Government taken over by Bankers ?

Originally Posted by dteowner
What do you call an economy that darn near guarantees employment for life?

The unemployment rate in France is 7.40%.

There's certainly no merit-based hire/fire dynamic to churn your labor pool and demand that they progress. I would think a free market would include competition in the labor sector.

That's not true. The French labor market *is* very heavy, and it *is* more difficult to fire employees than in most other countries, but that doesn't mean it's not happening at all, or even that it's happening orders of magnitude less than in comparable economies.

Once again, you're taking a difference in degree and making it look like a difference in quality — in the USSR, for example, you really *did* have guaranteed employment for life, regardless of merit.

N.b.: I don't think the French system is a particularly successful one; IMO the Danish/Scandinavian one strikes a much better balance between worker security and market flexibility. But if you genuinely believe that you can go to France, march to the Big Government Employment Office, and they'll give you a 35-hour-a-week, 7-week-paid-vacation job for life regardless of what you do while on the job, you're so badly mistaken that it's borderline delusional.

It's the same sort of argument—while they both fit under broad umbrellas such as "advanced capitalist economies", that in no way forces them to be considered equivalent.

It all depends on your point of view, padawan. If we look at things globally, including countries like China, North Korea, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uganda, and Brazil in our comparison, then they most certainly should be put in the same basket. But if we narrow our focus to include only advanced capitalist countries, then obviously differences are going to emerge.

Originally Posted by JemyM
It's in the providers best interest to increase their income or at least keep it stable. This leads to using all sorts of strategies to increase demand such as advertisement and other kinds of "customer-catchers". It's also their interest to block reduction in demand.

Alright, thanks for taking the time to explain that further. I can see now why companies want to prevent bad news of them and their products becoming public. It can decrease demand which directly has effect on their income.

And when it comes to the drugs trade, blocking decrease in demand means keeping people addicted and enslaved to drugs.

I still see an industry like the arms production, with tight regulations and sanctions, could be allowed to compete though. The motivation to go around regulations for profit still does exist there. But these days news of companies breaking laws travel really fast, which helps to keep keep an eye on the companies. Edit: Not to mention create another motivation for the companies to keep themselves in check.

Originally Posted by Surlent
I still see an industry like the arms production, with tight regulations and sanctions, could be allowed to compete though. The motivation to go around regulations for profit still does exist there. But these days news of companies breaking laws travel really fast, which helps to keep keep an eye on the companies. Edit: Not to mention create another motivation for the companies to keep themselves in check.

Bad example, may I present the international arms trade:

http://www.amnestyusa.org/arms-trade/page.do?id=1011003

There may be tight regulations in some regions but internationally the arms trade is just sickening.

Incidenly Lord of War was a really good film based on a real arms dealer.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
The unemployment rate in France is 7.40%.



That's not true. The French labor market *is* very heavy, and it *is* more difficult to fire employees than in most other countries, but that doesn't mean it's not happening at all, or even that it's happening orders of magnitude less than in comparable economies.

I seem to remember a bunch of kids rioting in France for precisely that reason. There was a racial angle as well, but supposedly a key problem was that the young couldn't get jobs.
http://riotsfrance.ssrc.org/Salanie/

As an economist, I will focus on what appears to me to be one of the root causes of the riots, namely the obscenely low employment rate of the young in France, and especially of low-skilled young men.

http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unyin/documents/ch02.pdf (I should get bonus points for this source)

One of the key reasons why unemployment tends to be higher among young
people than among adults relates to the existence of “job queues”.24 As new entrants
to the labour market, young people may find themselves at the back of the line for
jobs; they tend to be hired only when there is a relatively high aggregate demand for
labour because employers often prefer experienced workers. Other significant factors
relate to the higher levels of job-changing among young workers, to redundancy policies
based on the “last-in, first-out” principle,25 and to the lower levels of job protection
afforded to new workers.

Originally Posted by dteowner
I seem to remember a bunch of kids rioting in France for precisely that reason. There was a racial angle as well, but supposedly a key problem was that the young couldn't get jobs.
http://riotsfrance.ssrc.org/Salanie/

Right. So how does this square with your belief that France guarantees lifetime employment for all and sundry?

http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unyin/documents/ch02.pdf (I should get bonus points for this source)

Ten points, with a little gold star and a parrot sticker. Of especial note is the job INstability for young workers, again squarely at odds with your earlier belief that the French system's main problem is that it ensures lifetime employment.

That's exactly what's wrong with the French labor market — but that doesn't mean firing and hiring doesn't happen at all, or happens orders of magnitude differently than in other advanced capitalist countries, or that France isn't a "true" free market country, whatever that may mean.