Economist: France lost its once-envied rank among nations

France has lost its once-envied rank among the nations, its former attractiveness and charm, and is on a path to nowhere, French economist, Professor Olivier Babeau tweeted, Report informs.

“France has become poor and its population aged. It has already lost its once-envied rank among the nations. It is in the state of mind of a formerly rich man who no longer has the means to meet his demands. Old beauty that no longer attracts. Bitter. GDP per capita, productivity, working time, level of its students, etc.: we are left behind. And we don't give a damn.”

“France no longer has the means of the most generous social protection system in the world. Its public accounts are empty. Those who lend us (6 billion each week, to pay our operating expenses), are beginning to frown. Debt costs more. When they are really worried, they will simply stop lending.

The narrative that has emerged among us is that of a society where everyone can live at the expense of others' efforts. All wealth is illegitimate. Progress is viewed with suspicion. Science is an object of mockery. We enjoy an irrefutable moral superiority against these people living in darkness because they have not been affected by the lights of our glorious exception. We can work less than others, tax more than others, regulate more than others because we are French,” he wrote.

“We may well scrounge a little more tax thinking that this is the solution (“just tax the rich”), but soon there will be nothing and no one to tax.

We will be something between Lebanon without cedars and Venezuela without oil. The rooster on manure.”