fatvegan

I've read so many articles recently about how much of a mess France is in. Apparently they have all sorts of problems when everything you could imagine. High unemployment, low growth, nasty unions and the general unhelpful attitude that the economy isn't very important. I've wondered about this. French people seem pretty happy and well off. The government tried to make them more like the US, and everyone told them not to. If things are so horrible there, why are people so keen to keep things the way they are? Nonetheless, The Economist insists that they change and become more like Britain or the US. It's their only hope of not descending "into a graceful poverty."

So I had a look and GDP levels, and growth rates and unemployment rates. They didn't strike me as anything particularly special. The same income level as Britain. The same growth rate as Britain. Lower on both counts than the US, but so are nearly all developed countries. It does turn out that the French work far less than other people. The average worker in France works 1459 hours a year (compared to 1815 in the US and 1707 in the UK), and the average person works 611 hours (US:866, UK:785). The ratio is different because France has higher unemployment and presumably lower work participation. I thought that maybe France would have much lower productivity than the US because, as we all know, the US is the king of productivity. This is sort of true, but also not really true. I made a little graph to show it. It's a little confusing. It basically tells you how much is added to GDP for every hour that someone works. It turns out that the French are actually rather good at working - they just do a lot less of it.

Source: OECD

Now it's kind of an unfair comparison because the US has a whole lot of unproductive workers earning $7/hour (minimum wage), who you wouldn't expect to be contributing $48/hour to GDP. And the more productive people have to make up for those less productive people, who in France would just be unemployed. However, unemployment in France isn't that high and they've voluntarily chosen to reduce their working hours.

The other interesting thing about this is that for some poor US worker contributing $7/hour to the economy (because the theory says your wage equals value created) you have wonder why they even bother working. $7/hour is far closer to $0/hour than it is to the average rate. The average person will generate in 10 minutes what it takes them an hour to generate.

Based on this if I had to choose between living the US or in France, I think I'd prefer to work in France. If it was a choice between Britain and France.... well I'm not sure that's really a choice. The British work far harder (22% actually), for exactly the same income as France. If you then think about French wine and cheese and sun, then it's hard to comprehend why there isn't a mass exodus. Rather than the other way around, as The Economist would have you believe. I'm beginning to wonder if graceful poverty is actually far more fun than it sounds. Give me French poverty over Aussie prosperity any day.