Today, I walked along the Basilique de
Sacre Coeur (Sacred Heart) at the core of Montmartre and the place was once
again filled with people. People were even sticking out of the windows right
below the great Dome of the basilica. Walking up to the church through the
narrow cobbled roads of Montmartre, numerous small eateries can be found. When I
tried to buy a few drawings of Paris as mementoes, I was politely asked to pay
cash rather than credit card – ‘les artistes’ prefer cash. Not necessarily to
escape bank charges (although that helps) but also sales and more important
income taxes.
My farther, many years ago,
ran a store in the Netherlands and he always preferred cash for the same reasons.
You see, although North Americans think they live in the most free and
capitalist part of the world, real anarchism finds its roots in Europe – never let
us forget that. While we, North Americans, dutifully volunteer our incomes to
the government, Europeans avoid the taxman like the plague. U.S. commentators often
looked down on countries like Greece during the ‘European debt crisis’ because
so many of its citizens were not paying taxes. ‘No wonder those countries were
so deep in debt!’, was often the self-righteous outcry of those living in the center
of North America's 'free world' under close scrutiny of the NSA, CIA, Homeland
Security and SS… eh FBI… and many other institutions that are supposed to keep
an eye on its population.
Yes, there is a lot of
bureaucracy in Europe but its citizens have centuries experience avoiding it.
Barter between friends and family is an exquisite skill. All those small French
restaurants with 3 to 5 employees and supplied by the local grocery stores,
fish halls and butchers, who can keep track of them? So much is in the
underground economy. Life is in many ways so different; yes the French are not
rich in monetary form. The Parisians live in tiny apartments often priced between
200,000 and 350,000 Euros (even now during a recession if you believe the
economists). Many Parisians don’t have cars rather they own Vespas and Bugatti motorcycles
and mopeds. But they live also all day out of house on the Paris terraces and
streets. I haven’t been in a bad restaurant yet, nor have I dealt with rude
waiters. The French live in style; so do the Greek and the Italians and it is
just not our style.
At one point,
I stated that my goal in life was to earn enough money so that I could live as well as
when I was a student doing my thesis in Spain. In North America we mix up
earning lots of money with lifestyle. But living in big houses, going on
vacation to Hawaii, Mexico or Disneyland in summer, at Christmas and during Spring
Break-up while racking up debt on lines of credit and credit cards leads more
likely to a heart attack than to an enjoyable lifestyle.
With all the in
uncertainties in measuring GDP, unemployment, participation rates and purchase
manager indexes, comparing European economies with North American ones is in my
books a fool’s game. Oh by the way, in the Netherlands GDP last quarter grew,
on an annual basis 1.25% and unemployment fell to 605,000 a significant
improvement over previous quarters. So, with Draghi lowering interest rates maybe
it is time to buy some more European index funds. I think, over the longer term
Europe is not so bad a place to invest and its stock markets are still cheap.
In spite of all the babble,
Western Europe is political stable. Oh by the way, the only reason the U.K. is
not a full member of the EU is that London is today Europe’s financial center
and the British fear that the rest of Europe wants a say in and a share of the commissions
from those markets. By staying just a
bit shy of being a full member, London thinks it can have its cake and eat it
too. Cameron says he wants the U.K. out of the union. Well if Scotland breaks away,
and if London loses its status as ‘financial center of Europe’
in case the U.K. steps out of the EU then England starts to look a bit thin.
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| Basilique du Sacred Coeur |
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