I wanted to draw your attention to a comment on another blog that I found interesting:
I am French. And I love this site, always well informed.
The French situation resists any comfortable simplification.
Personally, I think our social and economic system was one of the best. It was evolving and sustainable. The State had an important redistributive role and it was moral. It remains an enviable goal. This is not socialism. I repeat: nothing to do with socialism. Fifteen years ago, the Navy Chief of Staff was able to write that there was an air of freedom in every village in France that was unknown elsewhere. I don’t think he could write it again. The total level of taxation (unduly complex) was high, but so was the redistribution. Over the past 15 years, taxes have increased and redistribution has fallen sharply.
French capitalism has always been deficient. Its followers are not entrepreneurs or directors. This is why the role of the State in the industrial sector was so important. This role, which was carried out without any problems, was rather beneficial. In all this, there is an original French way of doing things that escapes comfortable “isms”. We continue to live on his legacy, squandered more or less quickly. Capitalism dilapidation, of course. Our industrial base has almost been destroyed .
We have a cancer in France: the French-American Young Leader organization (created in 1972). For the past 15 years, all rulers have gone through this institution of intellectual rectification.
Read the whole thing. It touches on a number of notes that have been repeated themes here including the “Yellow Jackets”, the role of social cohesion and “denationalization”. I think he’s pointing his finger in the wrong direction—there are many more factors than those he identifies. For example, how is the European Union not a force for “denationalization”?
The existence of the EU bureaucracy obviates the need for national level governments. They may have some utility, like American States, but the EU bureaucracy bypasses them. It is probable that the separatist movements everywhere in Europe feed off the existence of the EU. Catalonia, or Scotland, or Lombardy, or Brittany, et al. could survive as administrative districts and cultural entities without Spain, UK, Italy, or France.
I’m not sure what you mean by that. In the United States most government that you encounter on a day to day basis is state government. Federal activities are primarily the military, foreign policy, Social Security, and Medicare.
States are not some vestigial organs, as some would have it. For practical purposes they are the government.
I think that’s probably true. In France that’s particularly threatening. The core of the modern French state is the idea of “Frenchness”. It’s being challenged by separatist movements and mass immigration.
“Over the past 15 years, taxes have increased and redistribution has fallen sharply.”
I, no surprise, disagree strongly with anything but minimalist redistribution, designed to make sure the impaired and the incompetent are not destitute. I feel it is fairly ineffective, and in many cases harmful. In another post Dave points out that we spend more on education than just about anyone. Its going to administrators, not educational benefit. That’s not valid redistribution. Anyone surprised?
But I at least understand how someone could rationally have a difference of opinion, arguing for more aggressive redistribution. But only marginally more. That would exclude the current crop of progressives. They are mired in weirdo economics and class envy. They are crazy.
Lastly. Seriously, is anyone surprised that the tax in to redistribution out ratio falls? Its all but a law of physics. Its going to the government class, their contributors and those in a growing government whom they bestow benefit in return for votes. Its structural. The exceptions to this empirical result are few.
It’s not redistribution at all. We’re doing exactly the same thing. Paying professionals to perform services, presumably on behalf of the poor, is not redistribution.
Note that the author of the comment is writing about France.