Nicholas Wapshott is full of glorious praises for Sarkozy’s decision to go ahead with reforms of France's retirement and pensions plans. He asserts that he is breaking with old Europe’s illusions and delusions to embrace new Europe’s voluntarism and economic realism. Moreover, he uses the word extravagant to describe the French system, which is an ideological way to look at it since it implies that it does not reflect the French’s conscious choice about the way they want to live and the quality of life that they want to have, but simply their capricious and unrealistic refusal to adapt to the world:
Four months later, he is set to start putting that mandate into action. "I was elected to put in place deep reforms to modernize France, and those reforms will be completed," Mr. Sarkozy said on a recent trip to Germany. In a poll conducted in France this month, 68% said they favored reform of the special retirement schemes.
But it won't be easy. French workers have long derided the "Anglo Saxon economy" of free and open markets, preferring Mr. Sarkozy faces a more serious set of problems even than Prime Minister Thatcher confronted when she tamed the powerful British trade unions in the early 1980s, and it is by no means clear whether he has the courage and determination to press on with reforms in the face of strident opposition, as she did during the bruising yearlong British coal miners' strike of 1984–85.
The French system was largely installed in 1945, though some of the country's most extravagant working practices are much older than that.
The guiding principle, to reward those who work in dangerous jobs with early retirement and a full pension, has long been an anachronism.
Wapshott’s assertions are similar to the triumphant ones of Fukuyama in The End of History in which he make the staggering claim that there was one way for countries to succeed and that was to Americanize. I love the American way of life, but I also like diversity meaning that France to open to the world and reform, but to remain FRANCE. If Wapshott were right that would mean that political choices don’t matter for at the end, the market always win and that economics trumps politics. Thus, it would no longer be possible to choose quality over quantity and solidarity over individualism. It is true that socialism is dead but that doesn’t mean, I hope, that there is no alternative to neoliberalism and to the idea that any form of government plan or involvement within the market place is socialist and thus unacceptable.
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