PAUL KRUGMAN E "FRENCH FAMILY VALUES"

Numa altura em que tanto se discute a reforma do chamado "estado social", e em que muitos "iluminados" da nossa praça traçam paralelismos entre o que acontece na Europa e o que acontece nos EUA, nada melhor que darmos uma olhadela ao que diz, (do outro lado do Atlântico) sobre este tema, o muito respeitado (pela esquerda americana) e muito odiado (pela direita conservadora e religiosa americana) Paul Krugman.

Só para aguçar o apetite, um pequeno excerto:

"Americans tend to believe that we do everything better than anyone else. That belief makes it hard for us to learn from others. For example, I've found that many people refuse to believe that Europe has anything to teach us about health care policy. After all, they say, how can Europeans be good at health care when their economies are such failures?

Now, there's no reason a country can't have both an excellent health care system and a troubled economy (or vice versa). But are European economies really doing that badly?

The answer is no. Americans are doing a lot of strutting these days, but a head-to-head comparison between the economies of the United States and Europe - France, in particular - shows that the big difference is in priorities, not performance. We're talking about two highly productive societies that have made a different tradeoff between work and family time. And there's a lot to be said for the French choice"

O artigo foi publicado hoje, dia 29.7.2005 no New York Times, o que significa que têm mais cerca de 8 dias para o lêr gratuitamente. Depois é a pagar. Mas garanto que vale o investimento.