| Posted on the off-chance that France still matters. |
The French farce that is currently passing as the presidential election campaign across the Channel continues to throw off laughable gaffes, extraordinary revelations and some of the best examples of "double-think" in contemporary politics. And if the French electorate is enjoying this spectacle, they are mad. The laughs are all on them.In many ways, it is hard to see France's decline. But lovers of la vie française (such as myself) need to stand back. In 1979, the British were 20 per cent poorer than the French, as measured by GDP per head. We are now 5 per cent richer, and the outlook is for that gap to widen further. The general economic background is a major part of this - the French economy has crawled along at a growth rate that has averaged half that of the UK's in recent years. Unemployment is stubbornly high, and even after a recent recovery, remains nearly twice the UK's.
All this despite the extraordinary act of generational theft that is being committed daily by the French pension system, which is funding current consumption by inadequately providing for the future. Not to mention incredibly high government spending - 43 per cent of GDP, while national debt is now equivalent to 70 per cent.