8.17.2005

Hilarious!

I saw this once before, laughed my ass off and then promptly forgot about it, so I felt compelled to post it this time. It consists of a series of frames from a bootleg "Revenge of the Sith" DVD and contains the "direct English translation of the Chinese interpretation of what the script was saying," and it's hilarious.
For instance: "Let the force be with you," becomes, "ratio tile, the wish power are together with you." While not terribly funny, it at least offers a comparison. This is just plain funny.

"Giving first aid the already disheveled hair projection"
or
"I was just made by the Presbyterian church."

Devaluing a MIT PhD like no one else...

Whenever there’s a topical overlap between Paul Krugman and France, I gotta blog about it.

A few weeks ago the left’s favorite economist wrote “The French Choice”, a NYTimes editorial arguing that despite a yawning gap in fiscal measures of standard of living; the French just have different and arguably better societal priorities. Since no leftist economy has ever managed to exceed the US standard of living (except for when we briefly had our own leftist economy under Carter) this un-provable argument has always been the refuge of last resort for the intellectually dishonest; first in the context of communism and now in the context of France. Next to a lobotomy such twisted reasoning is the only way to quiet the cognitive dissonance of educated leftists actively pushing the very same policies which are now pulling their dream state under. “It’s not worse…it’s just different!”.

Actually it is.

The only empirical measure for Krugman’s claim that the only difference between the French and American economies is “priorities, not performance” is the utterly dishonest comparison of productivity per hour. Per hour worked, France’s economic output is slightly higher than the US but to argue that this in any way reflects the productive value of an economy is disgraceful – especially for an Economist with a PhD from MIT. It would be the same to argue that some lucky rookie baseball player who has a hit his first time at bat is as good or better than Barry Bonds who fails to get a hit over 60% of the time. Through policies such as the 35 hour work week and regulations which make it nearly impossible to fire anyone, only the very fittest population in the French work force is employed. Productivity per hour is the only measure which hides the vast number of unproductive members of French society. When the entire population is taken into consideration, a picture less favorable to Krugman’s argument comes into view:



While Krugman admits the obvious: “that the typical French family, without question, has lower disposable income. This translates into lower personal consumption: a smaller car, a smaller house, less eating out.” He attempts to put a happy face on the situation by arguing that having a minimum 7 weeks paid leave for the employed (it’s family fun all year round for everyone else!) is more than an adequate trade off for a lower standard of living. A generation ago, one could make such an argument and not get laughed at but the truth is that the current generation is swiftly becoming poorer. Fewer and fewer Parisians can even afford to leave their homes for the traditional August vacation. Instead they must sit on trucked in sand overlooking that glorified open sewer, the Seine.

And for as good as French schools may be, the future is bleak for their graduates. This quarter the US economy grew 35 times faster than the French economy.

Krugman is right to be concerned about France’s inevitable slide into poverty. It will be harder and harder for his lot to convince the US to take their medicine when the corpse of their last patient is rotting nearby.