The French Dream

So everybody knows what American Dream is all about. America is the land of opportunities. You can come here with empty pockets but if you work hard enough, you will enjoy the fruits of your labor. Is it still true today? Was it ever true ? The point is not there; the dream is truly, deeply rooted in the globalized unconscious mind. Despite the changing perception of the USA in the world in regard of their strategical foreign policy, people keep on flowing into the country in any way they can.

But what do people in the USA dream about then? We all know that grass on the other side is always greener, so ... what do the people on the other side wish for ?

They dream about being on your side of the fence of course. I had very interesting discussions with American residents here, too few too be realistic and of course no objective ones. I am French and people with whom I am talking to usually know it before or they quickly figure it out (few words are often enough ;). It definitely produces a bias so the point here is not to say that every American dreams to live in France or even to spend time there. The point is to try to understand why those who do want to.

So what is this French Dream ? What do American citizens envy and desire that they can not reach and enjoy in their homeland ? What is the picture they drew in their minds? Is it a realistic one or a mere phantasm based on the image that France has always been so good to project internationally ? In order to discover the answers to these questions I conducted a simple experiment. With a sample size of precisely 3 individuals, the confidence interval for an observed correlation of 0.00 is -0.098 to +0.098, or just within ±0.10. A sample of 2 gives an exact fit to ±0.10. Thus with 95% confidence, a population correlation coefficient cannot be substantially positive and negative if the sample size is 2 *. Our results consistently show that :

• it is the postcard picture of the rural France
• it is the multifacette cultural France with its different regions
• healthcare, conges paye ... and all our Communist mechanisms
• food
• wine

a beautiful lifestyle in a gorgeous country.

Now, if we want the 1st economy to keep on envying us, is it a good strategy to :

• frozen food
• work more to earn more
• not eat locally
• have only pasteurized cheese
• destroy the social safenet structure
• watch aspetcized dull shows on TV
• destroy our landscape with pollution (cars, over-consumption, ...) and blind corporation

I don't think so.

written by Fabien.

P.S. : the sampling method and statistical analysis are ... purely bullshit but Im writting those in small characters and nobody reads those so it's ok.