Tuesday, November 14, 2006

The Economist goes snarky

The Economist has a new blog. In keeping with magazine tradition, the contributions are unsigned, but some of them have a surprisingly feisty or contentious flavor, as though the writers had been waiting for a genre in which to spoil for a fight.

Case in point: a post from today takes up, in pointing to a working paper from the IMF, the question of how the French and their economy have been affected by the 35-hour work week. The writer's closer, allegedly summing up the IMF findings:

(i) why and how do the French fool themselves into thinking that such crazy laws can have any useful effect?;

(ii) what elaborate public policy mechanism prevents them learning from past errors?

(iii) does anything ever make the French happy at all, even inadvertently?

Whoa there, that level of snark is positively Gawkerish. Imagine The New Yorker having a blog of this kind. I don't see why the French labor restrictions get everyone so riled up (even the non-French). Are we all secretly jealous? Is it that any worker-friendly policies have become hopelessly backward?

Posted by Evan Hughes at 04:45 PM

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