Sarkozy elected French president
 

http://today.reuters.com/misc/Printe...E-ELECTION.xml


BMT

On the surface, he seems better than Chirac or the Socialist. We shall see...

I wonder, how is he going to "get closer" to the US without angering the French Sheeple who see to be staunchly anti-US.

All I cared about was the Woman not winning. Not because she is a woman. I didn't want to hear SHillary make comparisons between us and France.

Some countries have legally mandated work hours and vacation day minimums. France has a 35 hour work week and a 5 week vacation minimum by law. The EU has imposed a 48 hour maximim work week directive that applies to every member except the UK. Most Europeans have 20 - 30, or more, days vacation a year.

Other work force perks, Spain has a 3 week "honeymoon leave" fully paid for just marrieds. Sweden gives 360 days of maternity leave at 80% of full salary. Plus there's still national holidays.

The work week is one of the things the new French president is looking at changing.

Hence the lower productivity and loss of GDP under socialism. Three shifts per day turn in 15 man-hours less work per week, for every three employees, requiring an extra employee for every seven workers to equal a 40-hour work week. If you factor in the month long vacations, you are probably closer to an extra employee for every five or six workers.

And they still have chronic un/underemployment.:rolleyes:

TR

They probably still would not have gone to Iraq if Sarkozy was president instead of Chirac at the time. Sarkozy and Chirac are in the same party albeit in different factions of it, the UMP which is the main party on the right. Also they both are in the network of Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris alum that pretty much run France. I would say Chirac is not on the left-wing but is a Gaullist which falls on the right and President Bush is not a conservative, but that’s another time.

It was not in France’s national interest to go into Iraq in my opinion . They also know from their history never to go to war for “moral” reasons, since medieval France blew a lot of its power and advantages on the Middle Eastern crusades. I’ll say a lot of things about the French, most of them bad, but when it comes to foreign policy realpolitik is their game, and they are ruthless pragmatists. They probably knew the WMD threat was hyperbole because they sold a lot of the dual use equipment Iraq used to use in their NBC programs. And also knew how important Saddam was to containing Iran. They also seem to have a pretty good picture of AQ and modern terrorism, and knew the AQ-Saddam connections were shenanigans.

They’ve been dealing with Islamic terror for some time. In ’94 GIA hijacked an Airbus with the intent to fly it into the Eiffel Tower, and they have been dealing with GIA’s offshoot the GSPC now called the al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb since its inception. I believe France has been a good ally in the “war on terror”. A lot of their political whining about it appears for domestic consumption. The French government knew about the renditions, more than likely aided in some of them, and with a clandestine service known for its ability to keep secrets has likely spearheaded some dark side stuff themselves.

I spent two weeks in SOUTHERN France (Toulouse) two years ago. I know that they are very happy now. No one would say anything nice about Chirac. They didn't seem to like 'northerners' very much. Most worked an extra 5 to 8 hours per week 'under the table' where possible.

My wife and I had a great time there, saw a stage of the TDF, and drank a lot of good wine. Wonderful place to spend a summer. As for Paris, ugh! Don't bother.

Mind you that the social programs that these nations operate have a commensurate level of taxation....(50% of income). Both parents work full time because basically one of them is working for the state.

Can you connect the dots between the EU work load and the unions here in the U.S.?
Ever wondered what has "driven" the U.S. auto industry into the ditch?

Exactly.

Ever wonder why a Toyota or a Honda built in the US can be as reliable as a Japanese made variant, but a union built Dodge or Ford has parts falling off on the way off the lot due to bad workmanship and a lack of QC?

IIRC, the Big Three asked for a tarriff be slapped on the small Japanese cars in the 70s while they "retooled" to make the smaller, more efficient cars. Congress complied, and the US manufacturers immediately raised prices on all of their models the same amount as the tarriff, without changing much of anything else. I suppose you could say that gave us the Gremlin, Vega, Pinto, Maverick, and some other pretty scary cars.

A union plant gets twice the wages, gives a big chunk back to the union, and kills the goose that laid the golden egg by slapping the parts on any way they want, as they have the job for life. Or they used to, those days appear to be disappearing fast. The US workers can do the job, in a competitive (read non-union) shop, where they are held to a standard and a job is not an entitlement program.

At one time, we owned four US made vehicles. As time went by, each one gave us trouble, and was replaced in turn by a Japanese car or truck (made in the US) that has given us pretty much flawless service. Fill the tank and check the oil, kick the tires and off we go. As opposed to, take the list of things that are wrong, make a Monday service appointment, juggle vehicles, call daily, go back Friday afternoon to pick it up, write a big check, look down the list at "Not able to duplicate", "Checked okay", "Within tolerances" etc., and drive off with it doing the same thing as when you brought it in. Call all the way up to the regional service rep, who examines the vehicle, says "Yep, it sure does seem to be doing that" and tells me to learn to live with it. Last ones left here are a Dodge truck, and my Harley, which has been the most reliable of all the US branded vehicles.

You fooled me once, shame on you, no new chances to fool me again.

TR

Get ready, because we're headed there ourselves. The window to reform Social Security has passed and the Baby Boom generation is getting ready to crush our economy as they retire. Marginal tax rates as high as 47-50% are pretty much inevitable over the next 20 years if we expect to make good on promised benefits (which we will, consequences be damned). :(

I'll leave that lie for now...I don't want to lead the thread further off the marked trail.....

I think the US car companies like GM pay a magnitude higher in costs per car than say Toyota for retirement/pension/healtchare etc.

Not only do unions drive costs higher, but they suffocate innovation. Anytime a process improve/change needs to be made on the manufacturing floor that results in some loss of labor, unions have fought it.

I remember a Ford rep in college showing us a powerpoint show of a fancy new robot that installed pistons in the engines. Their current method was to insert the pistions in by hand for that partiuclar engine. They couldn't put that robot in the existing line, but had to create a completely new line due to unions fighting any change on the floor. Funny how Toyota perfected ideas intially set in motion by Henry Ford with regards to process control, quality assurance, reduction of waste/, reduction of defects, etc.

Stagnation in business is a slow death. Flexibility and the ability to adapt will always be key. Businesses get corrected by the market, so should labor. Unions did great things back in the day when monopolies ran amok and the well being (Safety) of laborers was threatened. Contract non/unionized labor is providing better product. Maybe initially more expensive, but when the lifecycle cost is considered, the Japanese automakers can't be beat right now.

IMO France isn't going to change anytime soon though. Neither will Ford or GM. The new French President may sound 'great', but he still answers to the people of France.

Incentives
 

I'll go there just for a second or two.

Social Security reform was a no brainer two years ago, but remember, the democrats screamed on the hill that any privatized social security system would put many baby boomers and retiree's in dire financial straights. :rolleyes: Most democrats seem to have missed Econ 101 during their stay at Yale or Harvard, if they were lucky enough to have attended and graduated from any prestiguous University.

Here we sit with record highs on the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 and "The People" have not been given the choice to participate in that those milestones with the Social Security tax dollars. Bush enacted stonger saving bills, hence the Roth IRA and higher graduating IRA contribution limits out till the year 2008 when he first took office. This was done to incent Americans to save on their own, not rely on a pie in the skie called "Social Security" When in the history have we been able to save in a tax deferred account and then withdrawal the money at a set date in the future free of taxation ? Yet Roth IRA's and the standard IRA's seem to be the smallest part of the financial planning services industry. The democrats dont want the people saving for themselves, they can't control that money and they can't use it for anything else. Entitlements come to mind ? Voluntary privatization of Social Security was the only logical step to saving the system, yet the democrats are scared that they would have no control over those funds once a person elected to have his or her own private Social Security account invested in the Dow Jones or S&P 500 fund.

It's not a question of "If" Social Security breaks, it's a question of "when"

SMP:

Remember to that about $5000 of every retail price tag on an American made car was built into the price to make up for mismanaged pension funds by the Big 3.

Health insurance costs. Japan, having socialized (govt funded) health care, does not have to foot the cost of health benefits for it's Japanese employees (which are the vast majority of their work force). GM, on the other hand, spends 5.6 billion a year on health care.... that money is coming out of somewhere.

Also, the workers within many of the Toyota and Honda plants in the US are unionized (UAW), which indicates that there must be different reasons for the quality control issues present with US vehicles.

IMHO, there is a philosophical difference taken by the manufacturers themselves. The foreign manufacturers set out to make vehicles that lasted for 200K miles. The US manufacturers decided that it would be better for them to make vehicles that would crap out in 2-3 years, requiring the buyer to purchase another new vehicle..... That plan didn't work out so well.