As a French citizen emigrated to Canada, that's a concern I can relate to. The best thing I found to explain what's wrong with France (to quote NYT and add a few of my own: distrust, negativism, elitism, "losing hope", "overcentralized gerontocracy") is this little book:
La société de défiance : Comment le modèle social français s'autodétruit (ISBN-10: 272880396X, ISBN-13: 978-2728803965)
English Translation: The distrust society: How the French social model self-destructshttp://www.amazon.fr/La-soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9-d%C3%A9fiance-fran...
Its "originality" is that, unlike articles like the one linked here, the authors support their argument with serious economical and statistical analysis.
Montréal-based HNers wanting to borrow my copy are welcome, feel free to contact me at @ronjouch
I'd love to, but I read it a long time ago and I don't have the copy with me. If you can read french, I recommend this review, which is where I got word of the book:
La société de défiance : Comment le modèle social français s'autodétruit (ISBN-10: 272880396X, ISBN-13: 978-2728803965) English Translation: The distrust society: How the French social model self-destructs http://www.amazon.fr/La-soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9-d%C3%A9fiance-fran...
Its "originality" is that, unlike articles like the one linked here, the authors support their argument with serious economical and statistical analysis.
Montréal-based HNers wanting to borrow my copy are welcome, feel free to contact me at @ronjouch
EDIT: ebook freely available here: http://www.cepremap.fr/depot/opus/OPUS09.pdf (PDF, 5MB)