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Macron needs to stop playing President of Consensus and start playing Liquidator. He has 15 months left, zero seats to lose, and a legacy that currently reads "The guy who paved the road for Bardella."
He needs to execute one final operation.
Fire Lecornu immediately. He caved on the pension reform. In my book, reversing a structural reform to please the Socialists is like selling your armor to buy wine - it feels good tonight, but you bleed tomorrow.
Don't appoint a politician. Appoint a Technocratic Butcher. Find someone 75 years old, rich, and hated. Someone who doesn't want a career. Someone who looks at a spread sheet like a Reaper looking at a harvest.
Use Article 49.3 to ram through a brutal budget.
Restore the Pension Reform (back to 64, hell, try for 65).
Slash the welfare.
Raise VAT immediately to plug the cash gap.
The Parliament will scream. They will vote "No Confidence." The government will fall. Let it fall.
Under the French constitution, if they topple the government but can't agree on an alternative budget (which the Left and Right never will), the budget passes by ordinance.
Macron proves he is the only adult in the room willing to jump on the grenade to save the solvency of the state. He saves the finances, burns the opposition, and leaves the next guy a balanced book and a furious population. That is leadership.
Did the credit rating agencies hold off on downgrading France? Yes.
Did the government survive the vote of no confidence (by 9 votes)? Yes.
The tool (Article 49.3) worked perfectly. It was the willpower that broke later. Jupiter threw the bolt, but then he apologized for the thunder. That was the mistake.
He cynically tried to bank on the far right running hot and the left being divided to consolidate power, and ended up losing seats and gifting front national and the left 90ish seats at the expense of his own party. How's that for a success?
Barnier failed because he was a diplomat bringing a PowerPoint presentation to a knife fight. He tried to negotiate his survival. He tried to appease the unappeasable.
Here is the Constitutional trick (Article 47) that Barnier was too polite to use:
If Parliament fails to vote on the budget within 70 days (because they are too busy toppling governments and screaming at each other) the President can implement the budget by ordinance.
I'm basically in favor of all your are saying, but just want to add that it's not like Lecournu caved on pension reform on his own. He tried without caving, the government failed (or was effectively about to I don't remember), so he was let go, only to be immediately reappointed by Macron and then agree to suspend the reforms. It was clearly a Macron position at that point
Starmer is actually in a more tragic position than Macron. Macron is paralyzed by the math (no majority), Starmer is paralyzed by his psychology. He sits on a massive majority, possessing the power of a King, yet he governs with the caution of a junior lawyer terrified of losing a client.
Starmer's majority is dependent on, seemingly, a huge bunch of lefties who cannot comprehend that government resources are finite and that the statements "the rich keep cheating tax" and "tax the rich" are statements that inform each other.
It's a secret in British politics that across the aisles many eggheads and policy wonks agree on a shit ton (ask any and they bemoan NIMBYs behind closed doors), but the system is such that betray the confidence of the 20% of your constituency that for you your seat, and your done for
Also, in starmers case, his "majority" is actually razor thin. Huge number of parliamentarians, but less proportion of votes than Corbyn of all people in 2019
The reason why the lefties were even in a position to run amok is because Starmer went into No.10 with a stonking majority and a mandate to implement a manifesto, without any plan or apparent desire to implement any of it.
How hard would it even have been to phone Tony Blair for advice on how he delivered?
Starmer was elected by basically the whole country, who have seemingly decided 16 months is enough time to utterly undo the immense damage done over the last 15 years, and the fact we aren't in utopia yet means we need to elect the fascist loons. Loons who will, in short order, utterly annihilate the country, take all the wealth, and fuck it up for years, if not decades.
I agree he needs to make some tough decisions and do it fast (he's got 3 more years before elections, nows the time), and he's massively cocked it (Labour had over a decade to get their ducks in a row and its been nothing but infighting), but he really doesn't have the public support for massively cutting spending (it's Labour, their entire deal is increased spending and an end to austerity) and he's already raised taxes on everyone below 100k as much as he feasibly can. That, and their commitment to no more borrowing save for capital investment (the right decision, though again unpopular), means he's taking a slow-burn route, which isn't going to make any huge wins in the next few years. At best, he'll be able to point to some nice graphs vaguely trending in the right direction, at which point Farage will scream about brown people and we'll all be fucked.
The fundamental issue is that the entire nation came together behind Starmer not because they agreed with his policies, but because they hated his opposition. That does not create a solid mandate, or a united political party.
or, your hypothetical plan leaves most the population angry because theyve been fucked out of the pensions they work hard for, the centrists lose all their seats, and the far right gets a balanced book with enough money to spend on their bullshit
also, isnt this what he has done for the past nine years? how do you think this will prevent the far right this time?????
Macron isn't the invading army. He is the garrison trapped inside the city.
The "Siege" is happening right now. The opposition is starving the State of its budget. The bond markets are freezing the supply lines. The government is currently boiling leather for soup.
Always funny how you lot never bring up reversing his regressive tax cuts that he brought in at the start of his terms and which accelerated the current fiscal crisis.
Literally always "being someone in to make the unpopular decisions, but make sure none of them are decisions that affect me".
Let’s put away the "Class War" pamphlets for a second and look at the Math.
You are talking about the abolition of the ISF.
Revenue lost: Approximately €4-5 billion a year.
France’s Public Deficit: Approximately €154 billion a year.
You are blaming a flood on a dripping faucet.
Even if you reversed those tax cuts and taxed the rich until they squealed, you would cover roughly 3% of the deficit. And in exchange for that moral victory, you would trigger exactly what happened the last time France tried this under Hollande: Capital Flight.
The rich are not a renewable resource, they are a mobile one. If you tax them to death, they move to London, Dubai, or Brussels. And they take their investment capital, their businesses, and their VAT revenue with them.
France already has the highest tax to GDP ratio in the G7. You do not have a revenue problem. You have a Spending Addiction.
You spend 57% of your GDP on the state. That is not a "fiscal crisis caused by tax cuts", that is a fiscal crisis caused by trying to run a Soviet-sized welfare state on a Capitalist budget.
If the revenue from the ISF is so minor, why lose so much political capital removing it? Incredible how Macron can be in power for almost a decade and still be a complete innocent victim of the political climate according to this board
The top 10% pay 76% of the personal income tax. It's already an insult to economic rationality.
The marginal tax rate for the highest bracket (>180k) is 45%.
Do you understand why the system can't foster when the achievers and entrepreneurs are bled to death by statist leeches?
The marginal tax rate for the highest bracket (>180k) is 45%. Do you understand why the system can't foster when the achievers and entrepreneurs are bled to death by statist leeches?
Look up what the marginal tax rate is in California, federal + state. Is California known for failing entrepreneurs and achievers?
The rich people that are mobile earn more than 640k even in France, let alone California.
They are mobile because they can manage their business from anywhere.
I don't believe that taxing the rich would solve anything, but those rich earn at top rate anywhere.
Bardella is likely winning anyway. The question is: Do you hand him a loaded gun (a debt crisis) or a straightjacket (a balanced budget)?
If Macron fixes the books now, he deprives the RN of their best excuse. When Bardella walks into the Elysee, he won't find a crisis to exploit, he will find a balanced ledger.
If Bardella then wants to blow it up to fund his populist fantasies (like lowering the retirement age), he becomes the one who crashes the markets. He owns the disaster.
Like, for the most part I agree with you on France’s fiscal needs. But I don’t think that Macron doing this has much bearing at all on how well or poorly the RN would govern a year later.
France is still running one of the largest deficits in Europe, hasn’t passed a real 2026 budget, and no major bloc is willing to compromise. Macron’s coalition is weak, but the left and right would rather posture than deal with fiscal reality. Compared to other EU countries that tightened post-COVID, France just… didn’t?? Couldn’t?? The result we’re seeing is caretaker governance, stalled reform, and a slow erosion of credibility.
If this leads to being fiscally constrained, the country could struggle to increase defense spending, reinforcing U.S. leadership in European security at a time they should be focusing inward.
There are hundreds of things they’d cut before cutting military spending. If anything, cutting military spending barely makes economic sense for France as is.
History proves that when Paris runs out of money, they cut hospitals, they cut schools, and they slash pensions. They do not cut the Army. The French political class would rather have riots in the streets than be dependent on Washington for security. The fiscal crisis will be paid for by the grandmas, not the generals.
Macron literally sacrificed his entire mandate, bypassed Parliament (49.3), and watched Paris burn just to raise the retirement age. He did touch the pensions.
He didn’t CUT the pensions for current boomers. If anything he raised them lmao.
He cut future pensions for currently working people, which is a fine policy in isolation. Then he raised pensions for boomers and wiped out all the gains for some cheap electoral reason
> the current French Parliament is a suicide pact.
And who brought that Parliament into existence exactly? Calling the 2024 snap election will go down as the worst political move in the entire history of the 5th republic.
The army is the first thing they cut, France maintained higher relative spending because they're a nuclear power which forced the hand of successive government in either abandoning that capacity or keeping a minimum army that's relatively larger than our neighbors.
But outside of those big items that France must spend on to maintain their nuclear capability the rest of the army has been operating on a shoestring for decades, with a budget not too dissimilar from other European armies, despite taking part in much much more military operations.
There is a massive difference between Safety and Sovereignty.
When you rely on US security, you pay with obedience. Remember the NSA scandal? The US used Danish cables to spy on Angela Merkel. Denmark had to say yes. They are a vassal. France refuses to be a vassal.
France is a nuclear power with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. They have global interests (Africa, Pacific) that often conflict with US interests. Denmark does not.
Would PR fix the issue? It would probably just yield a similar result of three generally equal-sized voting blocs that are broadly mutually exclusive with each other.
PR would all but guarantee the next legislative elections result in a similar National Assembly to the current one, three roughly equally-sized blocs that all hate each other to the bone. Structural change doesn't lead to a German-style consensual coalition culture overnight.
It will however avoid a putinist majority even if a putinist president gets elected.
Consensual politics will not suddenly emerge but at least with time it might, without gambling on something like what happened in 2010 in Hungary (state capture)
> Consensual politics will not suddenly emerge but at least with time it might
Honestly, I really really doubt this. French political culture resembles Italy far more than Germany. And while Italy doesn't quite have PR (it has mixed-member majoritarian), their elections are still list-based systems. When France talks about PR, it usually refers to the 4th republic/Mittérrand version of PR by département, which means a very high barrier of entry in most constituencies given the few available seats. That is the most realistic version of PR for France. Of course they can adopt a different system but there's hardly anyone talking about that except for the Greens who want PR by région.
I wish people could see we as a collective are all responsible for each others health and wellness. Like, France is asking for a few more years of work and still are offered the ability to retire for 20+ years.
I get nobody likes that, but one would hope that reality wouldn’t be ignored, but instead, the non racist populist are just saying, “there’ll never be consequences ever of perpetual budget deficits” and the racist populist are saying, “there’ll never be consequences ever of perpetual budget deficits.”
It is just such a shame that the people of France now live a high quality of life but are willing to screw the next generation because they’re not willing to make a small sacrifice.
That's basically impossible. Paris has a metropolitan area of anywhere between 9 and 13 million people depending on how you define it. Frankfurt is at six million at its most expansive definition. Do you really think that the typical resident of Frankfurt is 50-116% more productive than Paris?
Median disposable income is an accurate representation of a population’s buying power. For productivity, we can look at nominal GDP per capita, and I think you already know who leads in that.
What it shows is that the French are more likely to own their homes and that France has less inequality than the US. If you look at median wealth per household, the difference disappears between the US and France.
Sort of. France's population is older than the US's. Wealth increases with age. It's like saying millennials are more wealthy than gen z. It's true, but largely meaningless on its own.
That claim is just wrong, not to mention mixing incompatible metrics.
On GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power, France sits roughly in the middle of the US state distribution, ahead of states like Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, and Alabama. Median disposable income comparisons are even messier because US and French figures are constructed differently and ignore non-cash benefits like healthcare, childcare, and higher education, which are largely socialized in France but privately purchased in the US. Net those out properly and the gap narrows a lot.
Also, if France were a US state, it would instantly be one of the largest economies in the country, roughly comparable to California or Texas. Calling that "the poorest state" is just vibes-based nonsense.
France has better infrastructure than arguably any state in the US and some of the best health outcomes on the planet, but sure, tell me about how poor it is based on very rudimentary figures.
That’s not true. According to the World Population Review, the US beats France on infrastructure. Additionally, median disposable income per person is not something to ignore. It’s substantial.
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Macron needs to stop playing President of Consensus and start playing Liquidator. He has 15 months left, zero seats to lose, and a legacy that currently reads "The guy who paved the road for Bardella."
He needs to execute one final operation.
Fire Lecornu immediately. He caved on the pension reform. In my book, reversing a structural reform to please the Socialists is like selling your armor to buy wine - it feels good tonight, but you bleed tomorrow.
Don't appoint a politician. Appoint a Technocratic Butcher. Find someone 75 years old, rich, and hated. Someone who doesn't want a career. Someone who looks at a spread sheet like a Reaper looking at a harvest.
Use Article 49.3 to ram through a brutal budget. Restore the Pension Reform (back to 64, hell, try for 65).
Slash the welfare.
Raise VAT immediately to plug the cash gap.
The Parliament will scream. They will vote "No Confidence." The government will fall. Let it fall.
Under the French constitution, if they topple the government but can't agree on an alternative budget (which the Left and Right never will), the budget passes by ordinance. Macron proves he is the only adult in the room willing to jump on the grenade to save the solvency of the state. He saves the finances, burns the opposition, and leaves the next guy a balanced book and a furious population. That is leadership.
Bro needs to stop larping as Jupiter, and be him
He has the thunderbolt (Article 49.3). He needs to stop worrying about scorching the furniture and start using it.
… he already has, and it failed last time
Define "failed."
Did the law pass? Yes.
Did the credit rating agencies hold off on downgrading France? Yes.
Did the government survive the vote of no confidence (by 9 votes)? Yes.
The tool (Article 49.3) worked perfectly. It was the willpower that broke later. Jupiter threw the bolt, but then he apologized for the thunder. That was the mistake.
He cynically tried to bank on the far right running hot and the left being divided to consolidate power, and ended up losing seats and gifting front national and the left 90ish seats at the expense of his own party. How's that for a success?
The left was the big winner and somehow he ended up forcing through a center-right prime minister anyway.
I am referring to Barnier’s govt
Barnier failed because he was a diplomat bringing a PowerPoint presentation to a knife fight. He tried to negotiate his survival. He tried to appease the unappeasable.
Here is the Constitutional trick (Article 47) that Barnier was too polite to use:
If Parliament fails to vote on the budget within 70 days (because they are too busy toppling governments and screaming at each other) the President can implement the budget by ordinance.
I'm basically in favor of all your are saying, but just want to add that it's not like Lecournu caved on pension reform on his own. He tried without caving, the government failed (or was effectively about to I don't remember), so he was let go, only to be immediately reappointed by Macron and then agree to suspend the reforms. It was clearly a Macron position at that point
You are absolutely right.
Same with Starmer. They will lose badly in the election. Why no just man up and do proper change?
Starmer is actually in a more tragic position than Macron. Macron is paralyzed by the math (no majority), Starmer is paralyzed by his psychology. He sits on a massive majority, possessing the power of a King, yet he governs with the caution of a junior lawyer terrified of losing a client.
Starmer's majority is dependent on, seemingly, a huge bunch of lefties who cannot comprehend that government resources are finite and that the statements "the rich keep cheating tax" and "tax the rich" are statements that inform each other.
Starmer’s problem isn't just the Lefties, it’s that the entire British political class (Left and Right) has forgotten how to bake a bigger pie.
The Left wants to slice the pie differently.
The Right wants to protect the pie owners.
Nobody is talking about the fact that the pie has been moldy since 2008 because you made it illegal to build new bakeries (NIMBYism).
This isn't the only problem
It's a secret in British politics that across the aisles many eggheads and policy wonks agree on a shit ton (ask any and they bemoan NIMBYs behind closed doors), but the system is such that betray the confidence of the 20% of your constituency that for you your seat, and your done for
Also, in starmers case, his "majority" is actually razor thin. Huge number of parliamentarians, but less proportion of votes than Corbyn of all people in 2019
Jeremy Corbyn on society
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The reason why the lefties were even in a position to run amok is because Starmer went into No.10 with a stonking majority and a mandate to implement a manifesto, without any plan or apparent desire to implement any of it.
How hard would it even have been to phone Tony Blair for advice on how he delivered?
Starmer was elected by basically the whole country, who have seemingly decided 16 months is enough time to utterly undo the immense damage done over the last 15 years, and the fact we aren't in utopia yet means we need to elect the fascist loons. Loons who will, in short order, utterly annihilate the country, take all the wealth, and fuck it up for years, if not decades.
I agree he needs to make some tough decisions and do it fast (he's got 3 more years before elections, nows the time), and he's massively cocked it (Labour had over a decade to get their ducks in a row and its been nothing but infighting), but he really doesn't have the public support for massively cutting spending (it's Labour, their entire deal is increased spending and an end to austerity) and he's already raised taxes on everyone below 100k as much as he feasibly can. That, and their commitment to no more borrowing save for capital investment (the right decision, though again unpopular), means he's taking a slow-burn route, which isn't going to make any huge wins in the next few years. At best, he'll be able to point to some nice graphs vaguely trending in the right direction, at which point Farage will scream about brown people and we'll all be fucked.
The fundamental issue is that the entire nation came together behind Starmer not because they agreed with his policies, but because they hated his opposition. That does not create a solid mandate, or a united political party.
Only took me reading this comment to realize you're writing all your comments with AI.
Clown.
starmer has both the time and the power to do something about his predicament. he just sucks.
Starmer has no convictions.
It’s funny how people don’t bring his blatant bribes to boomers in late 2023 that wiped all their gains from pension reform.
lmao.
the political naivete of this sub is hilarious sometimes.
this is how your guarantee france is governed by ruinous populists for decades to come.
Jupiter Ascended
Inshallah
or, your hypothetical plan leaves most the population angry because theyve been fucked out of the pensions they work hard for, the centrists lose all their seats, and the far right gets a balanced book with enough money to spend on their bullshit
also, isnt this what he has done for the past nine years? how do you think this will prevent the far right this time?????
waiting 2 years = fucked out of pensions
"Don’t siege Leningrad, take it immediately"
You have the metaphor backwards.
Macron isn't the invading army. He is the garrison trapped inside the city.
The "Siege" is happening right now. The opposition is starving the State of its budget. The bond markets are freezing the supply lines. The government is currently boiling leather for soup.
This is embarrassing
You know what is actually embarrassing?
The spread between French and German bonds.
AI enhanced prose is getting really punchy, almost pleasant
Always funny how you lot never bring up reversing his regressive tax cuts that he brought in at the start of his terms and which accelerated the current fiscal crisis.
Literally always "being someone in to make the unpopular decisions, but make sure none of them are decisions that affect me".
Joke of a sub sometimes.
Let’s put away the "Class War" pamphlets for a second and look at the Math.
You are talking about the abolition of the ISF.
Revenue lost: Approximately €4-5 billion a year.
France’s Public Deficit: Approximately €154 billion a year.
You are blaming a flood on a dripping faucet.
Even if you reversed those tax cuts and taxed the rich until they squealed, you would cover roughly 3% of the deficit. And in exchange for that moral victory, you would trigger exactly what happened the last time France tried this under Hollande: Capital Flight.
The rich are not a renewable resource, they are a mobile one. If you tax them to death, they move to London, Dubai, or Brussels. And they take their investment capital, their businesses, and their VAT revenue with them.
France already has the highest tax to GDP ratio in the G7. You do not have a revenue problem. You have a Spending Addiction.
You spend 57% of your GDP on the state. That is not a "fiscal crisis caused by tax cuts", that is a fiscal crisis caused by trying to run a Soviet-sized welfare state on a Capitalist budget.
If the revenue from the ISF is so minor, why lose so much political capital removing it? Incredible how Macron can be in power for almost a decade and still be a complete innocent victim of the political climate according to this board
Rich people in France pay a disproportionately large amount of taxes; it's not even funny. https://www.boursier.com/patrimoine/impots/analyses/en-france-trois-quarts-de-l-impot-sur-le-revenu-est-paye-par-10-des-foyers-les-plus-aises-9293.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com
The top 10% pay 76% of the personal income tax. It's already an insult to economic rationality.
The marginal tax rate for the highest bracket (>180k) is 45%. Do you understand why the system can't foster when the achievers and entrepreneurs are bled to death by statist leeches?
Look up what the marginal tax rate is in California, federal + state. Is California known for failing entrepreneurs and achievers?
https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/personal-finance/tax-brackets
You hit the highest marginal tax rate (at 37%) with 640k for singles. How is that comparable to France?
That's federal taxes. You need to add state taxes, 9.3% at 70k, up to 12.3%
Even considering that, you get into the highest tax bracket at 3,5 times the income, and it’s still a bit lower.
The rich people that are mobile earn more than 640k even in France, let alone California. They are mobile because they can manage their business from anywhere.
I don't believe that taxing the rich would solve anything, but those rich earn at top rate anywhere.
The next guy (Bardella). Worth including in your master plan.
Bardella is likely winning anyway. The question is: Do you hand him a loaded gun (a debt crisis) or a straightjacket (a balanced budget)?
If Macron fixes the books now, he deprives the RN of their best excuse. When Bardella walks into the Elysee, he won't find a crisis to exploit, he will find a balanced ledger.
If Bardella then wants to blow it up to fund his populist fantasies (like lowering the retirement age), he becomes the one who crashes the markets. He owns the disaster.
If you hand Bardella a debt crisis, he is in a straitjacket. If you hand him a balanced budget, he can spend a bit of money after a few years.
A balanced budget is not a straitjacket.
Like, for the most part I agree with you on France’s fiscal needs. But I don’t think that Macron doing this has much bearing at all on how well or poorly the RN would govern a year later.
based based based
France is still running one of the largest deficits in Europe, hasn’t passed a real 2026 budget, and no major bloc is willing to compromise. Macron’s coalition is weak, but the left and right would rather posture than deal with fiscal reality. Compared to other EU countries that tightened post-COVID, France just… didn’t?? Couldn’t?? The result we’re seeing is caretaker governance, stalled reform, and a slow erosion of credibility.
If this leads to being fiscally constrained, the country could struggle to increase defense spending, reinforcing U.S. leadership in European security at a time they should be focusing inward.
French people aren’t doves.
There are hundreds of things they’d cut before cutting military spending. If anything, cutting military spending barely makes economic sense for France as is.
History proves that when Paris runs out of money, they cut hospitals, they cut schools, and they slash pensions. They do not cut the Army. The French political class would rather have riots in the streets than be dependent on Washington for security. The fiscal crisis will be paid for by the grandmas, not the generals.
No, history proves they will cut anything but pensions.
Macron literally sacrificed his entire mandate, bypassed Parliament (49.3), and watched Paris burn just to raise the retirement age. He did touch the pensions.
He didn’t CUT the pensions for current boomers. If anything he raised them lmao.
He cut future pensions for currently working people, which is a fine policy in isolation. Then he raised pensions for boomers and wiped out all the gains for some cheap electoral reason
And look what happened.
Yes, he became the most hated man in France. That is the job description.
If you want to be loved, go sell ice cream. If you want to govern a nuclear power with 110% debt to GDP, you make the hard calls.
No, what happened is that he became the most hated man in France, and then the pension reform got reverted.
Macron passed it. The law was on the books. The math worked.
It was suspended (not fully reverted, yet) by the current coalition of cowards because they were terrified of the polls.
This doesn't prove that Macron was wrong. It proves that the current French Parliament is a suicide pact.
They looked at a solved problem and said, "Let's un-solve it so people like us for six months."
All of that happened because the French people voted for people who will do anything but cut pensions.
Exactly. And if 51% of the passengers vote to steer the ship into an iceberg because they want a better view of the penguins, the ship still sinks.
Democracy gives you the right to choose your leaders, it does not give you the right to suspend the laws of arithmetic.
> the current French Parliament is a suicide pact.
And who brought that Parliament into existence exactly? Calling the 2024 snap election will go down as the worst political move in the entire history of the 5th republic.
What the fuck are you talking about ?
The army is the first thing they cut, France maintained higher relative spending because they're a nuclear power which forced the hand of successive government in either abandoning that capacity or keeping a minimum army that's relatively larger than our neighbors.
But outside of those big items that France must spend on to maintain their nuclear capability the rest of the army has been operating on a shoestring for decades, with a budget not too dissimilar from other European armies, despite taking part in much much more military operations.
That seems paranoid of them, Denmark relies on US security and that seems to be working out for them.
There is a massive difference between Safety and Sovereignty.
When you rely on US security, you pay with obedience. Remember the NSA scandal? The US used Danish cables to spy on Angela Merkel. Denmark had to say yes. They are a vassal. France refuses to be a vassal.
France is a nuclear power with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. They have global interests (Africa, Pacific) that often conflict with US interests. Denmark does not.
Just do PR
Would PR fix the issue? It would probably just yield a similar result of three generally equal-sized voting blocs that are broadly mutually exclusive with each other.
It will, but at least you can prevent a far right majority. Even if there is going to be a far right president.
PR would all but guarantee the next legislative elections result in a similar National Assembly to the current one, three roughly equally-sized blocs that all hate each other to the bone. Structural change doesn't lead to a German-style consensual coalition culture overnight.
It will however avoid a putinist majority even if a putinist president gets elected.
Consensual politics will not suddenly emerge but at least with time it might, without gambling on something like what happened in 2010 in Hungary (state capture)
> Consensual politics will not suddenly emerge but at least with time it might
Honestly, I really really doubt this. French political culture resembles Italy far more than Germany. And while Italy doesn't quite have PR (it has mixed-member majoritarian), their elections are still list-based systems. When France talks about PR, it usually refers to the 4th republic/Mittérrand version of PR by département, which means a very high barrier of entry in most constituencies given the few available seats. That is the most realistic version of PR for France. Of course they can adopt a different system but there's hardly anyone talking about that except for the Greens who want PR by région.
Link for the global poor?
archive.ph/98Jj8
Archive.today is easy to use. I could generate a legitimate gift article, but the max number of visits would be quickly exhausted.
Thanks!
I wish people could see we as a collective are all responsible for each others health and wellness. Like, France is asking for a few more years of work and still are offered the ability to retire for 20+ years.
I get nobody likes that, but one would hope that reality wouldn’t be ignored, but instead, the non racist populist are just saying, “there’ll never be consequences ever of perpetual budget deficits” and the racist populist are saying, “there’ll never be consequences ever of perpetual budget deficits.”
It is just such a shame that the people of France now live a high quality of life but are willing to screw the next generation because they’re not willing to make a small sacrifice.
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France has strengths in luxury goods, aeronautics, civil engineering and hospitality what are you talking even talking about?
Paris is one of the wealthiest cities on the entire planet. Literally a global top 10 AI research hub as well.
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Paris is one of 5 metro areas in the world with a GDP above 1 trillion USD. Per capita wise, it’s pretty similar to London.
https://preview.redd.it/x4zkgtdd3ccg1.jpeg?width=2016&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d4e83828ff0ad28ecf5da7d69ca1b1d024cd6702
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Are you serious
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_GDP?wprov=sfti1#Cities_(metropolitan_areas)_by_percentage_of_national_GDP
?
In 2017, Paris had a GDP (metro area) lower than that of Frankfurt.
That's basically impossible. Paris has a metropolitan area of anywhere between 9 and 13 million people depending on how you define it. Frankfurt is at six million at its most expansive definition. Do you really think that the typical resident of Frankfurt is 50-116% more productive than Paris?
You're right, they misread the data. Looking at the source
https://ceoworld.biz/2018/02/12/worlds-15-richest-cities-in-2017-new-york-london-and-tokyo-tops-list/
It's a list of total wealth contained within the city (excluding government funds), not gdp
Well, it’s what the data says.
The link you posted is not a list of cities by gdp. Per the source, it's total wealth of all people living in the city in 2017
https://ceoworld.biz/2018/02/12/worlds-15-richest-cities-in-2017-new-york-london-and-tokyo-tops-list/
It’s a shoddy article. I think they’re conflating wealth with GDP.
Nope. Cities by number of centi-millionaires ($100m+):
...
I was referencing 2017 GDP (metro area). I think you’re not really refuting my point. France is substantially poorer that the poorest American state.
France's median wealth per adult is $140,593 compared to $112,157 for the US.
Try again.
That’s median wealth, not median income. Again, you’re not refuting my point.
Wealth or "poorer" =/= income or productivity.
Median disposable income is an accurate representation of a population’s buying power. For productivity, we can look at nominal GDP per capita, and I think you already know who leads in that.
You don’t think Median wealth shows a decent picture of how wealthy a population actually is?
What it shows is that the French are more likely to own their homes and that France has less inequality than the US. If you look at median wealth per household, the difference disappears between the US and France.
Sort of. France's population is older than the US's. Wealth increases with age. It's like saying millennials are more wealthy than gen z. It's true, but largely meaningless on its own.
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That claim is just wrong, not to mention mixing incompatible metrics.
On GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power, France sits roughly in the middle of the US state distribution, ahead of states like Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, and Alabama. Median disposable income comparisons are even messier because US and French figures are constructed differently and ignore non-cash benefits like healthcare, childcare, and higher education, which are largely socialized in France but privately purchased in the US. Net those out properly and the gap narrows a lot.
Also, if France were a US state, it would instantly be one of the largest economies in the country, roughly comparable to California or Texas. Calling that "the poorest state" is just vibes-based nonsense.
It should go without saying, but just like the US, France also has areas that are dirt poor and areas that are rich as fuck.
France has better infrastructure than arguably any state in the US and some of the best health outcomes on the planet, but sure, tell me about how poor it is based on very rudimentary figures.
That’s not true. According to the World Population Review, the US beats France on infrastructure. Additionally, median disposable income per person is not something to ignore. It’s substantial.
It actually does lmao, which is why this whole situation is even more ridiculous.
Unless you were being sarcastic.
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