French President Sarkozy is my Hero

Always remember that almost all mainstream European and most mainstream Canadian conservative politicians are liberal by US standards. In fact, they are more progressive than Obama and the Democrats. Sometimes, and in some respects, they are much more progressive than them.

As for Sarkozy, he is my hero. Here is a guy who the French for a few months after they voted him in were thinking was a mistake, but who has come through rather well all things considered. He has turned out to be much more resiliant and progressive and, well, French, than people were thinking back in the summer of 2008.

I'm afraid, though, that among the fascists who will be gathering in Pittsburgh, Sarkozy will be just a meaningless peasant. (Your presidency of France means nothing to us; see 1941 for details of what we mean. Laugh out loud.)

Seriously, It's not only that the US is not going to, as Sarkozy wants, adopt or even consider adopting broader and more realistic measures of and perspectives on the economy. It is worse than that. It is that the US is moving in the opposite direction to that as we speak.

The US is now running two separate economies: one for roughly the top 10-15%, and the other one for the other 85-90% of the population. For the top 10%, non-market, non-traditional perspectives and performance measures are simply irrelevant, since for them money (financial assets if you prefer) alone is all that matters. This is simply because the sheer amount of money they control is so massive that everything else you could possibly think of in economics (besides huge amounts of money and how fast those sums are growing) is unimportant.

Furthermore, the amount of money controlled by the rich is in fact determined by markets as traditionally defined, and as measured by the traditional indicators. Obviously, the higher the GDP growth, the more profits by big corporations there are, and so the more money there is for the top, regardless of whether there are any new jobs being created or not.

Meanwhile, since they have no political representation, and since they as of now refuse to stand up for themselves and, for example, demand health care, or demand jobs, etc, the welfare of the bottom 85-90% is totally meaningless to the wealthy power elite. So no new economic measures or perspectives are needed for them. Let them eat cake.

So sorry, President Sarkozy, America is not interested in new economic parameters (or in economic progress, for that matter) for the middle or the lower classes, so go back to Paris like a good little boy and don't make a fuss.

The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.