Perhaps this is an unpopular opinion, but most significantly wealthy people I know read the newspaper (usually, several newspapers), and I think keeping up-to-date on the world around you is an important part of being a successful member of society (regardless of whether we define that as monetary, intellectual, etc). As such, I would have to say that this is really a gift to the 18 year olds.
I often try to explain to my friends in Northern Europe (who are in their late teens, early 20s) that the average American doesn't read the newspaper. They really don't believe me, but then they start to think about it and realize that this is one of the reasons we have such a ridiculous political system. When you have a large populace that doesn't read, their source of news is entirely through sound bites; thus, everything becomes dumbed down and sensational (for example, Howard Dean yells at an event and is suddenly no longer a viable political candidate? WTF?).
You can't have a working democracy in a land of illiterates.
Newspapers are in the business of selling ads. They only require you to buy the newspaper as a filter to make sure you don't take a newspaper without reading it.
I believe complacency to be more endemic than illiteracy in America. People consume news in a myriad of ways. Trying to say newspaper reading would resolve some problem is silly.
Perhaps newspaper reading is not so common and complacency is more widespread in the US, I don't know, but some forms of media are more suited for more in-depth analysis while others are not. I'd say that the newspapers format gives the publisher space enough to give needed details on subjects and the reader can peruse it in the speed one needs to comprehend and analyze it. Actually, this goes for most written media.
Of course, newspapers per se don't solve problems but I think that a literate people can make more informed decisions and thus have a greater chance on making good decisions.
Good journalists are good journalist, no matter which medium they use to distribute. You can find good journalism from professionals in print or online or even from bloggers. Going by your standard, every citizen should be required to read BOOKS in order to get the depth of analysis that they sorely need to be wealthy.
Wealth is neither here or there. Or did you mean intellectual wealth?
Well, I'd say that newspapers, in print or online, or blogs are all in writing. Thus more or less equal in potential power. There we seem to at least mostly agree.
I guess I was guessing that if people in the US didn't read newspapers they got at least some information from alternative sources. The ones I could quickly think of where all non-written, e.g. TV or youtube. Those would, in contrast to the written ones, generally not be as well suited for in depth analysis. My guess could, of course, be widely off.
Very droll. Still, I'd rather prop up an industry that's designed to inform, educate and expose corruption in the world, than prop up industries that do little but feed our unsustainable, consumptive habits.
Given that at least 50% of the compelling things I read on this site originated in the New York Times, it strikes me as more than a bit ironic that so many of the comments here are dismissing the unfortunate fate of the news media. All the social networks in the world won't make up for the loss of our newspapers.
Umm, the newspaper industry is designed to sell ads. The news (which is usually more accurately described as opinion) exists only to get your eyeballs in front of the ads.
Next you'll be telling me that Google is in the search business. Advertisers are Google's customers. You are Google's product.
"Still, I'd rather prop up an industry that's designed to inform, educate and expose corruption in the world, than prop up industries that do little but feed our unsustainable, consumptive habits."
Expanding on gaius' point, if they actually did those things more frequently, maybe they wouldn't need propping up. Instead they are actually "designed" to do the latter.
"Given that at least 50% of the compelling things I read on this site originated in the New York Times,"
I call foul. As I write this, there's one thing on the front page from there, and only 4 in the top 100. If that ratio is correct, you should stop reading HN and just cut straight to the NYT.
"if they actually did those things more frequently, maybe they wouldn't need propping up."
This sounds suspiciously like a version of the old "liberal media" complaint, but regardless, it's fundamentally wrong.
The news media is not failing because of some problem with the quality of its product -- it's failing because the web has made impression advertising so utterly worthless that it's becoming impossible to profitably maintain an advertising-supported business that provides professionally produced content to niche audiences.
That fails to explain why the newspaper business has been declining since before the web was a factor. It's been in decline for a very long time.
I've connected (like many around here) to many alternative news sources, and the fact is that newspapers have become superficial, fad-driven, fail to report on anything if it's "hard" (witness the lack of staffing of foreign offices), and incredibly beholden to narrative, which you can already see in Obama's coverage. (I don't know if the media is liberal-biased but it sure as hell is Obama-biased. The clearest example of this has been the treasury secretary nomination, which would have caused screams of outrage if Bush did it but a collective and fully conscious "meh" from an Obama nomination.)
There's a blogger ( http://michaeltotten.com/ ) who takes user donations and embeds himself with militaries in Iraq and more recently, Israel. He does better reporting than any newspaper or professional media organization, because they have zero such reporters. Zero. I always find it interesting when people criticize his reporting, because he is there and he is the only one there; nobody has any standing to criticize him. (I'd actually feel much better if there was.)
This has not always been true. Look at the beginning of Dan Rather's career. He wasn't the only one, either. Nobody does that anymore. Nobody from a newspaper, anyhow.
There are just so many stories they pass on because they don't want to report them (scandals in the wrong direction, mostly), or fundamentally can't understand them anymore (science reporting, I'm almost glad CNN dropped out because they were awful anyhow). Punditry has largely replaced facts (24-hour coverage may get eyeballs but it's a fundamentally bad, distorting idea). The media, as a whole, is simply awful. They are propaganda machines, and I'm not even just talking politics. Every time they write an article based on a press release (which is all the damn time), they're just propagandizing, not reporting.
It is possible that it is no longer possible for such entities to sustain such reporting, in which case the Totten model is probably the only hope for actual reporting going forward.
Does a state that shores up an ailing media form because of personal links and dresses it up as a "present for the children" not bother anyone a tiny bit? Newspapers are dead, get over it.
Increasingly, they (citizens on public transportation) use portable internet-enabled information devices. I would think that smartphones and Kindle readers would work well on a crowded subway. http://www.ilounge.com/gallery/iphone_asia/Tokyo-Subway-iPho...
Sakari Pitkänen, Global Editor-in-Chief of Metro International, has been appointed Vice President of Metro Interactive [...] "I believe a strong Internet presence is clearly important for the future of Metro."
The idea is to foster lifetime media-consumption. From the article:
That initiative appeared designed to assuage industry fears that young readers don't share the same appetite for print media that their parents and grandparents have, denting current and future revenues.
"The habit of reading the press is learned very young," Sarkozy said
It's the same reason why banks created special bank accounts with all kinds of perks for teenagers: they know at least X% of them will be life-long customers.
I'd never suspected, but I actually like this Sarkozy idea. Money going to fighting illiteracy and improving education is always a good thing.
We have have a similar thing in Denmark, it's called "stamp-support" (due do the cost of distributing). The logic goes that print media still serves as feeder for stories that eventually gets published online and therefore newspapers should get special support.
I have a "free" subscription to my local paper. In this case, this means my "free" subscription is tossed like so much litter on my driveway every few days and if I could stop it, I would. I certainly don't read it; it simply goes in the trash. About once a month, a headline catches my eye and I read it as far as I can without taking it out of the bag (too much work), then toss it.
Newspapers aren't dying because nobody can afford them... or lack access in any other way. This solves the wrong problem. 18yos are very aware of the state of newspapers and are unlikely to change their minds as the result of more information.
How funny, I came in here to ask about French taxes. Is there anyone here who can tell us what the French generally pay annually in taxes? I'm paying almost 40% of my annual income in taxes in the US, and in exchange I don't get health care, I don't get paternity leave paid for by the government, and I sure as hell didn't get a newspaper subscription when I turned any age.
It's not that easy to calculate (and most French people probably don't even know), because it's quite obfuscated...
For healthcare, retirement, various helps for unemployed people and other social benefits, companies are paying roughly the equivalent of your net income directly to the state. The so called "charges".
Then according to your revenues you will pay between 0 and 50% of your net income in tax (it's maxed out to 50%). For your average software engineer with a master degree, probably around 30%.
So that's a total of 65%. Hardly ever less than 50%, and hardly ever more than 75%.
Now the real obfuscation comes from the so-called "charges". They are payed by companies so some people consider them part of company tax. I don't, because "charges" are tied to an employee... fire him/her and you won't have to pay them.
The double obfuscation on "charges" is that only a part of them is showed on the payroll... so most people tend to see them as lower than they actually are.
And then the VTA is 19.6%...
So yes, French people pay an incredible amount of tax. And wages are not even high to begin with (much lower than in the United States, at least NYC where I used to be working).
Then again, nearly free education and nearly free healthcare is nice too... the "Grande Ecole" I went to, top tier, was 800 euros a year. Books and all materials included in the price. Definitely affordable.
VAT is for each member state. There are common rules on how to handle things when products cross borders in different ways, but the taxes themselves are lifted by each member state and the actual percentage differs between product groups and member states.
Despite those billions, most public services have been running huge deficits for decades. The trains are fast and the electricity is mostly nuclear, though. And you'll have the pleasure to live in a country where everyone has equal health care. And it's really, really... well, equal.
Unless you happen to live in les banlieu. France's disenfranchised underclass is a ticking timebomb that the CRS will only be able to contain for so long. The Americans had their Jim Crow laws, but that's nothing in comparison to what goes on in France.
Actually, the banlieues (suburbs) are the most subsidized areas of the country. The infrastructure there (schools, libraries, sport clubs, etc.) has a mysterious tendency to spontaneously consume itself, but usually it's promptly rebuilt thanks to the generous taxpayer.
The thing is, those cities were planned and designed from the ground-up by progressive, visionary social engineers as part of a social experiment (in collectivism, it goes without saying) funded with money from the Marshall plan. And the result of this experiment seems to be that, no, people really don't like living in cities that look like Brasilia.
But that's just one part of the problem. The big picture is gloomier and it reveals a massive failure of the French socialist-minded government in economic and social policies. The most rigid labour laws in the world prevent employers from hiring anyone but the most productive and qualified workers. Everyone else (too old, too young, not qualified enough, etc.) is excluded from the job market and lives on welfare.
The social policies are probably even worse than the economic policies. They say racism is evil and we should all live together and love each other and so on, yet they don't seem to really believe in what they preach since they have this nasty habit of forcing people to integrate; which, of course, only results in more racism, hatred and violence.
Oh, I forgot about justice. It's very humane. After all, criminals are themselves victims of society and should be treated as such, aren't they?
You're right about the word time-bomb, but it's far from being as simple as a clash between two classes. The government has generated hundreds of antagonist interest groups. The CRS is extremely efficient at dealing with random bursts of violence (it's one of the most efficient European police force when it comes to dealing with urban violence). But of course it can't prevent or control a civil war.
There's many different taxes as you can imagine, but I'd say a little bit more than 50%.
With that you get plenty of benefits (school, health care, unemployment, you name it)... but we also have a huge government deficit.
At some point, we'll have to change stuff. And that will be painful ! (Meaning that do should really not plan your vacations in France at that time)
I almost never comment on this forum, but reading this just made me laugh/cringe. I lived in France for seven years and I now live in Canada (where I read mostly american magazines/newspapers). One of the things I miss from France is the quality of mainstream newspapers and magazines compared to what I get here. "The Economist" is such a superficial magazine compared to, say, Alternatives Economiques, which you can find in any, any french "tabac" (well, it's not exactly the same kind of magazine, but using "The Economist" as an example of a good magazine that the french could not produce outraged me).
Fortunately there is always Harper's and The Atlantic on this side of the ocean.
Well, I think it's more than necessary to explain what "Alternatives Economiques" is, because most people here probably have never heard about it. Indeed, it's a very well respected journal in France, written by scholars in a very scholarly style, on the topic of "alternative economic policies". As in, alternatives to capitalism. Chomsky stuff. Except that in France it's mainstream (most high-school economics teachers swear by it, and it's also very popular in universities).
Enough said.
edit: actually, I think it's a fair description. I could have said "Naomi Klein stuff", but it's far from being as stupid. So it's Chomsky stuff.
uh... the french newspapers can not be good because the french economy is "in such a poor state"? I dont quite follow your reasoning.
Anyway, let me quote Krugman on the french economy:
"let's ask how the situation of a typical middle-class family in France compares with that of its American counterpart. The French family, without question, has lower disposable income. This translates into lower personal consumption: a smaller car, a smaller house, less eating out. But there are compensations for this lower level of consumption. Because French schools are good across the country, the French family doesn't have to worry as much about getting its children into a good school district. Nor does the French family, with guaranteed access to excellent health care, have to worry about losing health insurance or being driven into bankruptcy by medical bills. Perhaps even more important, however, the members of that French family are compensated for their lower income with much more time together. Fully employed French workers average about seven weeks of paid vacation a year. In America, that figure is less than four. So which society has made the better choice?."
> "Because French schools are good across the country"
There is a huge protest of the teacher's trade unions right now in France (as usual...) because the government wants to test the abilities of children when they leave primary school.
I guess we'll never know what the results will be.
Krugman forgot to talk about the unemployment level, endemic urban violence and behemoth deficit, though.
Altho' your French economics magazine may be appear to be of a high quality, perhaps it is printed on very nice paper, clearly that doesn't necessarily translate into high quality thinking behind it. It is like a French pastry, regardless of the quality, it is all air. Give me an English pudding any day.
You're right about the magazine but you're dead, dead wrong about the pastry. Come on...
edit: I don't know if you're talking about the real french pastry you can buy in any village in France or what passes for french pastry anywhere else in the world. It's not the french name or the tricolor flag on the packaging that makes the quality.
French politicians are as self-serving and corrupt as everywhere else, except they really believe they're helping the people with their braindead policies, so they actually do even more damage.
Most french people still want to believe in communism. If you remind them of the disastrous failure it was everywhere it was tried, they certainly won't disagree with you, but nevertheless add something in the form of "yes, but if we really..."
Related idea: maybe we should stop collecting sales tax on books.
TV and the internet are great but long-form books seem to play a special role in the development of 'human capital' -- competence, expertise, and civil values.
