Sneering at the French

I am still getting emails with snide jokes about the French. You’d think that since the re-revision of the congressional cafeteria menu from Freedom Fries back to French Fries, that whole thing would have died away.

If we are to dislike the French, then let us do so on a realistic basis: envy rather than condescension. How should we envy the French?

First, on the basis of the situation that started it all. The French are not mired down in Iraq. They thought that the WMD claims were nonsense, that Iraq was contained, and that the invasion was a bad idea. It turns out they were right. (Note: Some of us on this side of the Atlantic realized this at the time as well.) Their government is not bankrupting itself into the pockets of corrupt contractors. Their army is not being stretched to the breaking point. There are a couple of thousand French troops in Afghanistan, a few thousand sprinkled around Africa and South America, and a few thousand unfortunates stationed on islands in the Caribbean. The rest of the French Army is stationed in France, smoking Gauloises and looking cool in designer uniforms.

Free time.

The French take five-week paid vacations. Yes, five weeks, when most Americans fight for two. There would be a crippling general strike in France if this were reduced to four. I have heard that the French lunch hour has actually been reduced to an hour in some cases, but they still drink wine with the meal. Somehow, their economy survives. Please note that in a list including even moderately industrialized countries, only the U.S. has no minimum required paid vacation time. The Finns get seven weeks off from making our cellphones – envy them more.

Decent food.

The French simply would not accept the swill that is shoveled at Americans over Formica counters. France is a country with four hundred varieties of cheese, innumerable vineyards, and artisanal bakers on every corner. The French have specialty and sub-specialty shops dealing in what we would consider gourmet foodstuffs but what they consider the very least a civilized person could expect. Sure, there are McDonalds, but even their McDonalds are better than ours.

Better health.

The World Health Organization rates the U.S. healthcare system (if you could call it that) 37th, right ahead of Slovenia and just behind Costa Rica. France? Numero un. (Number one.) Even with all that rich food (see above) they have a higher average life expectancy. Their death rate from heart disease is 63% lower than ours, despite a higher rate of animal fat consumption. Some researchers think that all that wine drinking might protect their hearts.

The American Dream.

This is the kicker. There is a measure studied by sociologists called intergenerational income mobility. This is the mathematical relationship between the income of one generation and the next. If this is 1, it means that parental income absolutely determines the income of the next generation and there is no upward mobility whatsoever. If it is 0, then there is no parent/child income relationship, indicating an absolutely socioeconomically fluid society. France beats us at what is supposedly our own game, 0.36 to 0.61. A young French person has a far better chance than a young American of earning more than his or her parents.

The French are ahead of us in many ways, including our much vaunted social mobility. The facts of French life throw American exceptionalism back in our faces. For the flag-waving set this must be exceptionally painful. And then, of course, there is their condescension towards us. Perhaps well deserved.