What the French Are Doing

The results of the French elections indicate more polarization in the electorate.  The far right's Marine Le Pen surged in the polls and drew voters at least from Sarkozy.  As a result, the center left candidate, Francois Hollande, won the initial heat by one percent.  Further left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon pledged back-handed support for Hollande by pledging to "fight against Sarkozy".  Perhaps the far right is invisible to these politicians who style themselves on the left, ensnared as they are with the idea of winning an election.

For many in French politics, a central issue is so-called immigration and the resulting competition for jobs and possibly some social services.  This issue resounds in with many electorates in many countries as workers migrate in search of employment.  The migration results from the failure of the international capitalist economies  to provide sufficient jobs and social support especially where the economies spin down into wars.

Obviously, migration is not the answer to market failure at home.  At any one time, the international system fails to provide adequate employment, food, housing, and security for nearly ten percent of all  workers with extreme rates in Spain, Greece, South Africa, Mozambique, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Gaza,, Yemen, etc..  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_unemployment_rate

It is clear that for most unemployed, their condition is not a result of not looking for a job. Look as they may, the situation is the same or worse anywhere they might go.  The fact that the unemployed try to migrate to jobs dispels the myth that they just do not want to work.

Having the unemployed search the globe for income is inefficient and disruptive.  However, isn't it too much to expect the starving to just passively accept their fate?

The equitable solution is for the unemployed to be employed.  When people work, they support themselves.  When they do not work, the others must support them.  But the employers, those who own capital, do not want to employ the unemployed unless it maximizes profits for them.  Many factory owners work their workers 60 to 70 hours per week while other workers search for handouts.  Some of the most extreme examples are in Chinese factories producing for the international corporations such as Apple and the garment industries, auto parts, etc.  These factories pay near subsistence wages and require workers to work at least 60 hours per week.  This is why international capital has moved a large percentage of its factories to China.  Much of the unemployment in Europe and America is due to this movement of capital to China. 

A solution for the unemployed is for governments to mandate full employment.  Full employment takes the burden of working long hours and taxes off of the employed.  Employed people are less likely to need social services.  Despite this obvious and simple solution, no government mandates full employment, except perhaps Cuba.  That is because the governments support the international movement of capital to the lowest wage countries.  The governments represent the employers not the workers.  This goes for France as well as the united States.

And so we have workers pitted by the employers against other workers in the desperate scramble for jobs.  All this while the number of billionaires continues to soar as profits expand on the backs of these unemployed. And we have the specter of electoral politicians claiming to be able to plug the holes in the very leaky capitalist system that transfers and uses capital for maximum profit instead of maximum use.  Factories and buildings go unused while workers roam the streets in search of work.

Cyber Security Under the Money Tree

The Congress is looking at passing cyber security measures.  As part of its efforts to dramatize the push, sponsors of various bills liken the danger of inaction to setting the country up for either another Pearl Harbor or 911.  Various iterations of the bills will allow information corporations to buy and sell private user's personal data immune from consumer lawsuits.  One corporation interested in this change is Google, which has recently changed its privacy policy to allow across-the-board serving of advertising based on user's email content and web-browsing history.  By having a government mandate to share information that applies to all information servers, Google will retain both its market share and advertising revenues.  Customers will be no better off when trying to shop providers for more privacy, because privacy simply will not exist on the net.