If I have to be honoust, somewhat to my surprise, Sarkozy brought me some hope. In reaction to the by now famous golden parachute of Forgeard (EADS) of roughly 8 millions euros, after bringing EADS in only one year time both for the shareholders and the employees in a disastrous situation, Sarkozy preached some reason. A high salary is only justified, either by result or risk. If the result is absent, and/or there is no risk taken, then why would somebody be paid exceptionnally. There is hope Johana. Or should I say there is finally some common sense returning. So called market believers, often only believe in that market if it works in their interest, and otherwise they go for an unseen personal protectionism.
While being in Holland, I was always very impressed by a political party that is called D66 (clearly created in 1966) that labelled itself as democrats (in Dutch left-liberalists). I would like to call them pragmatists. They understand that any type of management (public or private) can be efficient or not; they understand that it is not the prime role of the government to take entrepreneurial initiatives; they have little or no dogmas in their political viewpoints; they value education and personal initiative. They did extremely well in the Dutch political scene, until a more conservatist movement took over 5 years ago. The party vanished away, also due to some unexplicable decisions.
And at the same time, in France, we still live a trade union movement that does not criticise the golden parachutes, that does not criticise the new paradigms of world wide liberal capitalism, but that still thinks in 60s-70s language of "exploitation", small salary increases, workers-capitalists (not understanding that managers are in fact employees just like them), that still strike whenever they should just take place around a negotiation table, and that are then surprised that the French economy does not do very good in the European arena. We will get some more regular strikes of the national raylway system, the air traffic controllers, some airports, etc, etc.
It takes time to built something nice, but it is easy and rapid to break it down.
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