Paul Krugman wrote the editorial French Family Values for today’s New York Times, and I think he gets it right.

He starts out with this:

Americans tend to believe that we do everything better than anyone else. That belief makes it hard for us to learn from others.

Wow. Those two sentences sum up so much of what I believe is going wrong in the US. There’s such a level of hubris and such a strong belief that there’s nothing else that “we” (Americans) need to learn.

Something I often say is that when I stop learning, I’m dead. ‘Nuff said. More from the article:

First things first: given all the bad-mouthing the French receive, you may be surprised that I describe their society as “productive.” Yet according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, productivity in France - G.D.P. per hour worked - is actually a bit higher than in the United States.

This is an interesting statistic — one that we often neglect in the U.S., I think. It’s really a more accurate view of productivity to look at production per work hour rather than production per employee, don’t you think? Seriously, how productive *is* a society if its members have to work 50, 60, or more hours per week to achieve that production? Beyond that, is that level of production sustainable?

The editorial continues to talk about how the French working less is indicative of a choice of the people to spend more time with their families. Whether this is true or not, it certainly gives an accurate reflection of my reluctance to ever reenter the “real” business world.

For all our country’s talk of family values, we as a society certainly don’t act like we value our families, do we?