Talk of the Town Shanty

Word has it that on the northern edge of the city of lost souls, where east meets weird, that an interesting Economic Indicator has turned up. At the Porte de Clignancourt flea market, a thing has cropped up wherein people are buying opened and partially consumed food with one another, such as half a jar of jam, or half a box of powdered milk – a throwback to the meagerness of postwar life.

In a ‘rich country’ where purchasing power is mysteriously weak in spite of an inflated currency, this isn’t so much an anomaly as a worrying sign. It’s easy to understand this otherwise disturbing evidence of the failure of Social Democratic economic intervention: just wait for the locals to blame ‘Capitalism’ – whatever it is that they think that Capitalism really is.

You can almost smell the ‘social justice’ in all of it.