Agreed that France desperately needs to lower its enormous debt, but austerity measures are somehow political suicide. I wrote something similar over here:
As a French citizen, I can unfortunately only agree with your analysis. The situation is particularly exasperating given the distortion between fiscal reality and the media discourse, which at best outrageously downplays the problems of our country, and at worst actively contributes to denying them.
It must be said that announcing on the media the dire need for reforms is quite frequent but putting forward even the beginnings of concrete proposals is far less common. The population is not ready to accept unpopular yet necessary measures. The fact that one in five working people is employed in the public sector, nearly 17 million French citizens are retired—almost one-third of the population—and, as stated in your article, about 8% are unemployed (though without some accounting tricks, the figure is undoubtedly higher) makes the issue of fiscal reforms deeply explosive.
While anxiety is palpable—despite the complacency and forced optimism of both far-right and far-left movements—the population is, overall, resigned, much like in your illustration for the article: ready to boil.
I can’t help feeling that the media is partly to blame for the pensions issue. They can’t help but side with the “poor” pensioner. But the journalists would probably retort that stories about how the numbers don’t add up with today’s pension settings don’t get as many clicks!
>Macron’s tepid 2023 pension reform led to massive social unrest in which young people played a major role. Over 80% of French young people (aged below 35) opposed the reform. French young people seem to think public pensions’ sustainability is merely a matter of political will and one’s preferred conception of social justice.
I am not usually one to defend protestors, but there is some sense in which these reforms are always throwing the young(er) under the bus. It's not enough to just raise the age of retirement, you also have to reduce the benefits in some way (or at the very least cap their growth).
Agreed that France desperately needs to lower its enormous debt, but austerity measures are somehow political suicide. I wrote something similar over here:
https://kainesianmacro.substack.com/p/why-france-is-looking-a-bit-italian
Unfortunately, virtually every Western nation faces the same problem, and they all refuse to do anything substantial to fix the problem.
As a French citizen, I can unfortunately only agree with your analysis. The situation is particularly exasperating given the distortion between fiscal reality and the media discourse, which at best outrageously downplays the problems of our country, and at worst actively contributes to denying them.
It must be said that announcing on the media the dire need for reforms is quite frequent but putting forward even the beginnings of concrete proposals is far less common. The population is not ready to accept unpopular yet necessary measures. The fact that one in five working people is employed in the public sector, nearly 17 million French citizens are retired—almost one-third of the population—and, as stated in your article, about 8% are unemployed (though without some accounting tricks, the figure is undoubtedly higher) makes the issue of fiscal reforms deeply explosive.
While anxiety is palpable—despite the complacency and forced optimism of both far-right and far-left movements—the population is, overall, resigned, much like in your illustration for the article: ready to boil.
Good piece!
If only we had some European rules about how much % debt and how much of a deficit a country could have, or something
Deindustrialization of Germany should offer a reprieve to France.
I'm not sure it's zero-sum gain like that
I can’t help feeling that the media is partly to blame for the pensions issue. They can’t help but side with the “poor” pensioner. But the journalists would probably retort that stories about how the numbers don’t add up with today’s pension settings don’t get as many clicks!
>Macron’s tepid 2023 pension reform led to massive social unrest in which young people played a major role. Over 80% of French young people (aged below 35) opposed the reform. French young people seem to think public pensions’ sustainability is merely a matter of political will and one’s preferred conception of social justice.
I am not usually one to defend protestors, but there is some sense in which these reforms are always throwing the young(er) under the bus. It's not enough to just raise the age of retirement, you also have to reduce the benefits in some way (or at the very least cap their growth).
Yeah, like things are real peachy in the US.