Francois Hollande wins French presidency

Ryan_m_b

If you mean manufacturing then yes I partially agree though there are various policies in France that protect against this (i.e. for public sector contracts there is a clause for taking into account societal well being so if there is a choice between saving money and placing a big order with a Chinese company and not saving money and placing it with the French one they have to go with the latter) and other European countries like Germany have a thriving manufacturing sector.
Yes I agree education is important and adds value to the workforce.
Off the top of my head things like that listed above and maximum/encouraged work hour regulations (to spread jobs amongst multiple people).
I haven't got a proposition. France is in a typical situation of having parties arguing for austerity and those arguing for stimulus. Both are a gamble but the latter is easier to sell to a voting public IMO.

I like Serena

Protection of internal manufacturing business is an artificial measure.
I do not believe in artificial measures.
People tend to find ways around that and in the end it's the government (indirectly) paying for it.
I believe France should invest in business in which they can compete internationally.
It should outsource low-tech manufacturing to countries better suited to it.
That's much healthier and pays off better.

mheslep

Pass (enforce?) the obviously needed First Employment Contract, i.e. change the employment laws that make it nearly impossible to fire in France, and hence equally difficult to hire.

In a ranking of economic freedom, France lands at 67 behind Kazakhstan and Bulgaria, due in large part to French labor laws.

mheslep

Seemingly never, or seemingly always?

rootX

Productivity using these ways won't occur in the short run IMO.

I am concerned that "raising minimum wage", "taxing rich people 75%", "lowering retiring age" will burden not help the economy for now. I believe people voted him for all his crazy proposals which seem unrealistic to me. He is trying to give everyone a free lunch.

Does he even have any experience?

AlephZero

I think they were more likely voting against Sarkozy, who hasn't actually achieved much despite his continuous hyperactivity.

He was an economic advisor to Mitterand back in the 1980s. He's never held a government office, but he's not a new kid on the block by any means.

TheMadMonk

Arguably, the biggest thing that will effect his presidency is who controls the National Assembly. I think we tend to forget the President is only one person and can do very little by themselves. I wouldn't want to second guess anything he will do until after the 17th of June.

Office_Shredder

This would be way more convincing if starting with the fifth article we weren't seeing articles about how austerity is good and stopping austerity is a bad thing

mheslep

Convincing of what? My point is that the criticism of austerity is found anywhere one looks. One can not get away from it, especially from parties claimed to be undergoing austerity*. It is a bit curious to suggest such criticism is "seemingly never mentioned".

BTW, as far as I can tell there is little *spending* side austerity, i.e. cuts. Certainly not in France where spending is still increasing.
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economi...able-2012-3-en

Angry Citizen

Raising minimum wage allows for the creation of demand, which is one of the main thing stifling the French economy. If a demand existed for products, these products would be created, and the creation of these products would require greater employment.

Taxing rich people at 75% is actually well known to work. In America, our period of highest economic output and security was during the 50s and 60s, where top tax rates hovered between 91% and something around 75% (I cannot recall the exact figure). Essentially, income was soft-capped at a modern, inflation-adjusted level of thirty-one million during the fifties, whereby it became too inefficient to pay someone more than that amount (and likely far lower than that amount). The hoarding of wealth is like a vampire, sucking the blood out of the economy. The dispersal of wealth, as this tax scheme would allow, is the only thing to stimulate an economy that is so based on inequality as France's.

Lowering retirement age allows for younger workers to take jobs previously occupied by seniors. Pretty simple really.

Europe moved rightward for the past three decades, and we see how it all played out. Time to go back to social democratic economics. Hollande's victory is just the first step towards that inevitable shift.

TheMadMonk

That actually sounds far worse than it is in reality. I don't know what the upper limit is but say it is one million euros. If somebody was to earn one million and one euros, only the one euro would be taxed at 75% for example.