La France and the good life (cont'd)
Let us dispel once and for all the notion that the good life is the exclusive province of the French. There are certain social arrangements, in France, that make it possible for a large proportion of the population to enjoy heavily discounted education, health care and decent retirement benefits. But is that the good life?
It's all a matter of proportions : if you live in Paris, have an advanced degree in something and come from an old family (i.e. that owns some real estate), then you're most likely to be fine. A French upper class professional probably makes significantly less money than her American counterpart. However, her kids will go for free to the best high schools in all of France (Louis-Legrand/Henri IV/Fénelon, all within a square kilometer on the Left Bank). They will then go on to attend a Grande Ecole, the French Harvard and Princeton and Columbia rolled into one neat little package. These vaunted Great Schools are also located, for the most part, on the Left Bank. Some are more expensive than others. For instance Sciences-Po is semi-private and charges something like 3000 euros a year. Pretty cheap for your entry ticket into the French governing elite. Some like the Ecole Normale Supérieure actually pays its students a full entry-level government job salary. So in the best case scenario, your kids will actually get significant money (at least for a 20 year-old) and lifetime job security if they manage to get into the equivalent of Harvard. Point is, in France, if you're rich, educated and live in Paris you're basically set.
Being from Paris is in fact crucial. What applies to educational institutions also applies to hospitals, museums, government and economic life. To my knowledge, France is the only country of such import that is that heavily centralized. This is a unique situation, which goes back centuries. Everything that really matters happens in Paris. The French economic, cultural and political elites live, work and play in Paris. Sure, they might temporarily migrate to the South or the West in the summer. But all in all, they overwhelmingly gravitate towards the City of Lights. Compare that to the US, where New York is the cultural and financial center, D.C. handles the government, LA does entertainment, San Francisco takes care of high-tech growth, Boston leads in education, etc, etc... In the same vein, France has no equivalent in Europe or Asia. Germany or Spain are proudly decentralized, and so are England and Italy. Even Turkey, that herald of Jacobin orthodoxy, balances between Ankara and Istanbul.
But let's go back to the question of the good life. France's centralization heavily determines who has access to the good life. The closer you are to the center, the cheaper it is to access the best schools, the best jobs, the best services, the best shopping, the best museums, the best theaters and the best hospitals. So yes, provided you are in Paris, you'll enjoy the good life, international-class, for a very modest cost. You'll be connected to the global cities, you'll be part of that other Internationale of decision-makers and opinion-makers and money-makers, and you'll live like a bourgeois new-yorker for a third of what it would take in New York City, LA, London or Kowloon. I suspect this is precisely what enrages so many American journalists.
Now, for the rest of France, I don't know. It's all very picturesque and charming, but would you ever want to live in Bitche or Gueret on the French median salary (about $1800 per month)? or worse, be treated for cancer there?... I didn't think so.
