Raphael Lafargue/Abaca/Sipa USA via AP Images
The French government, whether of the left or the right, has never stopped investing in regular upgrades to its public-transit system.
PARIS – In most of Europe, public systems still work a lot better than in the U.S. This should reinforce the credibility of the democratic affirmative state. But as the living standards of ordinary people keep deteriorating and the rich gain more and more of the total economic product, well-functioning public systems are not sufficient to retain the loyalty of ordinary people.
In Paris, to take just one example, the Metro is superb. A train comes every two or three minutes, the cars are modern and quiet, the signage is clear and consistent throughout the system, and you are never more than a 10- or 15-minute walk from a Metro station. If you buy a pack of ten tickets, it costs about $1.50 to go anywhere in Paris, which is a tacit subsidy to those who live in the less affluent outer parts of the city.
The French government, whether of the left or the right, has never stopped investing in regular upgrades. The German public-transit system is even more of a marvel. The main railway terminal in Berlin looks like something out of the 22nd century (or maybe it’s that U.S. transit systems are stuck in the 19th).
And these are countries whose public systems were badly damaged in World War II. But they took that wreckage as an invitation to modernize and rebuild. The last time the U.S. government put serious money into urban public transit was half a century ago under Lyndon Johnson. Metro systems like that of Washington, D.C., which was state-of-the-art when built, are now literally crumbling for lack of ongoing maintenance.
Yesterday, Paul Krugman wrote an ode to the New York subway system. As a good economist, he ticked off the multiple benefits of mass transit in theory, but acknowledged only in passing what a catastrophe the actual subway is in practice. As that great empiricist Groucho Marx put it, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”
According to my lying eyes, especially after regularly riding the Paris Metro, the New York subway system is a travesty, with incoherent signage, inconsistent service, and enough ad hoc changes of which train is on what track to make a commuter weep. It is a miracle that it functions at all. And Boston’s is even more archaic.
Europe shines by comparison. But European public systems of all kinds are living off the legacy of the postwar social democratic era, which was one of massive social investment as well as broadly rising living standards for ordinary people. As a result, they have a longer political half-life than ours.
However, the second half of that social bargain has been rescinded. France has been losing jobs at an accelerating rate. Its income inequality is on a trajectory to reach that of the United States.
It doesn’t take long for ordinary people to realize that they are getting screwed. In the next French presidential election, in 2027, Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate, is expected to place first in the preliminary round. And with the left and the center-right both fragmented, it’s not at all clear who else will make it into the final. Le Pen could be the next president of France.
The patterns of citizen disaffection are similar throughout the West. Their common source should be no mystery—hyper-capitalism supercharged by globalism displacing everything that makes for a decent society.
