As I have said before it is not my custom to comment on the politics of countries other than my own. That is why I have refrained from remarking on the riots presently roiling France. That has not stopped the editors of the Wall Street Journal:
It’s easy to scoff at French rioting as its national pastime, but what’s unfolding now is different. France is approaching its most serious crisis in decades, and the disorder in the streets may be only the start.
Ostensibly the destructive rioting of the past few days is a student protest against underfunded schools. If you believe that, we have a pont over the Seine to sell you. The riots have been encouraged by politicians on the left, as Dominic Green recently reported on the Journal’s Free Expression newsletter.
Labor-union comrades of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise (“Indomitable France”), stoked the protests that quickly became riots. Mr. Mélenchon—think Bernie Sanders with a Gallic accent—visited the barricades. It feels like a display of left-wing muscle-flexing before next year’s presidential election, in which Mr. Mélenchon will be a candidate.
The violence obscures the related crisis engulfing public finances. France doesn’t have more money to spend on schools because it doesn’t have more money to spend on anything.
It is on the subject raised in the last paragraph of that quote I want to focus. According the American authorities, France has the highest military readiness of any country in Europe as the U. S. reckons such things. France’s present government spending is more than half of France’s GDP. Here is how it spends the money:
As the editors point out France’s taxes and borrowing are high while its tax revenues rise slowly. They summarize the situation succinctly: every incremental tax euro goes to pensions and health care. Neither of the two major candidates running for president of France supports reducing France’s pension or health care spending. If France increases its borrowing, it will further impede its growth.
Where will the money to increase France’s spending on education come from? The French don’t want to reduce pension or health care spending and France cannot reduce military spending without reducing its readiness and that should be discouraged. France’s conundrum is that it bears the costs of previous decisions to increase the public debt and, as I have said before, there are no mulligans in public life.
