In Paris
I am in Paris for two days. My French publisher, Le Cherche Midi, organized for me a couple of interviews and a meeting with the French readers of End Times (in French, Le Chaos Qui Vient).
Photo by the author
Naturally, I got a lot of questions about whether and how our structural-demographic theory applies to France. I like French history and often use it to illustrate various ideas from cliodynamics. For example, see
Fiscal Crisis in France (again)
But mostly people wanted to know about the France of today. We are fortunate that a French colleague recently completed a thorough investigation of current political-economic conditions of France through the lens of the structural-demographic theory. I plan to write a series of post on his results, including my take on how far France has gone down the slippery slope. But here’s roughly what I said in response to questions.
Generally speaking, the data suggests that France is well behind the United States — perhaps trailing it by 20 years or so, as indicated by when the relative wage started to decline. As a reminder, relative wage is median wage divided by GDP per capita. It’s decline indicates that the wealth pump began operation, setting in train increases in popular immiseration, elite overproduction, and state indebtedness.
Not only did the relative wage start declining later, its negative effect on popular well-being was somewhat compensated by the redistributive policy of the French welfare state. And, according to the World Inequality Database, income and wealth inequality in France increased much less than USA in recent decades.
The two big problems are severe elite overproduction and the looming state fiscal collapse. The credential route to power was always predominant in France, as brilliantly shown by such luminaries as Pierre Bourdieu in La noblesse d’État: grandes écoles et esprit de corps. Well, those grandes ecoles are churning out elite aspirants like there is no tomorrow. And they’ve been joined by numerous private business schools.
On the state fiscal crisis I hardly need to write — this was very much in the news. So, according to various indicators, France is approaching a structural-demographic crisis. But it’s not so far advanced that no solutions are possible.
A detailed account with graphs and all is forthcoming. But it has been a couple of very intense days, so I am now signing off.