Sarkozy: France's Margaret Thatcher

The realpolitik of economic globalization has finally hit home for the French people. They no longer live in a bubble-wrapped world, where 35-hour work weeks and six-week paid vacations are normal. While these perks should be normative, the hungry of China and India will perform the same work for much less pay and under much more stringent conditions.

So the French trade unions will go on demonstrating and picketing, even as their ranks are thinning. Only seven percent (yes 7%) of the French labor force are unionized, a surprisingly low number that is about half that of the United States (Source: Los Angeles Times, 11/23/2007).

Nevertheless, Sarkozy – thirty years after Margaret Thatcher – has the difficult and unenviable task of dismantling the entrenched welfare-nanny state that has made France unproductive and inefficient. We wish him all the best because he WILL need it.