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Business Day
More Workers Are Claiming ‘Wage Theft’
A flood of recent lawsuits and government enforcement actions accuse employers across the country of violating laws regulating employee pay.Opinion
Europe’s Migration Crisis
The European Union needs a unified approach that would distribute the financial and social costs of coping with refugees more fairly.Opinion
How to Buy a Mine in Wisconsin
The state’s mine legislation is bad from an environmental point of view; it is even more shocking from an ethical viewpoint.U.S.
Desperately Dry California Tries to Curb Private Drilling for Water
Farmers have long believed that landowners controlled groundwater, but the state legislature passed new controls that establish a framework for managing water withdrawals through local agencies.
They haven't the ability.
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Opinion
Rearranging Deck Chairs in France
What François Hollande needs is not new faces but a new economic strategy."What’s The Matter With France?
Update: I wanted to add one more chart, showing real GDP growth since early 2008:
France has done better
than the euro area average, although obviously not as well as Germany —
but much better than the Netherlands, a creditor country nonetheless
deeply committed to austerity.
As I mentioned this morning,
France’s President Hollande, after years of passivity, has finally
taken strong action – firing anyone who questions his subservience to
German and EC demands for ever more austerity. But what’s actually going
on in the French economy? It is, of course, a catastrophe – hugely
uncompetitive, failing to create jobs, etc. etc. – that’s what everyone
says, so it must be true, right?
Actually looking at the data, however, reveals a number of surprises.
Let’s start with jobs.
France has low labor force participation by the relatively old, thanks
to generous retirement programs, and by the young, partly because
generous aid means that few need to work while in school, partly perhaps
because a high minimum wage and other factors discourage youth
employment. What about prime-age workers? Figure 1 compares France and
the United States. It’s a good thing we know that France is the country
in crisis, isn’t it? Because otherwise you might get confused by
employment performance that looks much better than ours.
Still, we know that
France is highly uncompetitive on world markets. Figure 2 shows the
French current account balance as a percentage of GDP, which is in, um,
mild deficit, nothing like the deficits the United States ran during the
“Bush boom”.
It’s interesting to
note, by the way, that in the great European divide during the euro’s
boom years, when costs in southern Europe surged relative to Germany,
creating a huge problem of adjustment, France was – as you can see in
Figure 3 – right in the middle, with no particular sign of getting out
of line. This puts it in a somewhat awkward situation now that southern
Europe is deflating while Germany refuses to inflate, causing an overall
deflationary bias in Europe. But this isn’t a French problem so much as
a euro problem.
Speaking of deflation,
France – as you can see in Figure 4 — is well below the conventional 2
percent target (which is too low) and falling fast. Mr. Hollande may
like to say that the French problem is supply-side, but it sure looks like demand-side by this criterion.
Still, France has to
worry about bond vigilantes. After all, international investors are so
worried about French prospects that they won’t lend to the country
without being paid … well, the lowest rates in French history (Figure
5).
OK, you get the picture. French economic data look nothing at all like the story everyone tells. Yes, you can tell stories of excessive regulation,
but they don’t dominate the macro picture. Yet Mr. Hollande is meekly
going along with demands for ever more belt-tightening, reserving his
wrath for those who want France to stand up for itself. And the result
is a sort of multiplier process in which austerity causes growth to
falter, which worsens the budget prospect, which leads to even more
austerity.
What’s going on here politically? Simon Wren-Lewis
makes a very good point. In America, many of the people who shape
economic discourse are forever living in the 1970s, when stagflation was
the order of the day; in France, the corresponding nightmare is the
early Mitterand era, when France was suffering from Eurosclerosis and an
attempt to pursue unilateral fiscal expansion (with a fixed exchange
rate) failed. But now is not then. To an important extent, what ails
France in 2014 is hypochondria, belief that it has illnesses it doesn’t –
and this hypochondria is leading it to accept quack cures that are the
real cause of its distress."
Not much.
World
Affiliate of Al Qaeda Confirms Capture of U.N. Peacekeepers in Syria
The Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda, said it had seized more than 40 peacekeepers because the United Nations failed to help the people of Syria during the country’s civil war.
World
Israel Claims Nearly 1,000 Acres of West Bank Land Near Bethlehem
The move could herald significant Israeli construction in the area — defying Palestinian demands for a halt in settlement expansion and challenging world opinion.Business Day
China Plans a Market for Carbon Permits
The nation plans to use the market, expected to be introduced in 2016, to slow its rapid growth in climate-changing emissions.N.Y. / Region
Showboat Casino Closes Amid Tears and Questions About Atlantic City’s Direction
Showboat, a New Orleans-themed casino owned by Caesars Entertainment, closed on Sunday at 4 p.m. Revel will shut its doors 37 hours later, early Tuesday morning.N.Y. / Region
Inspired by His Father’s Activism, Tim Wu Is Running for Lieutenant Governor as an Outsider
Mr. Wu, a Columbia law professor who is an expert in Internet law and policy, has waged a shoestring anti-establishment campaign in the Democratic primary.World
Germany Steps Up Its Response to Global Security Crises
The country’s top politicians on Sunday approved the delivery of thousands of machine guns and hand grenades, as well as hundreds of antitank missiles, to Kurdish forces battling Islamic militants in Iraq.Opinion
Obama and the Warmongers
The president’s deliberative approach to the ISIS threat may be drowned out by the chants for blood.
Behind the Cover Story: Emily Bazelon on Medical Abortion Through the Mail
Emily Bazelon, a contributing writer for the magazine, wrote this week’s cover story about the online distribution of medical abortions. Here she discusses reporting on a group of activists working to provide medical abortions through the mail.Opinion
In City Condos, Separate Entrances for Poor and Rich
Readers discuss whether developers should be allowed to create different entrances for renters and owners.
N.Y. / Region
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