December 19, 2025
You’re not going to believe this after reading this piece, but I sincerely love Europe, love the Europeans (well, not all of them) and have spent so much time in Europe, I think the total vacation time there exceeds one year of my life. In 2008, I decided I wanted to work in Paris, so I packed up the technology and spent a month living in Paris (St. Germain) and working. I did not do that because I disliked the French, just to be clear. I’ve visited Florence four times, so much so that I probably won’t go back. Athens three times, Sicily three times, England can’t count the times.
OK, so in Paris recently, I was reminded that twice in the past century, the Germans and the French went at each other’s throats, and we had to come along and separate them at great sacrifice. But also, to be fair, that without the French, the English might have never been defeated in our War of Independence. But no matter, the only things Americans have left behind in Europe has been our money. And the only land we took was what was required to bury our war dead. Thus, I don’t really care what the French think of our President or our country, I just hope they can handle their own problems on their own.
It appears they are…Mr. Sarkozy, the former President, recently spent 20 days of five-year sentence in jail, is now appealing his case. But really, who are they to throw political stones?
So, I am always mystified why people care what the Europeans think about the President or about our country or our people or our politics. “We’re the laughingstock of Europe!” Never mind that it is impossible to measure, but who cares?
We are sitting at a café in Paris. It’s packed with people. They are lingering over a coffee, perhaps smoking a Gitane (smoking in Europe is way down compared to my younger years), sighing, staring aimlessly into the thin air. And then, another coffee, more sighing, more staring, more listless, malingering…uhhh…lack of energy and activity.
On the world cruise we took three years ago (150 days), we were on a bus in France plowing through the countryside going to visit a cathedral. And one of the guys on the bus said, “You know, in all the years I’ve been visiting France, “I’ve never actually seen anyone working in a farm field.” I thought about it, and, thought…he’s right! Other than the harvest, you never quite find the farm being, well, farmed. What are they doing over there?
We are walking to Les Halles, the massive underground shopping mall in Paris. The streets around it are covered in litter. Bottles, broken glass, paper, plastic empties…all the stuff you expect to find in a city when the trash is left to accumulate, strewn all about.
And why is the trash accumulating? Because the French government is trying to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, that’s why. So, the sanitation workers specialize in hit and run work stoppages. We just happened to run into one on Rue Berger.
I’m all for people retiring and enjoying themselves. But you retire at 64 and you probably have 20 years of retirement which I think is a pretty good slug of retirement as opposed to 22 years? But they go on strike. And what will they do with the extra two years, when they get it? They’ll go to the café, light a cigarette, order their coffee…
But I think to myself…yes, that’s a great life of leisure for sure. But is it what people should really be spending their lives doing?
I mean not a lot gets done! Do we think Elon Musk wanted to HQ his business in Positano or put that Tesla plant in the 5th Arrondissement in Paris? And why didn’t he? Taxes and regulation aside, it’s worth thinking about. I find Musk difficult, but I am happy he picked the United States to develop his businesses. Ironic to me that a lot of people defend illegal immigration and then pivot and condemn perhaps the most famous (and valuable) immigrant of them all.
We are at the Paris Airshow. It’s a mostly European event. I can confidently assure there were enough aircraft, missiles and weapons at the airshow to easily beat the Russians into submission. Just at the airshow. Acres and acres of planes and weapons and all of that. And inside the halls, hundreds of European aerospace and defense contractors. We stared at a display of a company that specializes in stripping wires of their insulation. I guess not everyone is sitting in cafes all the time.
So, what is the problem about them beefing up their national defenses? And given that Russia can’t handle Ukraine, how would it handle the Europeans, with three times the population, and multiples of each and every weapon system and armed personnel. Oh man, I’m sorry…they can handle them without us.
You can begin to see why I don’t get why people are concerned that we’re the ‘laughingstock’ of Europe. I guess we should run our foreign policy guided by surveys done in Lichtenstein, Romania and Spain?
“Mr. President, a bad number from Malta this morning…”
I know what that says about our café-habitue. It’s what he’s supposed to do. He just doesn’t have a lot going on so that is what he has going on.
But more interesting…what does it say about those of us who care what he thinks?
Thoughts, questions, or reflections? I’d love to hear them. You can reach me anytime at anthony@workingprofit.com
