Published on November 28, 2024
–
A
+
Since we know that the French public authorities, still at the top of the world rankings for its expenditure and compulsory levies, will end the year 2024 with a deficit and a debt of 6.2% and 113% of GDP respectively ( or around 3,300 billion euros for the latter) without any particular crisis justifying such a slippage, the analyzes are progressing well. Listening to Bruno Le Maire, Minister of the Economy from 2017 until very recently, we believed that the country's accounts were kept and that Bercy had saved France during Covid… Hence, nagging question: but how did- could we get there?
The political class having promptly and exclusively thrown itself into the additional taxes that it would be able to extort from rich taxpayers and big businesses in order to redress the situation, a certain number of commentators active in the press and on social networks preferred to carefully examine the “public expenditure” part of the budgetary equation. You know, this aspect that all governments promise to reduce without ever initiating the slightest movement in this direction, except via the little scam sewn with white thread of the reduction in “trend” spending.
Very quickly, it became apparent that within social spending, which alone represents more than half of French public spending and 32.2% of GDP, retirement spending in turn represents almost half, thus constituting the first item of expenditure, i.e. 376 billion euros and 14.2% of GDP, as indicated in the table below for the year 2022. In the OECD, France occupies first place and third place (after Greece and Italy) for social spending and pension spending compared to GDP.
Weight of social spending, including retirement spending, in France's public spending in 2022 (Sources : GDP, public spending, social spending) :
The matter seems settled: pensions cost us too much. And what's more, they are unfair, because the contributions paid today by workers and employers are significantly higher than those previously paid by today's retirees. To which retirees respond that at their time, the weekly working time was 39 hours and that there was neither RTT nor teleworking allowing them to best combine work, leisure and family obligations.
This dialogue of the deaf is sadly typical of the battle between different categories of citizens to have access to state generosity. Which, limited by consent to tax and the country's debt capacity, increasingly takes the form of shortages as social systems enter into deficit. We saw this very clearly during the Covid pandemic in the context of the health system and the lack of beds in intensive care units. In particular, there was talk of denying access to the unvaccinated or making them pay for the care in question, even though they had paid their social security contributions like everyone else.
In a representative democracy, logic would dictate that those who govern are accountable for their actions to those who are governed, not that those who are governed accuse each other of the deficiencies of those who govern in a harmful search for scapegoats. We nevertheless see that when the State comes to take care of everything and everyone by means of a financial redistribution which amounts to hundreds of billions of euros, the solidarity supposed to spread in society quickly transforms into bitter competition. between citizens, each seeking to obtain as a priority the best share of the shortage which is inevitably taking hold.
It was true yesterday of the quarrel between vaccinated and non-vaccinated people for access to care, it is true today of the quarrel between active people and retirees for access to good retirement pensions and a good level of life. And we can add that this is still true of the quarrel between French and foreigners for access to employment and social benefits or of the quarrel between civil servants and private sector workers for access to security of the employment, the most advantageous pensions and the best health reimbursements. Etc.
Also, in response to the question asked in the introduction, I tend to think that if France is doing badly, it is firstly due to the exorbitant weight of the French State in the broad sense in all areas of existence of citizens.
To appreciate this, it is enough to note that public spending currently represents around 58% of GDP, that subjects as important and personal as education, health and pensions come under increasingly shaky state monopolies and that many other sectors (transport, energy, agriculture, etc.) are subject to crazy legislative and regulatory inflation.
Oh of course, the French are not completely foreign to such a structuring of their economic and social life. Another way of answering the introductory question would be to say that the vast majority of them are indeed responsible for the descent into hell of public accounts and, by extension, for their disastrous consequences on the prosperity of the country, since they have been voting for decades in favor of social-democratic governments of the right or left which place redistribution well above production, the preservation of our glorious social model requires.
As the economist and deputy Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) explained in his time, the State is never anything but ” the grande fiction through which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else. » Ditto today, through the aid and subsidies blithely spread throughout society by politicians who are half-ideologues, half-clientelists; the fatal outcome being that “the people will be crushed by taxeswe will make loan after loan; after having exhausted the present, we will devour the future. »
However, as a taxpayer, it is infuriating to see that we will once again have to absorb the mistakes of the political class at a high price. Besides, at what point do we move from the effects of the will of the people to those of the incompetence mixed with complacency of leaders comfortably installed in power and far too sure of themselves by dint of rehashing in automatic language the same commonplaces on the beauties of the French exception?
Rather than absorbing, once again, as usual, the deficits of a model that is heading towards its doom; rather than seeking to correct here and there, again and again, the inconsistencies generated by the system without rethinking the overall system; rather, therefore, that all this which we have already done a thousand times without success, would it not be time to give back to individuals the faculty and the responsibility to make the choices which concern them directly and personally – their work, their retirement, their health, the education of their children, etc. – and to leave the State responsible for only basic protections, certain infrastructures and everything that the individual cannot do for themselves, namely justice, police and defense?
In other words: strengthening the sovereign, breaking up state monopolies and stopping regulatory mania – this is the best recipe to apply to the French “things are going badly”. Easier said than done, and if we do it, it won't be without pain, but the other recipes, those of “always more”we know them and they don't work. The proof, this fall of 2024.
