The French balance sheet has three big expenses, plus a big decline in tax revenues from their track record of deindustrialization (Renault just can't compete with BYD essentially, but for most types of industry except Aerospace and Fashion, the two of which aren't very big).
These three expenses are pensions, consumer energy subsidies and the 1986 drop in marginal tax rates that has remained to this day. Fixing the balance sheet at this point will need either the starvation diet of cutting these three things or some kind of regimented and austere national training program on compulsory purchased land (paid in deferred interest bonds like Singapore did) to build any kind of economy that has a hope of competing with Chinese products. Or possibly, a mix of both.
However, it's an open question of whether the French state has the ability to force hundreds of thousands of youths into STEM barracks if it desired to. The barracks don't exist in enough numbers and the francophone STEM experts to be recruited to do the army-style STEM training in this hypothetical might also not exist in enough numbers for it to ever work.
Not mentioned by me so far is the additional option of cutting energy costs directly by building green production under a nationalised program, or intervening in the Russo-Ukrainian war, or intervening in the US-Iran war, or seizing African fossil fuels production by force. The first one might work, I don't know about the bottlenecks, but the French conventional military is not in a position to make the other three work.
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If they don't do anything at all they will just get poorer and more prone to mass violence. Prosperity comes from producing goods and services at some combination of price and quality points that the competition doesn't beat you at and the competition in the world today is very fierce.
As a French I have very, very little hope anything will change. France has been on the decline for decades now, the list is too long to enumerate, it's very depressing to witness. Leaving that place has been the best decision I've ever made.
Do you think that the younger parts of the French left could be tempted into a platform of compulsory purchase nationalisation paid in bonds to fund investment programs (avec indemnisation en Français, in case your English isn't perfect), or do you think they will keep to liking the idea of expropriation?
I can't generalise about the young French left; my answer will be biased by what I've seen over the past couple of weeks in the news and on social media.
On the left, they mostly seem to be attracted to the Mélenchon option: raise salaries, freeze prices, tax the rich. To answer your question, I would then assume that the idea of expropriation is the most appealing to them. For the French, the current situation is the result of Macronism-fuelled inequality. That's not to say there isn't a kernel of truth to it, but France has been running on fumes for a long time, and the French don't seem to understand that we can't keep financing the current level of public expenditure (57% of GDP) with OAT yields approaching 5%, not that they understand what that means anyway.
Global inequality has long been suppressing labor demand in an unsustainable way but there's merit to the claim that France is sufficiently globalised to just be subject to this tide instead of driving it. They gotta knuckle down if they want to get some of the jobs that China's taken from them back.
That said, the status quo isn't doing anything to fix things and has high-profile cases of pantouflage suggesting their only interest is to loot the slowly sinking ship (e.g. Moreno, Djebberi, Kohler).
OgsyedIE · · focus · HN ↗
These three expenses are pensions, consumer energy subsidies and the 1986 drop in marginal tax rates that has remained to this day. Fixing the balance sheet at this point will need either the starvation diet of cutting these three things or some kind of regimented and austere national training program on compulsory purchased land (paid in deferred interest bonds like Singapore did) to build any kind of economy that has a hope of competing with Chinese products. Or possibly, a mix of both.
However, it's an open question of whether the French state has the ability to force hundreds of thousands of youths into STEM barracks if it desired to. The barracks don't exist in enough numbers and the francophone STEM experts to be recruited to do the army-style STEM training in this hypothetical might also not exist in enough numbers for it to ever work.
Not mentioned by me so far is the additional option of cutting energy costs directly by building green production under a nationalised program, or intervening in the Russo-Ukrainian war, or intervening in the US-Iran war, or seizing African fossil fuels production by force. The first one might work, I don't know about the bottlenecks, but the French conventional military is not in a position to make the other three work.
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If they don't do anything at all they will just get poorer and more prone to mass violence. Prosperity comes from producing goods and services at some combination of price and quality points that the competition doesn't beat you at and the competition in the world today is very fierce.
Zealotux · · focus · HN ↗
OgsyedIE · · focus · HN ↗
Zealotux · · focus · HN ↗
On the left, they mostly seem to be attracted to the Mélenchon option: raise salaries, freeze prices, tax the rich. To answer your question, I would then assume that the idea of expropriation is the most appealing to them. For the French, the current situation is the result of Macronism-fuelled inequality. That's not to say there isn't a kernel of truth to it, but France has been running on fumes for a long time, and the French don't seem to understand that we can't keep financing the current level of public expenditure (57% of GDP) with OAT yields approaching 5%, not that they understand what that means anyway.
OgsyedIE · · focus · HN ↗
That said, the status quo isn't doing anything to fix things and has high-profile cases of pantouflage suggesting their only interest is to loot the slowly sinking ship (e.g. Moreno, Djebberi, Kohler).