As part of our continual discussion on how economic opportunity drives migration patterns (or if you prefer - why people go where the gettin' is good), the French election has become an important topic.
All two of you regular blog readers know that the French appear poised to vote to change their punishing tax and regulatory code that has driven its citizenry - particularly high wage earners - to places where success is rewarded. Go figure. You also know that the class warfare and big labor folks use as one of their primary arguments for paid leave, the number of other countries with paid leave (number of US states with paid leave stands at 1).
In today's Washington Post, Anne Applebaum touches on why the French are leaving France, and what Nicolas Sarkozy plans to do about it,
He understood, furthermore, that hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen had moved to Britain because "they are risk-takers, and risk is a bad word" in France....
To Americans, who've become used to the idea that people take jobs far from home, that people move to places where the economy is better and that consequently some cities shrink (St. Louis) while others grow (Los Angeles), there is nothing odd about the fact that the French now vote with their feet. There are better-paying jobs in London, taxes are lower in London, the economy grows faster in London: C'est la vie -- and tough luck for Paris....
All of this is, of course, precisely what previous generations of European politicians have feared. For the past decade, French, German and other European leaders have tried to unify European tax laws and regulations, the better to "even out the playing field" -- or (depending on your point of view) to make life equally difficult everywhere. The emigration patterns of the past decade -- and the past five years in particular -- prove that that effort has failed. Sarkozy's election campaign, if successful, might put the final nail in the coffin.
The political and economic consequences of this new mobility could be quite profound. Countries such as Poland and France may soon be forced to scrap those regulations and taxes that hamper employment, however much the French unions and the Polish bureaucracy want to keep them: If they don't, their young people won't come home. (emphasis ours)
Which brings us back to the question we have been asking since members of the Senate Labor Committee started romanticizing about life in certain countries in continental Europe and how their economies had managed and how we were merely demonstrating a lack of compassion: If the economy is managing so well in continental Europe, while simultaneously protecting the workforce so strongly, why are people leaving for better economies such as the US? Just askin'.
The April 5th edition of Time Magzine tells the same story.
Labels: French elections, New Jersey Competitiveness, paid family leave
