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How France is surviving the economic crisis
- ulvund 17y agoMy impression is that the French did not buy derivatives.
- TriinT 17y agoThat's a retarded statement. There are tons of derivatives. Would you care to be more specific? A counter-example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2008_Soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9_G%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale_trading_loss_incident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2008_Soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9_...
- known 17y agoInvestment (French) versus Consumerism (Bush Regime)
- tybris 17y agoDoesn't seem like they're doing that well. The Netherlands is a more interesting case. Booming in prosperious times, yet a stable unemployment rate of around 3% during this crisis (lowest in the EU).
- Luc 17y ago3%? Perhaps by the EU's definition, according to which someone who works at least one hour/week is not considered unemployed. The latest Dutch figure was 4.4%. Of course, that's still only for people actively looking for a job, with less than 12h/week of employment, and within a certain age bracket.
- laut 17y agoFrance economic policy doesn't look so bad if you compare it to other failed policies and look at them in a myopic way. So they throw in a graph with life expectancy and total public spending as a % of GDP. France ranks high on both (compared to the few other selected countries). Oh great. But correlation does not mean causation. Let's look at the country with the highest life expectancy in the world: Andorra. So do they have high taxes like in France? Anyone care to guess how much income tax they have in Andorra? ;) The Economists seems to me like a magazine like any other. Just like a tabloid they write whatever sells.
- anigbrowl 17y agoOh please. Only ~75,000 people live in Andorra and 80% of their economy derives from tourism - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andorra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andorra. You might as well compare the USA with Brunei.
- timr 17y ago"correlation does not mean causation" Stop saying that. First, you're saying it wrong: correlation does not imply cause. Second, you're misinterpreting the implication: a correlation certainly could indicate a causal relationship, but it doesn't have to indicate a causal relationship. In other words, you're not making an argument, unless you show that there's a reason that a causal relationship should be discounted. In this case, the French spend enough money on public health and social benefits that there's reason to believe that the relationship is more than coincidental.
- laut 17y agoYes, that should have been "imply". Sorry, I'm not a native english speaker. So with that out of the way do you think there is anything wrong with "correlation does not imply causation"? Denmark has high government spending too. But the average life expectancy is rather low compared to other similar countries. "In this case, the French spend enough money on public health and social benefits that there's reason to believe that the relationship is more than coincidental." Why?
- timr 17y agoWell, why not? Maybe the French spend it on different, more effective things than the Danes. Maybe the French have better health care. Maybe the French have better food. Maybe you're totally wrong about the statistics. I don't know enough about the subject to make an informed comment. All I know for sure, is that "correlation does not imply cause" is not an argument. We study correlations because when we find them, they usually point the way to interesting phenomena. If we discounted the meaning of every correlation as mere coincidence, there would be no point in searching for them at all.