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I do wonder what the French population actually want as a solution to the unsustainable debt and huge proportion of tax revenue(second highest in the EU) spent

I do wonder what the French population actually want as a solution to the unsustainable debt and huge proportion of tax revenue(second highest in the EU) spent on social benefits. Clearly they recognise a need for reform because they vote for politicians who run on a reform platform. Yet as soon as said reformer tries to change anything at all, it's back to the barricades. Reduce benefits? Riot! Increase tax rates? Riot! Extend the retirement age? Riot! Increase immigration? Riot!

warkdarrior 1y ago
> Increase tax rates? Riot! Somehow the tax rates for top 1% never go up.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > tax rates for top 1% never go up Genuine question: what is the effective tax rate on France's top 1%?
  - bwb 1y ago
    income tax is 45% on all income above 177,106 Euros
    - Ruphin 1y ago
      The effective tax rates on high income individuals is likely much less. There is a large correlation between income and wealth, and wealth increase through asset appreciation is largely not taxed, or at best taxed at much more favorable rates than general income tax. Tax on income is not the problem, it's tax on wealth gained through asset value increase.
      - bwb 1y ago
        That is why you have capital gains, which is ~30% in France. Investment income is flat taxed. And inheritance taxes, which are very high in France. If you want to increase taxes, consider taxing income more and capital gains at a progressive rate. Although I haven't seen good data on effects of say a 70% capital gain tax, might hurt th,e economy. I did some reading on this subject last month and the sweetspot was around 20% to 35% on that classification of income. Do you want to take people's wealth and cap it? IE, nobody is allowed more than $5 million? What are you advocating for instead?
        verzali 1y ago
        I think the proposal from the left is a 2% wealth tax annually on wealth above €100 million. I suppose that is what they are referring to.
        JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > the proposal from the left is a 2% wealth tax annually on wealth above €100 million Would this actually cover France's deficit?
        bwb 1y ago
        No, it is estimated that would only raise 15 to 25 billion. And people will just move, or move it around. France already has a wealth tax on real estate + property taxes.
        bwb 1y ago
        First, wealth tax doesn't work because it requires a ton of work to decide what constitutes "wealth," and then you have to carve out so much crap. The only wealth tax that currently works well is on real estate, as it doesn't move, and the state already taxes that. For example, how do you tax a private business? In Spain, for example, it is a big carve-out, which leads to people never selling a company, which hurts their economy as you have tons of zombie companies. Or what people do is they take their money and buy apartments and rent them out on Airbnb, wrap them in a business, and get around the wealth tax. The most effective way to tax wealth is to tax income, capital gains, and inheritance effectively. But, lets say you can wave a magic wand and tax wealth (France already taxes real estate with a wealth tax + property tax). What would a 2% yearly wealth tax raise? Maybe 15 to 25 billion a year in France, so it does nothing.
      - logicchains 1y ago
        Total French private wealth is around $15 trillion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_private_wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_pri... ), French government spending is around $1.8 trillion/year. Even if the French government were to expropriate the entirety of private wealth, it wouldn't even be enough to cover 10 years of spending. Fundamentally the French economy isn't producing enough to support the current level of spending, due to a continuously falling ratio of workers to retirees.
        JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > Even if the French government were to expropriate the entirety of private wealth, it wouldn't even be enough to cover 10 years of spending America's $6.75tn budget [1] would blow through our $140tn private wealth in 21 years. Even Norways $0.11tn budget [2] blows through its $1.6tn of private wealth in 14 years. Perhaps the better metric is deficit as a fraction of private wealth? If that looks unsustainable, the problem is in publicly-held assets and services. [1] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_budget_of_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_budget_of_Norway
        ta1243 1y ago
        French private wealth has increased $2,300 billion since 2020 according to that page. In the last 5 years French public debt has grown $750b [1] Had that growth in wealth been taxed at the rate income was taxed (45%), that would have seen France's debt decrease - even with the covid mess. [1] https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/france/national-government-debt https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/france/national-govern...
    - ta1243 1y ago
      You are implying the top 1% of wealthy people in france is related to income tax?
      - bwb 1y ago
        I don't understand this one? You tax income, you tax capital gains, you tax dividends. If you want more money, you increase those taxes.
  - sam_lowry_ 1y ago
    Unlike in the US, French top 1% are usually families that span dozens of households that run unrelated businesses. The staple of the French top 1% is the Mulliez family that counts >1000 members. The most prominent family members run Decathlon, Auchan and Leroy-Merlin, others handle equally important land and B2B businesses, the offspring get juicy jobs at McKinsey or spawn startups in what's the hot thing of the moment. I am sure there are a few you Mulliez running AI startups right now. It's really impossible to say what's the effective tax rate of these people. Their real wealth is not in the money, of with they have plenty, but rather in endless opportunities.
    - alephnerd 1y ago
      > Their real wealth is not in the money, of with they have plenty, but rather in endless opportunities. That's not solvable with tax policy. The solution to that is DEI, but HN froths at the mouth when those 3 letters are pronounced.
      - sam_lowry_ 1y ago
        > The solution to that is DEI Funnily, France already tried that in 1789.
ratelimitsteve 1y ago
There are actually several French people and if one of them votes for austerity while the other protests it that doesn't actually make both of them hypocrites.
bwb 1y ago
France is in trouble because people don't want to face the math. It's going to take a leader to push through changes nobody wants and somehow make them feel good about it. Hard bit. Also, the USA is in the same spot. Although better as their tax burden is so low, so raising it higher is easier when it comes to the math side of things.
- maeln 1y ago
  > France is in trouble because people don't want to face the math. I disagree, a lot of people here are quite aware that we are in very difficult financial situation, from all side of the political spectrum. The main issue is that there is a very big disagreement on how to solve it (i.e how/who to tax more, and where to cut spending). And with a fragmented national assembly, everything is at a deadlock right now.
  - bwb 1y ago
    I have not seen any solutions by either the left or the right that mathematically solve it. In fact, the last time I checked, the far right was advocating for a lower retirement age and increased spending. The left seems to want things we all want, but we're unsure how to afford them. They never seem to have math to back it up as taxes can only go up so much, and they are already some of the highest as a percentage of GDP in the world. Can you point me to a real proposed solution by either side?
    - fngjdflmdflg 1y ago
      >[Taxes] are already some of the highest as a percentage of GDP in the world. Is this the right metric: "Tax revenue (% of GDP)"?[0] If so, France ranks 28 at 23.1% of GDP. The highest non-island developed country is Denmark at 31.4%. Denmark's GDP per capita is 1.5x France. New Zeland's GDP per capita is similar to France and their GDP to tax rate is 29.6% which is the fifth highest. Does New Zeland face similar problems as France? I think I agree with your implication that simply increasing the tax to GDP ratio is not a magic bullet. In general, the data here is really interesting. Germany and the US have a pretty similar value, both averaging at about 11% in recent years. I would have assumed that Germany would have a higher rate. I wonder if this data is misleading somehow or if my assumptions were just wrong here. I guess one variable missing here is government debt, which is not a tax but is still used to pay for government expenses. [0] Global: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS?most_... France over time: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true&locations=FR https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS?most_...
potato3732842 1y ago
English government: "we have revoked all your rights and outlawed tea" English people: "oh bother, guess I'll just watch football" French government: "we are levying a .0053% tax on stinky cheese" French people: "we are on our way to the capitol with rocket launchers and we will light on fire every speed camera we encounter on our way" They're like Europe's Portland but without the prevalence of piercings and hair dye. Beautiful really.
- 0b110907 1y ago
  The french have really nailed protesting, see the BBQ adapted to be rolled along tram tracks to ensure you can stave off hunger mid protest: https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/tjmw8s/french_demonstrators_are_hungry_so_they_install_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/tjmw8s/fr...
- verzali 1y ago
  Rights whatever, but they'd never get away with outlawing tea.
  - Woodi 1y ago
    Ok, that is first thing for me to want to be tourist into UK :)
logicchains 1y ago
The population isn't homogeneous. The fundamental problem is that the average age of the population keeps increasing, meaning fewer and fewer working people per retiree. This means young people's quality of living gets worse and worse as they have to support more and more non-working people via pensions. Given the opposition to mass immigration, there doesn't seem to be any feasible solution in the near future.
maeln 1y ago
Well, you will never make 65 million people agree with each other. > Clearly they recognise a need for reform because they vote for politicians who run on a reform platform. Meh. Macron, and his party, was not really running on a reform platform. He was the typical, business centrist candidate. And the national assembly is very divided right now, and the government is systematically from a minority party (so neither from the left union, or the extreme right RN), which are not running on a reform platform (quite the opposite). There is proposition about reforming taxes to taxes the wealthiest, something with some popular support, but no party that support this kind of reform as the power to make it happen right now. We are in a deadlock since the dissolution of the national assembly by Macron, and we probably will be until the next presidential election, or a new dissolution that would give a big majority to one party which would pretty much ensure them control of the government. The french system is really not made for a fragmented assembly. This is not what you can find in more parliamentary system where coalition form the government. A fragmented national assembly is basically a deadlock in France's fifth republic system.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- lucianbr 1y ago
  Why? What exactly makes it possible or impossible to have a coalition government, in your opinion? A naive look tells me if a majority can agree to support a government then it can work, and it not not. What "system setup" helps or hinders a majority made up of different parties? To me it seems the important part is the willingness of parties to compromise. Which may or may not be there regardless of the "system setup".
  - maeln 1y ago
    > Why? What exactly makes it possible or impossible to have a coalition government, in your opinion? Mostly because it is a different system. The parlement in France doesn't elect the government. The president choose the prime minister, and the prime minister form the government. The parlement can, at basically any point, vote to "censor" the government, effectively terminating it if a majority is reached (they do stay in position until a new government is formed, but can only take care of the "affaire courante", i.e simple daily affairs, no big laws, reforms, policy changes, ...). Indirectly, this means that the parlement can have a lot of power over who will be in the government. If one party has an absolute, or almost absolute, majority in the parlement, it more or less mean that they can decide who shall be in the government. Due to the way our election works, the party of the president usually has the majority in the parlement. This is even more true since Chirac changed the duration of the presidential mandate to match the duration of the parlement mandate (and their elections are very close). This usually give a lot of power to the president, effectively making him the sole judge of who shall be in the government (since he choose the prime minister and the parlement member of his party follow his lead). But what we have right now is a very unique situation. Nobody has even close to an absolute majority in the parlement. The left "union" (which is not really united, but that's another story) control roughly ~33% of the seat, the extreme right party control ~21% of the seats, the presidential party control ~15%, and the rest are various centrist and right wing party. The issue is that there is no way to get a solid absolute majority with this assembly. For the left, even if they were to compromise heavily and add as much center-right as possible in their coalition, it would barely give them a majority, and the government would have to compromise so much, it would piss off all their voters, which would be a political suicide for the next presidential election. Nobody want to ally with the extreme right except a few members of some right party, which would never give a majority (and the RN would only go to the government if they don't have to make any important compromise, for the same reason). So, you have to remove the two biggest block. And so, even if all the other party would somehow make a coalition (which is more or less the government we had since the assembly dissolution), it would still give less than ~45% of seats in the parlement, not enough to ensure that your governement would not be censored (which is what is happening, we've had like 3 or 5 government since the dissolution, i can't even remember all of them). This is an unprecedented situation in France and basically the achilles heel of the fifth republic. Our system cannot function without a clear majority in the national assembly, and the way the assembly is divided right now makes any majority coalition impossible (or a political suicide).
inetknght 1y ago
> I do wonder what the French population actually want as a solution to the unsustainable debt and huge proportion of tax revenue(second highest in the EU) spent on social benefits. Fewer rich people would be my guess.
- logicchains 1y ago
  Total French private wealth is around $15 trillion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_private_wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_pri... ), French government spending is around $1.8 trillion/year. Even if the French government were to tax 100% of that wealth, it wouldn't be enough to cover 10 years of spending. Fundamentally the French economy isn't producing enough to support the current level of pension spending, due to a continuously falling ratio of workers to retirees. No amount of taxing anyone could produce enough money to plug that hole.
  - aurareturn 1y ago
    Fundamentally the French economy isn't producing enough to support the current level of pension spending, due to a continuously falling ratio of workers to retirees. Do we think this is why French government added so many immigrants in recent times? Of course an influx of immigrants will cause other issues. But if wealthy people need more population to keep their wealth up, I don't think they care.
    - alephnerd 1y ago
      It's not about wealthy people alone. You need staff to clean retirees sh!t (literally) in a country where the median age is 42.3 and rising. France overspent in the 2000s and 2010s due to populist politics, and now the chickens have come to roost. Something needs to give in France, otherwise it'll become an Italy 2.0.
    - vladvasiliu 1y ago
      > Do we think this is why French government added so many immigrants in recent times? It's part of the official discourse.
tehjoker 1y ago
> huge proportion of tax revenue(second highest in the EU) spent on social benefits. This is the goal not the problem.
- bwb 1y ago
  Somewhat agree, but the problem is that debt is at 110% and taxes are about maxed out. At some point, you go outside the Laffer curve, and then your economic engine is stunted (which maybe France already has?).
  - throwaway894345 1y ago
    How can you tell when taxes are about maxed out? What's stopping France from increasing its marginal tax rate or creating a new tax bracket? Is the idea that people will move elsewhere in the EU with lower tax rates?
    - yoz-y 1y ago
      That does happen.
      - throwaway894345 1y ago
        My question wasn't rhetorical, I'm not expressing an opinion, I'm trying to understand what the parent meant by "maxed out".
        yoz-y 1y ago
        Anecdata but several of my colleagues moved to other countries (Poland, Switzerland, US…) specifically citing high taxes as the reason. The middle class is disproportionately squeezed. Also one thing to consider is that most comments here talk about income tax. On top of that you need to also count all other taxes. Let’s say the company pays a US style salary for you, around 300k from that your actual gross salary will be only 200k from which the taxable salary will be 160k. That 160k is what you will be paying the income tax on (around 40k) This is the real reason salaries are lower here compared to the US even though the cost of employment is similar.
icepush 1y ago
What they want is for the government to write off the debt, but good luck actually getting it.
ok123456 1y ago
Why should people meekly accept austerity or acculturation?
- alephnerd 1y ago
  The alternative is going bankrupt, thus leading to forced and callous austerity by the IMF and ECB - just like what Greece faced. That would solve the problem as well, but French voters would have no say or autonomy. French voters need to get it in their head that they need to accept their government tightening belts, otherwise they will have no say on what gets cut.
  - ok123456 1y ago
    No. People are tired of socialism for billionaires and corporations, and the law of the jungle for everyone else.
ajb 1y ago
From an Anglo-Saxon perspective that's what it looks like, but I think you are missing a cultural difference. In France, the state does not have the legitimacy that it does in the UK and US. In the UK parliament, not the people, is sovereign; this is more or less the practical situation in the US as well, despite lip-service to popular sovereignty. In France, the people maintain the right to distruptively object to government actions and laws. What seems to us to be a criminal act may have (depending on circumstances) more popular legitimacy than the laws themselves. Or it may not, depending.
hamilyon2 1y ago
Chaos agents promote cooperation
creer 1y ago
Many french people, like in most other places, don't give a shit who gets cut or increased as long as it's not them. These people will try and paralyze the country because it's effective and the elected government will reliably back off from whatever was objectionable. Sarkozy, a long time ago, ran for president specifically against that, proposing that the country run that gauntlet once and for all. To solve that problem. He was elected on that platform - so it's not like there isn't support for it. Then he backed off like everyone else.
cAtte_ 1y ago
this is called goomba fallacy.
port11 1y ago
Perhaps ending or cutting the laughable 211 billion euros as subsidies to businesses?

warkdarrior 1y ago

> Increase tax rates? Riot! Somehow the tax rates for top 1% never go up.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> tax rates for top 1% never go up Genuine question: what is the effective tax rate on France's top 1%?
- bwb 1y ago
  income tax is 45% on all income above 177,106 Euros
  - Ruphin 1y ago
    The effective tax rates on high income individuals is likely much less. There is a large correlation between income and wealth, and wealth increase through asset appreciation is largely not taxed, or at best taxed at much more favorable rates than general income tax. Tax on income is not the problem, it's tax on wealth gained through asset value increase.
    - bwb 1y ago
      That is why you have capital gains, which is ~30% in France. Investment income is flat taxed. And inheritance taxes, which are very high in France. If you want to increase taxes, consider taxing income more and capital gains at a progressive rate. Although I haven't seen good data on effects of say a 70% capital gain tax, might hurt th,e economy. I did some reading on this subject last month and the sweetspot was around 20% to 35% on that classification of income. Do you want to take people's wealth and cap it? IE, nobody is allowed more than $5 million? What are you advocating for instead?
      - verzali 1y ago
        I think the proposal from the left is a 2% wealth tax annually on wealth above €100 million. I suppose that is what they are referring to.
        JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > the proposal from the left is a 2% wealth tax annually on wealth above €100 million Would this actually cover France's deficit?
        bwb 1y ago
        No, it is estimated that would only raise 15 to 25 billion. And people will just move, or move it around. France already has a wealth tax on real estate + property taxes.
        bwb 1y ago
        First, wealth tax doesn't work because it requires a ton of work to decide what constitutes "wealth," and then you have to carve out so much crap. The only wealth tax that currently works well is on real estate, as it doesn't move, and the state already taxes that. For example, how do you tax a private business? In Spain, for example, it is a big carve-out, which leads to people never selling a company, which hurts their economy as you have tons of zombie companies. Or what people do is they take their money and buy apartments and rent them out on Airbnb, wrap them in a business, and get around the wealth tax. The most effective way to tax wealth is to tax income, capital gains, and inheritance effectively. But, lets say you can wave a magic wand and tax wealth (France already taxes real estate with a wealth tax + property tax). What would a 2% yearly wealth tax raise? Maybe 15 to 25 billion a year in France, so it does nothing.
    - logicchains 1y ago
      Total French private wealth is around $15 trillion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_private_wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_pri... ), French government spending is around $1.8 trillion/year. Even if the French government were to expropriate the entirety of private wealth, it wouldn't even be enough to cover 10 years of spending. Fundamentally the French economy isn't producing enough to support the current level of spending, due to a continuously falling ratio of workers to retirees.
      - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > Even if the French government were to expropriate the entirety of private wealth, it wouldn't even be enough to cover 10 years of spending America's $6.75tn budget [1] would blow through our $140tn private wealth in 21 years. Even Norways $0.11tn budget [2] blows through its $1.6tn of private wealth in 14 years. Perhaps the better metric is deficit as a fraction of private wealth? If that looks unsustainable, the problem is in publicly-held assets and services. [1] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_budget_of_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_budget_of_Norway
      - ta1243 1y ago
        French private wealth has increased $2,300 billion since 2020 according to that page. In the last 5 years French public debt has grown $750b [1] Had that growth in wealth been taxed at the rate income was taxed (45%), that would have seen France's debt decrease - even with the covid mess. [1] https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/france/national-government-debt https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/france/national-govern...
  - ta1243 1y ago
    You are implying the top 1% of wealthy people in france is related to income tax?
    - bwb 1y ago
      I don't understand this one? You tax income, you tax capital gains, you tax dividends. If you want more money, you increase those taxes.
- sam_lowry_ 1y ago
  Unlike in the US, French top 1% are usually families that span dozens of households that run unrelated businesses. The staple of the French top 1% is the Mulliez family that counts >1000 members. The most prominent family members run Decathlon, Auchan and Leroy-Merlin, others handle equally important land and B2B businesses, the offspring get juicy jobs at McKinsey or spawn startups in what's the hot thing of the moment. I am sure there are a few you Mulliez running AI startups right now. It's really impossible to say what's the effective tax rate of these people. Their real wealth is not in the money, of with they have plenty, but rather in endless opportunities.
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    > Their real wealth is not in the money, of with they have plenty, but rather in endless opportunities. That's not solvable with tax policy. The solution to that is DEI, but HN froths at the mouth when those 3 letters are pronounced.
    - sam_lowry_ 1y ago
      > The solution to that is DEI Funnily, France already tried that in 1789.

ratelimitsteve 1y ago

There are actually several French people and if one of them votes for austerity while the other protests it that doesn't actually make both of them hypocrites.

bwb 1y ago

France is in trouble because people don't want to face the math. It's going to take a leader to push through changes nobody wants and somehow make them feel good about it. Hard bit. Also, the USA is in the same spot. Although better as their tax burden is so low, so raising it higher is easier when it comes to the math side of things.

maeln 1y ago
> France is in trouble because people don't want to face the math. I disagree, a lot of people here are quite aware that we are in very difficult financial situation, from all side of the political spectrum. The main issue is that there is a very big disagreement on how to solve it (i.e how/who to tax more, and where to cut spending). And with a fragmented national assembly, everything is at a deadlock right now.
- bwb 1y ago
  I have not seen any solutions by either the left or the right that mathematically solve it. In fact, the last time I checked, the far right was advocating for a lower retirement age and increased spending. The left seems to want things we all want, but we're unsure how to afford them. They never seem to have math to back it up as taxes can only go up so much, and they are already some of the highest as a percentage of GDP in the world. Can you point me to a real proposed solution by either side?
  - fngjdflmdflg 1y ago
    >[Taxes] are already some of the highest as a percentage of GDP in the world. Is this the right metric: "Tax revenue (% of GDP)"?[0] If so, France ranks 28 at 23.1% of GDP. The highest non-island developed country is Denmark at 31.4%. Denmark's GDP per capita is 1.5x France. New Zeland's GDP per capita is similar to France and their GDP to tax rate is 29.6% which is the fifth highest. Does New Zeland face similar problems as France? I think I agree with your implication that simply increasing the tax to GDP ratio is not a magic bullet. In general, the data here is really interesting. Germany and the US have a pretty similar value, both averaging at about 11% in recent years. I would have assumed that Germany would have a higher rate. I wonder if this data is misleading somehow or if my assumptions were just wrong here. I guess one variable missing here is government debt, which is not a tax but is still used to pay for government expenses. [0] Global: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS?most_... France over time: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true&locations=FR https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS?most_...

potato3732842 1y ago

English government: "we have revoked all your rights and outlawed tea" English people: "oh bother, guess I'll just watch football" French government: "we are levying a .0053% tax on stinky cheese" French people: "we are on our way to the capitol with rocket launchers and we will light on fire every speed camera we encounter on our way" They're like Europe's Portland but without the prevalence of piercings and hair dye. Beautiful really.

0b110907 1y ago
The french have really nailed protesting, see the BBQ adapted to be rolled along tram tracks to ensure you can stave off hunger mid protest: https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/tjmw8s/french_demonstrators_are_hungry_so_they_install_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/tjmw8s/fr...
verzali 1y ago
Rights whatever, but they'd never get away with outlawing tea.
- Woodi 1y ago
  Ok, that is first thing for me to want to be tourist into UK :)

logicchains 1y ago

The population isn't homogeneous. The fundamental problem is that the average age of the population keeps increasing, meaning fewer and fewer working people per retiree. This means young people's quality of living gets worse and worse as they have to support more and more non-working people via pensions. Given the opposition to mass immigration, there doesn't seem to be any feasible solution in the near future.

maeln 1y ago

Well, you will never make 65 million people agree with each other. > Clearly they recognise a need for reform because they vote for politicians who run on a reform platform. Meh. Macron, and his party, was not really running on a reform platform. He was the typical, business centrist candidate. And the national assembly is very divided right now, and the government is systematically from a minority party (so neither from the left union, or the extreme right RN), which are not running on a reform platform (quite the opposite). There is proposition about reforming taxes to taxes the wealthiest, something with some popular support, but no party that support this kind of reform as the power to make it happen right now. We are in a deadlock since the dissolution of the national assembly by Macron, and we probably will be until the next presidential election, or a new dissolution that would give a big majority to one party which would pretty much ensure them control of the government. The french system is really not made for a fragmented assembly. This is not what you can find in more parliamentary system where coalition form the government. A fragmented national assembly is basically a deadlock in France's fifth republic system.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
lucianbr 1y ago
Why? What exactly makes it possible or impossible to have a coalition government, in your opinion? A naive look tells me if a majority can agree to support a government then it can work, and it not not. What "system setup" helps or hinders a majority made up of different parties? To me it seems the important part is the willingness of parties to compromise. Which may or may not be there regardless of the "system setup".
- maeln 1y ago
  > Why? What exactly makes it possible or impossible to have a coalition government, in your opinion? Mostly because it is a different system. The parlement in France doesn't elect the government. The president choose the prime minister, and the prime minister form the government. The parlement can, at basically any point, vote to "censor" the government, effectively terminating it if a majority is reached (they do stay in position until a new government is formed, but can only take care of the "affaire courante", i.e simple daily affairs, no big laws, reforms, policy changes, ...). Indirectly, this means that the parlement can have a lot of power over who will be in the government. If one party has an absolute, or almost absolute, majority in the parlement, it more or less mean that they can decide who shall be in the government. Due to the way our election works, the party of the president usually has the majority in the parlement. This is even more true since Chirac changed the duration of the presidential mandate to match the duration of the parlement mandate (and their elections are very close). This usually give a lot of power to the president, effectively making him the sole judge of who shall be in the government (since he choose the prime minister and the parlement member of his party follow his lead). But what we have right now is a very unique situation. Nobody has even close to an absolute majority in the parlement. The left "union" (which is not really united, but that's another story) control roughly ~33% of the seat, the extreme right party control ~21% of the seats, the presidential party control ~15%, and the rest are various centrist and right wing party. The issue is that there is no way to get a solid absolute majority with this assembly. For the left, even if they were to compromise heavily and add as much center-right as possible in their coalition, it would barely give them a majority, and the government would have to compromise so much, it would piss off all their voters, which would be a political suicide for the next presidential election. Nobody want to ally with the extreme right except a few members of some right party, which would never give a majority (and the RN would only go to the government if they don't have to make any important compromise, for the same reason). So, you have to remove the two biggest block. And so, even if all the other party would somehow make a coalition (which is more or less the government we had since the assembly dissolution), it would still give less than ~45% of seats in the parlement, not enough to ensure that your governement would not be censored (which is what is happening, we've had like 3 or 5 government since the dissolution, i can't even remember all of them). This is an unprecedented situation in France and basically the achilles heel of the fifth republic. Our system cannot function without a clear majority in the national assembly, and the way the assembly is divided right now makes any majority coalition impossible (or a political suicide).

inetknght 1y ago

> I do wonder what the French population actually want as a solution to the unsustainable debt and huge proportion of tax revenue(second highest in the EU) spent on social benefits. Fewer rich people would be my guess.

logicchains 1y ago
Total French private wealth is around $15 trillion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_private_wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_pri... ), French government spending is around $1.8 trillion/year. Even if the French government were to tax 100% of that wealth, it wouldn't be enough to cover 10 years of spending. Fundamentally the French economy isn't producing enough to support the current level of pension spending, due to a continuously falling ratio of workers to retirees. No amount of taxing anyone could produce enough money to plug that hole.
- aurareturn 1y ago
  Fundamentally the French economy isn't producing enough to support the current level of pension spending, due to a continuously falling ratio of workers to retirees. Do we think this is why French government added so many immigrants in recent times? Of course an influx of immigrants will cause other issues. But if wealthy people need more population to keep their wealth up, I don't think they care.
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    It's not about wealthy people alone. You need staff to clean retirees sh!t (literally) in a country where the median age is 42.3 and rising. France overspent in the 2000s and 2010s due to populist politics, and now the chickens have come to roost. Something needs to give in France, otherwise it'll become an Italy 2.0.
  - vladvasiliu 1y ago
    > Do we think this is why French government added so many immigrants in recent times? It's part of the official discourse.

tehjoker 1y ago

> huge proportion of tax revenue(second highest in the EU) spent on social benefits. This is the goal not the problem.

bwb 1y ago
Somewhat agree, but the problem is that debt is at 110% and taxes are about maxed out. At some point, you go outside the Laffer curve, and then your economic engine is stunted (which maybe France already has?).
- throwaway894345 1y ago
  How can you tell when taxes are about maxed out? What's stopping France from increasing its marginal tax rate or creating a new tax bracket? Is the idea that people will move elsewhere in the EU with lower tax rates?
  - yoz-y 1y ago
    That does happen.
    - throwaway894345 1y ago
      My question wasn't rhetorical, I'm not expressing an opinion, I'm trying to understand what the parent meant by "maxed out".
      - yoz-y 1y ago
        Anecdata but several of my colleagues moved to other countries (Poland, Switzerland, US…) specifically citing high taxes as the reason. The middle class is disproportionately squeezed. Also one thing to consider is that most comments here talk about income tax. On top of that you need to also count all other taxes. Let’s say the company pays a US style salary for you, around 300k from that your actual gross salary will be only 200k from which the taxable salary will be 160k. That 160k is what you will be paying the income tax on (around 40k) This is the real reason salaries are lower here compared to the US even though the cost of employment is similar.

icepush 1y ago

What they want is for the government to write off the debt, but good luck actually getting it.

ok123456 1y ago

Why should people meekly accept austerity or acculturation?

alephnerd 1y ago
The alternative is going bankrupt, thus leading to forced and callous austerity by the IMF and ECB - just like what Greece faced. That would solve the problem as well, but French voters would have no say or autonomy. French voters need to get it in their head that they need to accept their government tightening belts, otherwise they will have no say on what gets cut.
- ok123456 1y ago
  No. People are tired of socialism for billionaires and corporations, and the law of the jungle for everyone else.

ajb 1y ago

From an Anglo-Saxon perspective that's what it looks like, but I think you are missing a cultural difference. In France, the state does not have the legitimacy that it does in the UK and US. In the UK parliament, not the people, is sovereign; this is more or less the practical situation in the US as well, despite lip-service to popular sovereignty. In France, the people maintain the right to distruptively object to government actions and laws. What seems to us to be a criminal act may have (depending on circumstances) more popular legitimacy than the laws themselves. Or it may not, depending.

hamilyon2 1y ago

Chaos agents promote cooperation

creer 1y ago

Many french people, like in most other places, don't give a shit who gets cut or increased as long as it's not them. These people will try and paralyze the country because it's effective and the elected government will reliably back off from whatever was objectionable. Sarkozy, a long time ago, ran for president specifically against that, proposing that the country run that gauntlet once and for all. To solve that problem. He was elected on that platform - so it's not like there isn't support for it. Then he backed off like everyone else.

cAtte_ 1y ago

this is called goomba fallacy.

port11 1y ago

Perhaps ending or cutting the laughable 211 billion euros as subsidies to businesses?