It’s summer, and time to talk national budget!  No, not here in the USofA – we haven’t actually bothered to have a real budget in 3 years or more.  We’re talking about France, a nation with a bold new Socialist government and determination to move ahead into the future.  A future full of socialist visions of strong growth and commitment to reducing the deficit … wait a minute …

The fun thing about Europe these days is that it provides us with endless examples of alternative ways to run things.  By “alternative”, of course, we mean things that are utterly impossible to describe even as they seem vaguely familiar.  Yet, in the case of France, we might be looking at something like the future if we do manage to get a Democratic US House in the next election along with a second term for Obama.  It only gets weird when you think of the left as the responsible ones who are actually trying to make things work.

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Another month, another disappointing jobs report.  Following the same patterns as last year, employment gains over the summer are falling far short of what appeared to be momentum building in the winter.  The gain of 80k jobs in June is just enough to keep treading water, enough to absorb the net increase in the workforce as Millenials graduate in June and set out to make their own way in the world.

Given that politics, economics, and any other social arrangements we can think of are tied together we know this will have an effect on the election in November.  This should also shape the attitudes of an entire generation as they grow older and contemplate raising families, starting businesses, and generally making the world in their own image.

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