>There’s a political side and a more economic side. On the political side, I think France is in the same situation as many other countries, including Britain and the US, which is that the pro-business centre has to choose between the nationalist side and the socialist side. And if you don’t want to choose, the pro-business centre will disappear. I mean, they are disappearing. If there were new elections now, they would shrink in numbers in the [French] National Assembly and that’s why they are resisting this. But they have to choose. There’s a clear proposal on the left to have a minimum wealth tax of 2 per cent for wealth above €100mn, which to me is really the very minimum you can do given the increase in top wealth. In France, the top 500 wealth holders used to collectively own €200bn in 2010. Now they collectively own €1,200bn — it’s been multiplied almost by six. Of course, GDP per capita, average wage or even average wealth has not been multiplied by six over this period. If you cannot accept this wealth tax, it means you are really telling the population: “the middle class has to pay, we don’t know how the rich can pay.” Then you have the other, nationalist, anti-migrant discourse, which is saying: “we’re going to make the foreigners pay”, or they suggest that there is a lot of waste in public spending, some going to undeserving poor, especially when they are foreigners, but also when they’re locals getting too much. Let’s see when the nationalists are in power how they are going to cut spending, because in practice, even if you cut everything you’re giving to migrants, that’s not that much. That’s not going to get you money for the health service and universities. **This nationalist discourse will become a more right-wing, anti-public spending discourse. That will contribute to making the political system return to a left-right system**, which to me is the most promising way to make social and economic progress. Not because the left is always right and the right is always wrong — both sides have different viewpoints and different economic experiences to bring to the democratic table.
This could be true. In Sweden and Finland, voters are going back to the left as the far-right parties support welfare cuts and tax cuts for the rich. Even if these voters are socially conservative, they are quite economically left-wing and the Left in these countries has already accepted keeping immigration restricted, so voters feel comfortable returning.
It does seem much of politics across the West is about culture, but Trump and others have shown they will cut welfare for their poor white voters, which their poor white voters did not expect.
WAGRAMWAGRAM on
>**TP: I think the left has not been very good at redefining its agenda for several reasons. The main reason is that the left has been a victim of its own success. The welfare state has become a reality — nobody really wants to return to a situation before [the] first world war where total tax revenue and public spending will be less than 10 per cent of GDP.**
>Now the only question is: do we stabilise it at 40 or 50 per cent in some European countries or do we keep going up? **I think we need to keep going up, because if we don’t put public resources into health, education, energy, and transportation, then private resources will go into them instead, because these sectors need to grow. And I don’t think this will be more efficient or more equitable. If you think of health in the US — 20 per cent of GDP is spent on health versus 10 per cent in Europe. If you compare health indicators [which generally show better outcomes in Europe] — what are you doing with this money?**
>**The other reason is educational expansion. Because it was successful, it has built a new class of highly educated people voting for the left. The left has been pushing for educational expansion throughout the 20th century, and so the people who have been most successful, who have become the winners of the education game are in a way grateful to the left for having made this possible.**
>**But if you grew up in a small city or small village, it’s just more difficult to access universities than if you grow up in a large conurbation, for a given parental income, given social characteristics.** For all sorts of reasons, some people are lagging behind in the education game, some people have been at the top, and the allegiance to the left in this process of educational expansion has turned around completely — it used to be the case that the less educated would vote for the left.
>**Back in the 1960s, when [French sociologist Pierre] Bourdieu was writing Les Héritiers about inheritance in higher education, a fraction of each generation was going into higher education in France . . . Now it’s 60 per cent. It’s a completely different world, so the left has to redefine equality in access to education which makes people with lower social class origins, and particularly people in the smaller cities, feel more respected.**
>**It’s not just about education; it’s also access to hospitals, access to public transportation. It’s easy to criticise people who use their car when you have the metro in London.**
>The entire movement of educational expansion, health expansion and also ecological concern has created a new educational divide and territorial divide. This is where the left has been in difficulties.
EclipseLadder on
>Then you have the democratic socialist side, you can call it the left-wing or more egalitarian side. This political family has been incredibly successful historically. It has built the welfare state and brought prosperity and equality to an extent that nobody could have imagined a hundred years ago.
>
> But they have sort of stopped thinking about the future. They have become in some cases just a force of conservation, of defending the welfare state, defending the social system, and I think they need to rethink, to have a new agenda for the future
Good point
> The welfare state has become a reality — nobody really wants to return to a situation before [the] first world war where total tax revenue and public spending will be less than 10 per cent of GDP.
>
> Now the only question is: do we stabilise it at 40 or 50 per cent in some European countries or do we keep going up? I think we need to keep going up
4 Comments
Is the success in the room right now?
>There’s a political side and a more economic side. On the political side, I think France is in the same situation as many other countries, including Britain and the US, which is that the pro-business centre has to choose between the nationalist side and the socialist side. And if you don’t want to choose, the pro-business centre will disappear. I mean, they are disappearing. If there were new elections now, they would shrink in numbers in the [French] National Assembly and that’s why they are resisting this. But they have to choose. There’s a clear proposal on the left to have a minimum wealth tax of 2 per cent for wealth above €100mn, which to me is really the very minimum you can do given the increase in top wealth. In France, the top 500 wealth holders used to collectively own €200bn in 2010. Now they collectively own €1,200bn — it’s been multiplied almost by six. Of course, GDP per capita, average wage or even average wealth has not been multiplied by six over this period. If you cannot accept this wealth tax, it means you are really telling the population: “the middle class has to pay, we don’t know how the rich can pay.” Then you have the other, nationalist, anti-migrant discourse, which is saying: “we’re going to make the foreigners pay”, or they suggest that there is a lot of waste in public spending, some going to undeserving poor, especially when they are foreigners, but also when they’re locals getting too much. Let’s see when the nationalists are in power how they are going to cut spending, because in practice, even if you cut everything you’re giving to migrants, that’s not that much. That’s not going to get you money for the health service and universities. **This nationalist discourse will become a more right-wing, anti-public spending discourse. That will contribute to making the political system return to a left-right system**, which to me is the most promising way to make social and economic progress. Not because the left is always right and the right is always wrong — both sides have different viewpoints and different economic experiences to bring to the democratic table.
This could be true. In Sweden and Finland, voters are going back to the left as the far-right parties support welfare cuts and tax cuts for the rich. Even if these voters are socially conservative, they are quite economically left-wing and the Left in these countries has already accepted keeping immigration restricted, so voters feel comfortable returning.
It does seem much of politics across the West is about culture, but Trump and others have shown they will cut welfare for their poor white voters, which their poor white voters did not expect.
>**TP: I think the left has not been very good at redefining its agenda for several reasons. The main reason is that the left has been a victim of its own success. The welfare state has become a reality — nobody really wants to return to a situation before [the] first world war where total tax revenue and public spending will be less than 10 per cent of GDP.**
>Now the only question is: do we stabilise it at 40 or 50 per cent in some European countries or do we keep going up? **I think we need to keep going up, because if we don’t put public resources into health, education, energy, and transportation, then private resources will go into them instead, because these sectors need to grow. And I don’t think this will be more efficient or more equitable. If you think of health in the US — 20 per cent of GDP is spent on health versus 10 per cent in Europe. If you compare health indicators [which generally show better outcomes in Europe] — what are you doing with this money?**
>**The other reason is educational expansion. Because it was successful, it has built a new class of highly educated people voting for the left. The left has been pushing for educational expansion throughout the 20th century, and so the people who have been most successful, who have become the winners of the education game are in a way grateful to the left for having made this possible.**
>**But if you grew up in a small city or small village, it’s just more difficult to access universities than if you grow up in a large conurbation, for a given parental income, given social characteristics.** For all sorts of reasons, some people are lagging behind in the education game, some people have been at the top, and the allegiance to the left in this process of educational expansion has turned around completely — it used to be the case that the less educated would vote for the left.
>**Back in the 1960s, when [French sociologist Pierre] Bourdieu was writing Les Héritiers about inheritance in higher education, a fraction of each generation was going into higher education in France . . . Now it’s 60 per cent. It’s a completely different world, so the left has to redefine equality in access to education which makes people with lower social class origins, and particularly people in the smaller cities, feel more respected.**
>**It’s not just about education; it’s also access to hospitals, access to public transportation. It’s easy to criticise people who use their car when you have the metro in London.**
>The entire movement of educational expansion, health expansion and also ecological concern has created a new educational divide and territorial divide. This is where the left has been in difficulties.
>Then you have the democratic socialist side, you can call it the left-wing or more egalitarian side. This political family has been incredibly successful historically. It has built the welfare state and brought prosperity and equality to an extent that nobody could have imagined a hundred years ago.
>
> But they have sort of stopped thinking about the future. They have become in some cases just a force of conservation, of defending the welfare state, defending the social system, and I think they need to rethink, to have a new agenda for the future
Good point
> The welfare state has become a reality — nobody really wants to return to a situation before [the] first world war where total tax revenue and public spending will be less than 10 per cent of GDP.
>
> Now the only question is: do we stabilise it at 40 or 50 per cent in some European countries or do we keep going up? I think we need to keep going up
Oh, for fuck’s sake.