in a glorified museum isn’t so terrible. Workers are more productive in France than the US (GDP per hour worked), and you actually get vacation time. Its social healthcare system provides more comprehensive cover than the patriotically championed UK National Health Service and is twice as efficient as the US’s virtually non-existent one. The veiled racism (no pun intended) about the dangers of Islamification of France and of anti-Semitism, forget that there are more Jews in France than anywhere else in Europe (twice the Jewish population of the UK) and it is still the most secular nation in Europe, which is much more secular than the US. Most important of all, however, it is a country famous for food, wine and sex. Far more fun than working 50 weeks a year, eating fried food and being preached at.
France is a nice place to live. It will be interesting to see how long it is before half of the 200,000 French living in London question what it has to offer without money, and I give Loic Lemur 6 months before he returns from an agreeable, but ultimately parochial, Bay Area.