Wall Street Opinion Journal JOEL KOTKIN Tuesday, November 8, 2005
France’s rigid economic system sustains privilege and inspires resentment.
The French political response to the continuing riots has focused most on the need for more multicultural “understanding” of, and public spending on, the disenchanted mass in the country’s grim banlieues (suburbs). What has been largely ignored has been the role of France’s economic system in contributing to the current crisis. State-directed capitalism may seem ideal for American admirers such as Jeremy Rifkin, author of “The European Dream,” and others on the left. Yet it is precisely this highly structured and increasingly infracted economic system that has so limited opportunities for immigrants and their children. In a country where short workweeks and early retirement are sacred, there is little emphasis on creating new jobs and even less on grass-roots entrepreneurial activity.
Since the ’70s, America has created 57 million new jobs, compared with just four million in Europe (with most of those jobs in government). In France and much of Western Europe, the economic system is weighted toward the already employed (the overwhelming majority native-born whites) and the growing mass of retirees. Those ensconced in state and corporate employment enjoy short weeks, early and well-funded retirement and first dibs on the public purse. So although the retirement of large numbers of workers should be opening up new job opportunities, unemployment among the young has been rising: In France, joblessness among workers in their 20s exceeds 20%, twice the overall national rate. In immigrant banlieues, where the population is much younger, average unemployment reaches 40%, and higher among the young.
One of my major criticisms of the WSJ and pubs like Forbes or Business Week is their leftist attachment to economic determinism. Poverty or joblessness, per se, are not responsible for turning people into pillaging monsters. It is almost as if Marxism is alive and well, not in Moscow, but in the editorial rooms of right-wing publications. There are tons of jobless people in Poland or Slovakia, for example, and none of them are currently burning anything. Last time I checked, the unemployment in Poland was over 10%, while fully 50% of the country would qualify as ‘poor.’
Unemployment may play a facilitating role in that these young men are hanging around with nothing better to do, so that opens up time and opportunity to get into trouble. But, there has to be other factors at work. Probably, we are seeing the actual convergence of multiple factors. Political scientists refer to them as ‘cross-cutting cleavages’ in society. We have a minority that is simultaneously 1) poor 2) culturally alienated 3) geographically compact 4) unwilling to assimilate 5) under the influence of an ideology that informs them of their superiority to the culture around them which is trying to oppress them and hurt them spiritually. At the same time, none of those factors shows the slightest chance of improvement anytime soon.
The WSJ has a piece of this right, but is missing the overall picture. Same is true with almost every other critique of this situation.
Unemployment in Poland is huge. Polish workers travel to France to get jobs they couldn�t find in their Homeland, looking for the welfare of their lot. They are too busy to burn cars and rioting.