Why France is screwed

If you have wondered why the French economy is a mess (forget about why they hate us, tho this is relevant to that issue as well), read this from the New York Times on the French rejection of the EU Constitution:

At the polling place at the Karl Marx primary school in downtown Bobigny, a working-class suburb of Paris...

Bernard Birsinger, the suburb's Communist mayor...

What more do you need to know? France is self-screwing.

Pollsters said the rejection reflected French voters' anger at the 72-year-old president and his center-right government for failing to improve the country's troubled economy, as well as fear that the treaty would erode France's generous cradle-to-grave social safety net.

The debate had been colored by fear of the mythical "Polish plumber," the worker from recent European Union members from the East who is increasingly free to move West and willing to work for lower pay than Frenchmen.

Proponents of the "no" fueled voters with fear of a more powerful European Union where France no longer has influence, and of an increasingly "Anglo-Saxon" and "ultraliberal" Europe where free-market capitalism runs wild.

So long as they demand policies which destroy their economy, but attribute the results to capitalisme, they are going to continue destroying themselves and fueling even more efforts which will make things worse for themselves.

Maybe the smart ones will do what so many of the Dutch have been doing lately: emigrate.

Fear of free movement of labor within Europe is much like it was in the northern United States when black southerners started moving up here in the search for factory jobs. That movement provoked a lot of racism, but that doesn't mean free movement of labor is a bad thing. It does provoke anger tho.

For French to denounce the British economic system as ultra-liberal free-market capitalism run wild just proclaims how out of touch with reality they really are. It is sad. The French are self-screwing, but they have convinced themselves that others are to blame. That disjunction between cause and effect, reality and perception, will continue to cause a lot of ill in our world.

Thank you, Karl Marx.