In recent months I’ve read at least ten articles about French malaise — all of it apparently due to some mysterious Gallic trait that makes the world’s luckiest people unable to make the best of things. Granted, unemployment is over 10 per cent, the Germans are again running Europe, and François Hollande’s ‘socialist’ government is coming apart at its hypocritical seams. But I don’t buy the thesis that the French are generally ‘miserable’, as Paris School of Economics professor Claudia Senik argued last month in the Financial Times. Indeed, I felt almost defiant as my wife and I boarded the Eurostar in London two weeks ago and headed off to Paris to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary.
I’m not the most objective observer. Being half-French and working in New York, I don’t have to put up with the aggravations that my French friends and relatives complain about (like how hard it is to fire anyone). Still, I feel that if I hear one more of my French compatriots blather on about Saint Obama and their ‘Rêve Américain’, I’m going to scream. There’s a good reason the French didn’t emigrate in huge numbers to the United States from 1890 to 1920, and that reason hasn’t changed. With all their current difficulties, the fact remains that the average French citizen lives better than his American counterpart. You can look it up on the most respectable websites, including the UN’s and Unicef’s.
Unlike Professor Senik, however, I favour anecdotes over statistics to make my case. My first witness is the distinguished American publisher André Schiffrin, who splits his time evenly between New York and Paris, where he was born. André’s repatriation is remarkable, given that he and his family had to flee France in 1941 because of the Vichy government’s anti-Semitic collaboration with the Nazis.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in