跟读练习: Why France’s Economy Is Stalling - 通过YouTube学习英语口语
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He was young, he was smart,
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He was young, he was smart,
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and he was supposed to embody a French renaissance.
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In 2017, 39-year-old Emmanuel Macron won the French presidency with a supply-side economic program aimed at lowering taxes,
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cutting unemployment, and reducing public spending.
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He wanted to unleash the energy of the country.
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Because he has this very pro-business image,
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it really was the final piece of the puzzle that was missing.
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The idea was to make the economy more dynamic in order to be able to afford the generous welfare system.
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But over the years, the plan fizzled out.
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By the end of 2025,
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France's debt-to-GDP ratio had skyrocketed to 117% and is projected to reach 120% by 2027.
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Meanwhile, GDP growth has stayed low,
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with a rise of only 0.7%,
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below the eurozone average of 1.3%.
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The paradox is that Emmanuel Macron came to power on an agenda of strong public finances and a dynamic French economy.
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Fast forward eight years, you actually see a greater debt and an economy that is not growing very much.
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So what went wrong?
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And why does France's economy still feel broken?
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And looking back at the past eight years,
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it's fair to say France hasn't had a smooth ride and neither has Emmanuel Macron.
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First there was the gilet jaune,
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then the pandemic, Russia's war on Ukraine and the resulting energy crisis,
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a re-election, the pension reform and some self-inflicted wounds like the dissolution of parliament in 2024.
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But beyond global external factors,
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Macron's economic policies didn't give him the results he'd planned,
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despite some encouraging debuts.
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This is the place to be,
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to invest, to work, to invent,
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to launch your business, to become a start-upper.
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The idea was that by lowering taxes for companies in particular,
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for individuals as well, this would help revitalize the economy altogether.
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Flat tax, basically capping at 30% the taxation on investment income,
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suppression of the wealth tax replaced by a real estate tax.
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So supply side policies which probably went in the right direction.
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With the former president, there were some propositions to do some very high taxes,
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which actually created a bit of a brain drain.
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And there was really this feeling of France is hostile to entrepreneurs.
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The launch of the startup nation was embodied by Station F,
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the world's largest startups campus.
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When Station F arrived, Macron arrived, that really changed.
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People understood that it's okay to launch a business here.
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Foreign direct investment began to flow into France's tech scene.
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And in 2019, France overtook Germany and the UK as the top FDI destination in Europe.
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It still held that title in 2024,
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and that investment seems to be making an impact.
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In 2016, France counted only three unicorns,
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companies worth $1 billion or more.
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By 2025, that number had increased by a tenfold to 30 unicorns.
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When we started in 2017,
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our companies raised 350 million.
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Well, this year, our companies raised 1 billion in the first nine months of the year.
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That's the equivalent of the whole country of Italy,
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just happening at Station F.
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The poster child of success is Mistral AI.
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And the AI scene actually,
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France is very well placed in Europe.
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Of our 1,000 companies on campus,
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roughly 80% is around AI.
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But we still do have other sectors.
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We have some climate, we have some robotics,
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which is still linked to AI.
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But we do have other sectors as well.
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Another success of Macron's was reducing unemployment,
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France's long-standing bugbear since the 1990s.
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Unemployment is near some historic laws in France.
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Essentially, some of the structural reforms I brought in helped with that.
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More flexibility for companies to hire and fire workers as well.
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We're still giving some protection,
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allowed to retrain some of the workers as well.
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Unemployment has dropped noticeably since 2015.
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That year, 10.4% of the labour force was unemployed.
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By 2024, that number had fallen to 7.4%.
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However, France's youth is still out of work.
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Although following the same trend as other age groups,
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youth unemployment still stood at 18.5% in 2025,
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a stark contrast to Germany's 6.6% rate.
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While fixing employment is a priority in most countries,
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it's especially key in France.
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That's because pensions are mainly funded through employees' contributions.
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France's current pension system started in 1945,
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just after World War II.
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Workers contribute to a fund that pays for their elders' pensions,
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with the expectation that they'll be able to collect their own pension through the future workforce.
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That system might have worked in the 20th century, but demographics have changed.
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In 1960, France counted four workers for each pensioner.
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In 2023, that ratio plummeted to just 1.8 workers per pensioner.
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To solve this, contributions are regularly rising,
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but that makes a dent in workers purchasing power.
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Another potential solution to the problem was raising the pension age,
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a reform Macron's government proposed in 2023.
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Despite mass protests, the measure was ultimately passed.
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However, the reform was paused in December 2025 to ease political tensions.
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We have a whole group above 55 years old that are too young to retire,
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but actually too old to find a new job.
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The main reasons for unemployment include a skills mismatch with job opportunities and employer uncertainty about future growth.
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Another factor often cited is the difficulty of letting go of employees.
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That is, until the 2023 labor market reform gave companies more latitude.
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There is more flexibility than people are usually aware of outside of France.
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There's had some labor market reforms,
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the introduction of some experience rating,
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what we call bonus malus system to make firms accountable for their layoff,
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capping basically the amount of money which can be demanded from firms when they dismiss a worker.
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We need to protect workers.
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That's important, but we have to do it in an efficient way.
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There are lots of wrong policies in labor market protection.
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And this applies to both workers and companies.
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Normally, when an employee resigns,
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they aren't entitled to unemployment benefits.
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But in France, if both parties agree to dismissal by agreement,
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the employee can claim benefits while the company is protected from wrongful dismissal claims.
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And that's ultimately at the expense of the social security system.
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The dismissal by agreement system cost the state an estimated 10 billion euros in 2024.
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We do have nearly 40% of companies that say that they're actually able to get up and running thanks to unemployment benefits.
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People can take six months off,
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a year off, say they have been fired by the firm and get unemployment benefits.
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It's a scandal.
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While France has a relatively average corporate tax rate for Europe at 25%,
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it surpasses its neighbors in employer social security contribution.
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On average, employers bear cost equivalent to around 45% of an employee's gross salary.
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But on the flip side,
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companies also benefit from subsidies.
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BPI France, which is the sovereign fund in France,
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is funding over 50% of our companies here.
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And that's directly because they're also investors in a lot of funds.
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But there's also ones for research and innovation,
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which is one of the most advantageous tax credits that we have in Europe.
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Do you remember Mario Draghi's famous 2012 speech to save the euro?
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The ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro.
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In 2020, Macron mirrored that approach with another whatever-it-takes moment.
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France is one of the most redistributive countries of the developed economies.
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And certainly what we've seen,
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the answer to the multiple crises over the past few years,
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is to kind of redistribute and give more money.
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Take the pandemic's one-off 150 billion euros state-guaranteed loan to keep businesses afloat,
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or the 26.3 billion euros worth of subsidies in response to the surge in European energy prices following Russia's war on Ukraine.
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Like everywhere, there were adverse elections,
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and that zombie firms took advantage of that to stay alive longer.
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Because these loans were open to all firms without vetting the sector or viability,
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state funds helped keep these so-called zombie companies afloat.
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Now, bankruptcies in France are surging to catch up.
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A recent Senate report also found that French businesses received between 108
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and 211 billion euros worth of tax relief and subsidies in 2023,
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with little follow-up or monitoring.
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This is a very difficult policy to perform
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because we don't have the information usually about whether the companies are still worth it, worth preserving.
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Now, in terms of taxing the firms,
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it's a very bizarre situation where we tax the firms a lot.
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And then we realize that and then we give them some stuff.
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So the policies we use are not necessarily the best thing.
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Macron has tried to actually reduce,
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for example, production tax, which are taxes,
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for example, that are on turnover rather than profits.
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Economists want taxes to be on profit,
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not on turnover, because it's distortive.
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But Macron has reduced the tax,
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which is a very good thing.
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Yet, cutting production taxes didn't do enough to help boost productivity.
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For a long time, France ranked amongst the most productive countries in the world.
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But that has recently changed.
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From the turn of the century,
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productivity growth rates, measured as the value added to GDP per hour worked, have been slipping.
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After Covid, it got even worse.
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And like much of Europe,
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the country has struggled to find its way back towards growth.
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It's been the focus on low productivity services sector of the economy.
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It's been a lower adoption of technology in some sectors as well,
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heavy regulation in some sectors.
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Purchasing power is actually stagnating,
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like in many countries, but more in France than elsewhere,
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in part because we have under-invested in many things.
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So that's what I call the time bombs.
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The time bombs mean that if you don't do anything for a year or two,
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it doesn't matter.
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But after a while, it actually has a cost.
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So debt in 1975 was like 30% of GDP.
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Now it's 115%.
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Education has actually decreased in quality.
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Innovation is another case in part.
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But innovation is more generally a prime of Europe
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because all the big tech and biotech firms are in the US and China nowadays.
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So that means that we lose in productivity,
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we lose in competitivity, and people aren't happy because their wage is stagnating.
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According to the Bank of France,
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The recent drop in productivity primarily came from a rise in apprenticeships due to students being both employed and in training,
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and the delay in COVID-related bankruptcies.
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Both factors are linked to French state subsidies.
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They ended up in a situation where they had to spend
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a lot of money to maintain the fabric of the French economy during this crisis,
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but not having as much tax revenue as they expected coming into the coffers.
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There were a bunch of things which were not dealt with.
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In part, the pension reform,
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there was nothing on the reform of the state.
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It's still a bloated state,
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rather inefficient in some respects, with talents as well.
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It's not like it's black and white.
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Now you could argue, actually,
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now the French economy is quite resilient.
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If all these measures hadn't been put into place,
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maybe the situation would be even worse right now.
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So is France doomed to remain trapped in a cycle of high debt and heavy spending?
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France right now is really a good example of zero-sum thinking.
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Basically viewing the economic life as a zero-sum game.
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So the pie is fixed and we fight to grab the biggest share in a sense.
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Forgetting that in this fighting we actually reduce the size of the pie instead of trying to increase it through economic growth,
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innovation, productivity gains and so on think about the current debate in the parliament.
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It's all about grabbing stuff and no discussion of policies that could improve education,
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solve the climate issue or is going to raise innovation.
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We see this problem now of the debt really growing at a really fast pace in the country
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and in parallel you have this polarization and political instability that means addressing these key economic issues becomes more and more difficult.
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Part of me thinks that there is a chance that this this ecosystem is solid enough that regardless of the outcome,
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it will just continue to move forward.
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I do think that if we hit the extremes for the presidency,
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that could take a different turn.
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But for the moment, I'm still very optimistic that we won't go that way.
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In French, people understand compromise is a compromission.
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And you basically betray your friends if you accept any agreement with the others.
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But we need to get more mature,
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and I'm sure we will.
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We have to invest for our children.
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Nice.
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