For the umpteenth time, the Court of Auditors has just launched an alert with very harsh words on the disruption of our budgetary health. Emmanuel Macron had promised to be zero deficit at the end of his term, today he has no chance of getting there. He is failing on this point. This spending disease causes a sort of permanent depression, accompanied by chronic fatalism. The proof is that the alarm signal from the Court of Auditors which does not cause any start.
Nicolas Beytout returns this Wednesday to a fairly serious illness that affects France.
It has been very contagious, it is not anymore. At the height of the epidemic, it had affected almost every country on the planet. It is a disease from which most countries have been cured for years. It is not coronavirus, but another fever called the disease of public expenditure. It is a long-term condition which has very serious consequences in terms of debt. The Court of Auditors has just launched, for the umpteenth time, an alert with very harsh words on this imbalance in our budgetary health. There is "no improvement" in public accounts. On the contrary, their recovery "is today at a standstill". Year after year, the total expenditure increases (it has just exceeded 1.300 billion euros) and nothing is really done to treat it.
Most countries are cured of this "inflamed spending" to use the medical image?
They do on average three times better than us. Emmanuel Macron, like his predecessors, is failing on this point. He had promised to be zero deficit at the end of his mandate, he has no chance today of getting there. It is not difficult to predict that the government will not launch a hunt for public spending before the 2022 elections.
Can we still live with this inflammation?
Yes, but badly. It's a trap ! France is the country that spends the most, the one that collects the most taxes and the one that redistributes the most. Despite this, France is the country whose inhabitants are in most demand for aid and public services. He who has, of all modern countries, the highest rate of pessimism. This spending disease causes a sort of permanent depression, accompanied by chronic fatalism. The proof is the alarm signal from the Court of Auditors which does not cause any startle, no awakening. It just causes a kind of collective indifference. Nicolas Beytout even fears that the situation is worsening.
What are the symptoms ?
The electoral programs like the great pharaonic works promised by certain candidates to the municipal ones and then, the political context. The drop in public spending is seen as a purge that no one wants to claim. On the contrary, at the time when the Fillon trial will begin, many remember to dissociate themselves from the program of recovery of public finances that he had defended, including in his political family. To kill this idea, its detractors have the magic word: liberalism. To want to reduce public spending is to be ultra-liberal. It is the first time that a drug is feared more than the disease it must treat.