French Holidays

As a full blooded capitalist reactionary pig-dog I'm of course not supposed to like this:

The average working Frenchman spends 37 days en vacances, with Italy in second place on 33 days, according to Harris Interactive, the American polling institute.

Workshy continentals, lazing around all the time etc. However:

While almost half of Italians declared that they would be prepared to work more, 80 per cent of the French were not prepared to do so.

The thought does arise though, what is it that we're actually aiming for? Being a good little classical liberal (as well as reactionary pig-dog) it's actually the maximum ability for people to go to hell in the handbasket of their own devising. As Adam Smith pointed out, the purpose of all and any production is consumption and if the French prefer to consume leisure then that's entirely up to them.

The only problems from my point of view therefore become those of those 20% of the French who would like to work more but cannot because of the mandatory 35 hour week or those half of Italians who cannot work longer because of the structural inefficiencies within their economy.

Which then leads to the policy prescription: tear down those regulatory insistences and allow people to decide for themselves: if they all choose leisure over work, well, who am I to blame them?

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