And literally all the limits on those things are artificial. Its the same right wing idiots that want this referendum that prevent smart transportation infrastructure in cities, that delay important transportation investments, that prevent bike infrastructure, that had the brilliant plan of buying cheap energy from France and Germany and so on.
France is mostly empty by Europe's population density standard though, so even though it was likely not the intent of GP, it kind of works in that context.
Which is so weird! France has large amounts of good farmland, some of the most modern (and unified, unlike Germany) government in Europe for a long time etc... no obvious reason to have just half the population density of Germany.
France used to be “the China of Europe” (which is why we kept being at war with the whole continent at once). Had France followed their neighbors' demographic, it would be home to more than 200 million people today.
The demographic collapse of France in the 19th century, while Germany kept growing, alone explains the French defeat in 1870 (and then the two world wars).
> no obvious reason to have just half the population density of Germany.
France was historically always focused on Paris, because that was where the Emperor was. If you were not a farmer, there was little reason to live anywhere but Paris or other large cities.
In contrast, Germany historically consisted of thousands of small fiefdoms that each held some sort of local importance and each held authority of some sort. The Kaiser was pretty far away and only mattered in practice when the Kaiserreich was involved in some sort of conflict.
> France was historically always focused on Paris, because that was where the Emperor was.
So much misconception in such a short sentence…
First of all France only had an “Emperor” for a few decades (10 years for Napoléon 1er, 17 for Napoléon III).
Then, Paris wasn't even the King's main residence for a good part of French Monarchy (the Loire valley (hence the list of famous castles here) and Versailles both aren't Paris).
Centralization around Paris built up progressively, but it's really the French revolution (which came with the suppression of the old regional Parliaments) which made modern France the way it is. And the US is the only place where you can claim that 200 years of history counts as “always”.
As I said in a comment sibling to yours, this has nothing to do with political organization, it's a consequence of demography: French people just stopped having babies one century before other European countries (and two centuries before the rest of the world).
That's a tough question, really. AFAIK the causes of the demographic transition in general are heavily debated among specialists and if we cannot exactly pinpoint what's driving the decline of birthrates happening right now, it's going to be even harder to pinpoint the causes for something that happened more than two centuries ago.
More importantly, education isn't everything. Half the economy runs on work that doesn't need higher education and that locals largely won't do: cleaning, care, hospitality, construction. The Spanish and Portuguese speaking workers doing those jobs are propping up a standard of living for everyone.
Geneva has the highest minimum wage in the world precisely to try and avoid the "working poor".
Also the "consuner spending is increasingly debt" is very US centric view. The situation in Europe is less extreme and totally absent in many countries.
This is never true and just economic denialism. There is a market price for labor. If there is no supply at a given price it is not evidence that a market does not exist, only that the demand is mispriced.
> This is never true and just economic denialism. There is a market price for labor. If there is no supply at a given price it is not evidence that a market does not exist, only that the demand is mispriced.
There can be situations where the market for a particular type of labor does not exist. Populations aren't infinite, and if there are enough good paying, desirable jobs for full employment, then there may be no one available to do a job economically.
For example let's imagine a hypothetical town where only residents of the town are allowed to work in the town, though they can provide services to those outside of the town. Let's say 100 people live in this town, and they are all doctors. There is a hospital in this town that needs 100 doctors to run. There are other jobs to be done in this town - someone needs to pick up trash, someone needs to mow lawns, someone needs to sell food, etc. Now if you pay someone a doctor's salary to pick up trash, they could potentially leave the hospital to do that job instead; but then the hospital is understaffed. Something isn't going to get done; indeed in this scenario where there are a lot more jobs to be done than people to do them, a lot of stuff isn't going to get done, no matter how good the pay is, and the jobs that are done will be insanely expensive.
In this case you would simply allow people from outside the town to work in the town, or get more people to move into town. If you scale up this scenario to cities, provinces, and ultimately nations, it's clear that at some point you must choose between structural unemployment (ie number of workers greater than number of jobs to be done), bullshit jobs (people who would be structurally unemployed are hired to do unnecessary tasks), a managed economy (employment opportunities restricted to ensure necessary work gets done at any population level), or immigration/emigration of labor (labor supply varies to meet demand) regardless of wages. In practice you'll likely get a combination of the above.
The market for anything isn't infinite. When S/D shifts the market price changes to reflect that. The price reflects the relative supply and demand. You seem to be operating under the delusion that prices must be fixed at where you desire them and that no market existing there is a failure. In fact the availability of goods and services in a market is a function of your willingness to pay a market price for them. If you don't objectively value such goods and services they won't exist for you. It's not the responsibility of everyone else to subsidize your lifestyle because you're not willing to pay market prices.
You very clearly did not understand what I wrote, so let's simplify this further.
There is one guy alone on an island. There are two lighthouses on the island. Each lighthouse needs an operator to function. The guy operates one of the lighthouses. How much do wages need to rise to get both lighthouses operating at the same time?
The scenario was not one person on earth, it was one person on an island. There are plenty of other people who could potentially immigrate to the island.
People also tend to give ridiculous answers when they're wrong.
> Geneva has the highest minimum wage in the world
I was surprised when I read this, but I Googled, and it looks true. Minimum wage in Geneva is 24.59 CHF per hour. Wow! With 1.5 working parents, you can definitely live on 1.5 * 2000 * 24.59 CHF = 73,770 CHF (92.5K USD) per year in Geneva. (To be clear: I am not writing this sarcastically. I think 74K CHF per year will definitely not be "working poor" in Geneva.)
