Frequent Naps or la Mort!
April 5th, 2006As investment capital flows ever more freely across borders, why would anyone open a plant in France?
I love Paris. It’s a wonderful place to vacation, lounge, sip wine in the afternoon, stroll. Thanks to the French protesters, employers will increasingly view France as a leisure destination rather than a compelling investment zone.
Thousands of French students are stomping along in their Nikes, texting each other on their mobile phones, protesting capitalism and the affront of having to work hard to retain their jobs. As a student of Mandarin, I can only imagine that their placards read “I Am Bored with Your Capital!†or “Frequent Naps or Death!†(French is such a 20th century language, who can be bothered to study it anymore?) They have succeeded in securing wall-to-wall coverage of their spectacle on infotainment peddler CNN and the front pages of newspapers worldwide. However, this achievement will cost them dearly over the long term, as unemployment will persist, capital will flow elsewhere, and the deficit will continue to swell under the burden of welfare.
France’s long history of nationalized and subsidized industries, combined with massive social programs, has enabled and nurtured an unattractive work ethic among all but the top tier of skilled workers. Cultural attitudes have inculcated a sense of entitlement into university graduates, who believe that mere graduation from school has earned them permanent jobs. Employers are very reluctant to hire incremental workers in France because of strict labor laws that guarantee lengthy contracts regardless of job performance. The controversial new law proposes to address the unemployment problem by easing restrictions on firing employees. If employers knew they could freely rid themselves of slackers, they would be far more willing to hire more workers. Similarly, the new emphasis on productivity would improve French economic efficiency – integral to global competitiveness. The industries that attract the most capital in France – technology, business services and manufacturing – are among the most vulnerable to competition from the cheap, highly skilled workers of India and China.
Given France’s staggering unemployment, as high as 23% for young people, capital should logically be flowing into the country to capitalize on an eager, available, educated labor pool. However, according to global consultancy A.T. Kearney, in 2003 France was the second largest exporter of foreign direct investment (FDI), which includes long-term investment such as manufacturing plants. This coincides with a dramatic decline in portfolio capital inflows, which includes short-term investments. A.T. Kearney ranked France 35th among the top 40 services locations worldwide in terms of cost, people skills and availability, and business environment. While French workers rank very highly in terms of productivity per hour, limited work weeks and strict labor protection laws stifle hiring practices. Capital flight combined with an unfavorable labor environment is a recipe for prolonged economic stagnation.
Prohibitively high corporate taxes versus other European countries serve as another impetus to shift capital toward nearby Eastern Europe, which has a far more flexible work force. French workers must demonstrate compelling productivity to compensate investors for France’s high-tax structure, rather than protest such expectations. France has already has to liberalize its capital controls under pressure from pervasive economic globalization. Capital is like water - it will always find the most efficient investment opportunity and will make no apologies for ditching a spoiled work force.
The French protesters should be very concerned about the global image they are cultivating through the anti-hard work stance they have struck. They claim they are trying to preserve their way of life – live more, work less. Their worldwide public display in defense of languor will guarantee that they will be the last generation to chant this mantra.
Hmm, I wonder how much the French will miss all of that American investment? Hmm, how much American investment goes there anyway???? Might be worth looking up.
Probably increasingly less, and not just from the U.S. So for all of you people whining about the evils of outsourcing, wake me up the next time you see Chinese workers protesting that they’re expected to work hard.
The Chinese will whine. Not now, maybe, but in due course. First the sexual revolution will hit (which it has in coastal cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou) and then the worker’s revolution. (sexuality/the breakdown of family culture has a funny way of working as a catalyst for change). That migrant laborers from river towns and peasant villages all over China are still indoctrinated with Mao exercises at daybreak, and that parents who in the past hardly had to worry about paying for their childrens’ education now do, is sign that the Deng Xiaopeng “greed is good” revolution ain’t such a pretty picture. Just because Chinese and Indians and other Asian laborers seeimingly have a better work ethic now, doesn’t mean that this much touted ethic means anything more than that these cultures remain embedded in highly regimented traditional societies. Wait until women start dropping their saris in India or kiss in public in China, let alone hold hands, then you’re going to see a backlash.
France was the last bastion of open vital sexuality. In America we have moved to the opposite extreme, as a culture that prizes a commodified version of all pleasures. According to Richard Wolin, a History Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center commenting on a recent article in TheOpenDemocracyForum on Michel Houellebecq’s book “Extension du domaine de la lutte” (English translation: “Whatever”), a study of French youth culture:
“[The French] are the new “hollow men” – and women. The lives they lead are compartmentalised, regimented, insubstantial and soulless. They travel from sleek, prefabricated apartment buildings to sterile and impersonal office complexes, often working twelve-hour days. After hours, they are good for little more than a stiff drink and a meaningless stretch of satellite-television viewing.”
And from Houllebecq:
“Sure, you manage to live according to the rules. Sometimes it’s tight, extremely tight, but on the whole you manage it. Your tax papers are up to date. Your bills are paid on time. You never go out without your identity card. Yet you haven’t any friends … The fact is that nothing can halt the ever-increasing recurrence of those moments where your total isolation, the sensation of an all-consuming emptiness, the foreboding that your existence is nearing a painful and definitive end, all combine to lunge you into a state of real suffering … You have had a life. There have been moments when you were having a life. Of course you don’t remember too much about it; but there are photographs to prove it … Existence seemed so rich in new possibilities. You might become a pop singer, go off to Venezuela.”
The question may be more existential and human than purely economic. The sheer force and pressures, the fast blowing wind that German literary critic Walter Benjamin alluded to as “progress”, may have it’s drawbacks.
Just because France is “losing investment capital” and China has a steady, but of course, dependent stream of hard working laborers, doesn’t mean that the French model is completely bankrupt & that all should bow to the Anglo-American “corporate welfarist but still free market” way of doing business. Redundancy infects the system.
Sexual politics like “individualist” politics will catch up with the Far East…The last stage in the dialectic, of course, is a ‘pre-fabricated existence’. That is, unless you have the time and energy to invest in protests to retain a system of work (35 hour/weeks), that, in my mind, still seems sufficiently reasonable.
[...] In his comment to my post Frequent Naps or la Mort!, Jason Kropsky writes “…The Chinese will whine. Not now, maybe, but in due course. First the sexual revolution will hit (which it has in coastal cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou) and then the worker’s revolution. (sexuality/the breakdown of family culture has a funny way of working as a catalyst for change)…” [...]