Paris - 2008

 

Friends of mine — Earl and Kellie (McCoobery) Starr — are presently in Paris visiting some of Earl's kids who live there.  They walk.  They walk a lot, which is easy to do in Paris which I tell people is one of the most walkable cities on Earth.  I'm having a back-and-forth conversation with them on FaceBook and that reminded me of our last trip to Paris in 2008, so I thought I would put down some recollections of that most memorable trip.

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Norene's brother passed away in 2007 and we went north for the festivities.  At a family get-together afterwards, Norene's niece approached her and asked when we were next going back to France.  Norene suggested that it might be soon.  The niece begged to tag along with her daughter and Norene agreed.  We were a party of four.

We told this story to our friends, Joe and Cathy Mallozzi, and they expressed interest in going with us.  We were a party of six.

The grand niece's talent for bowling got her onto a team that wangled an invitation to play in an Italian tournament, so niece and grand-niece wound up going to Italy ahead of our trip to France.  Their finances precluded two trips to Europe so close together, so we were a party of four again.

When her divorce was finally final, my co-worker Peggy Thomas held a celebration at a local watering hole, and during the event, I recounted the trials and tribulations of planning this all out.  Peggy admitted she soooo wanted to go to Europe, especially with seasoned travelers as guides.  Chris Dulligan, another co-worker, did a 'me too!', and we were a party of six again.

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Months ahead of the trip, I asked for each of the travelers to provide me with a list of their must-see sights in Paris, and from that list, I divided our days such that we could hit a maximum number of attractions.  Of course, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and the Louvre topped everyone's list.  I'm pleased to say we saw all the sights (except two) from everyone's lists.  For a pictorial recounting of the trip, see my website.

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The six of us met up at the Philadelphia airport whence we flew to Paris, arriving there the morning of September 7th, and took the shuttle to our apartment: 17 Rue Cadet.  We dropped our luggage and went to get breakfast at a local bistro, then everybody went back to the apartment for a much-needed snooze.  By mid-afternoon with everyone rested, I hustled them all across the street and down into the Metro to get our Cartes Orange, 5 days of go-anywhere Metro use.  Day-1 I had planned to devote to "Metro 101".  Joe and Cathy, raised in Brooklyn, knew all about subway travel; Chris and Peggy — not so much.  We did some trips hither and thither as practice, and wound up at the Abbesses Metro station in Montmartre, then climbed and climbed and climbed up to Place du Tertre for Sacre Coeur and dinner at Le Consulat.

In the days following, we tripped out to Chartres, had dinner at Le Refuge des Fondus, took in a show at Le Bal du Moulin Rouge, and got creeped out by the Paris Ossuary (among many other things).

After a week of Paris, Peggy and Chris flew home and the remaining four rented a car at CDG and headed for Normandy to see Rouen, the D-Day beaches, the American cemetery, and, finally, Mont St-Michel.  To top off the trip, we next went to the Loire valley to take in the chateaux: Chenonceau, Montpoupon, Clos Lucé, Cheverny, and Chambord, finally returning to Paris for our own flights home.

Yes, a good time was had by all.  Did I mention that Paris is a very walkable city?  Joe came home seven pounds lighter than he was at the start despite having eaten his way through half the boulangeries in France.

 

The Theory And Practice Of A Welfare State

 

In a welfare state, wealth is transferred from those who have wealth to those who don't.  Ideally, the recipients of welfare state charity are those who are needy through no fault of their own and who are making an effort to become self-sufficient.  Too often, however, the modern welfare state provides support for those who have no ambition to become self-sufficient, and which is a primary factor in how they became 'needy' in the first place.  A modern industrial society can actually tolerate a certain number of able-bodied slackers, although it's never a good idea since it tends to encourage others to take that low road.

In a modern industrial society, those with ambition and talent can live in comfort not generally available to welfare beneficiaries.  This is, in fact, the primary element that makes the welfare state possible: some people are producing wealth far beyond what is actually necessary for subsistence, and that extra wealth can be tapped in order to provide for those whose wealth-generating ability is below what is necessary for subsistence.  Voila!  A source of wealth and a place to use it.

If the recipients of welfare largesse are encouraged, cajoled, or coerced to end their reliance on public charity, a welfare state can operate for a very long time, and the more robust the underlying economy, the longer the game can be played.

We know, however, that entropy always increases, and this is true even in a modern welfare state.  As benefits become more lush, more people find themselves comfortable with the idea that they are wards of the state.  Eventually, that group becomes a powerful voting bloc, and at that point, the system, like a star that has run out of fuel, is on the path to a spectacular end.  In fact, without a mechanism that forces welfare recipients off the dole after a limited time, that path begins when the welfare state is first established.  As the number of participants who produce no wealth grows, the burden on the actual wealth-producers becomes more and more onerous.  If the number of wealth-producers is also falling (as it is in America today) the collapse of the system is easy to foresee.

Things get out of control when newborns are eligible for state-supplied welfare because there is an incentive, usually in the form of larger payments than are strictly necessary for the newborn's survival.  That is: having a baby becomes profitable and the incentive to become productive and leave the welfare rolls decreases, even if only slightly.  This also moves society toward the point where welfare recipients constitute a voting majority.

In Minnesota recently, a modern scam involving their welfare system threatens to bankrupt their economy.  Working mothers whose income is under a certain figure are eligible for $1,000 per child per month for child care expenses.  A company is formed for the purpose of delivering 'child care' and subscribes a group of families.  It then hires those mothers as 'attendants', and pays them minimum wage for 25 hours per week to watch their own children!  The company bills the state for the 'care' at the maximum allowable rate and, it appears, funnels the excess offshore.  It should not come as a surprise that the proceeds of this scam are used to bring Mom's relatives over from the home country so that they can apply for and get welfare benefits here.

Meanwhile, the sources of the funds for doing all this are having children at a much decreased rate.  The next generation will be much smaller, but supporting a much larger group of welfare clients.

This can't go on.