It's so much fun to pick on the French. Their Gallic haughtiness, which manifests itself in contempt for everything and everyone who isn't French — except for Jerry Lewis and tortured artists with greasy hair — is legendary.
So the French fracas over raising the national retirement age to 62, from 60, makes an easy target. How dare the lazy French, who already get something like 47 weeks of vacation a year and are forever taking six-hour lunches with their mistresses, complain about working two extra years?
French Socialists, as you might expect, charge that ordinary workers are being forced to bear the brunt of the financial crisis. President Nicolas Sarkozy, of the center-right Union for a People's Movement party, points to the gaping $41 billion shortfall in this year's payroll tax revenues and contends that France simply can't afford to continue its retirement policy.
Just like in “Les Miserables,” we'll see strikes and passionate picketing and mobs of angry workers. But in the end, there will be some kind of compromise (611/2, anyone?) and all the Sauvignon-besotted French still will be retiring years ahead of us hardworking Americans.
But before we start strutting around with our star-spangled sense of superiority, let's step back and look realistically at our own sense of entitlement.
Once you substitute dollars for euros, Americans are nearly as ridiculous as the French. Although we are worried about the ballooning federal deficit, we still want it all too — low taxes, cheap mortgages and ever-increasing government pensions (Social Security).
Yes, the political right in America has been warning about our profligate spending for some time. But once in power, Republicans, who traditionally have been the party of fiscal responsibility, turn out to be as liberal on the spending front as Democrats — yet they are reluctant to pay for their largesse through higher taxes.
The left, of course, doesn't mind taxing the rich, which it defines as anyone with earned income above the minimum wage.
But Democrats ignore the fact that income of $75,000 in practically every state other than Mississippi puts families solidly in the getting-by class, not the Nancy Pelosi wealthy class. And they refuse to accept that small businesses, where many owners make six-figure incomes, are the engine of job and wealth creation.
Because it is in the interests of Republicans to talk about tax-and-spend Democrats, and because it is in the interests of Democrats to talk about tax-cuts-for-the-rich Republicans, it is in no politician's interest to talk about the reality of America's fiscal plight.
The electoral successes of the Tea Party are a sign that many Americans are concerned about runaway government red ink. The solution is what's tough, and the big test will come when we must cut favorite programs (Social Security, Medicare, public-sector pensions and bridges to nowhere) and raise taxes too.
Will we buck up like John Wayne or bumble along like Inspector Clouseau?
E-mail Evan Cooper at ecooper@investmentnews.com.
