SORROW FOR THE SLOTHFUL:

A Race to the Top (THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, 6/03/05, NY Times)

It was extremely revealing traveling from Europe to India as French voters (and now Dutch ones) were rejecting the E.U. constitution - in one giant snub to President Jacques Chirac, European integration, immigration, Turkish membership in the E.U. and all the forces of globalization eating away at Europe's welfare states. It is interesting because French voters are trying to preserve a 35-hour work week in a world where Indian engineers are ready to work a 35-hour day. Good luck.

Voters in "old Europe" - France, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy - seem to be saying to their leaders: stop the world, we want to get off; while voters in India have been telling their leaders: stop the world and build us a stepstool, we want to get on. I feel sorry for Western European blue collar workers. A world of benefits they have known for 50 years is coming apart, and their governments don't seem to have a strategy for coping.

If he really cares about Frenchmen anbd Germans, which would be inexplicable, he should feel guilty--it was the Marshall Plan and NATO that rescued their secular social welfare systems and doomed their nations in the first place.

MORE:
Brussels is burning (Jonah Goldberg, June 3, 2005, Townhall)

One of the fascinating factors in the French referendum was that anti-Americanism of one kind or another motivated both yes and no voters. The yes voters were interested in, among other things, creating the sort of European superstate the French have envisioned for decades. The no voters were concerned that the EU Constitution would usher in American-style "ultraliberalism" (one thing the Europeans do have going for them is they still use the word "liberal" correctly).

The French have absurdly lavish social welfare policies, particularly for the middle class and for workers. Opening France to more economic competition threatens their cushy perks.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 3, 2005 12:02 AM