2022 French Presidential Election

ZenGiraffe said:
There are fundamentally other ways to "balance" an economy that doesn't require cuts or austerity measures. The current talking point is wealth taxes, but also land value taxes and transaction taxes are options too.

Also the idea of balancing an economy like you would your own personal finances needs to die anyway. Countries can borrow with terms of up to a century. That is a very different game from a 5 year loan or even a 35 year mortgage, and talking about it in the same terms is so disingenuous
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Borrow to invest, yes absolutely, especially when rates have been so low (not sure how much longer they will be) but to just spend, not sure how that works.
 
ZenGiraffe said:
There are fundamentally other ways to "balance" an economy that doesn't require cuts or austerity measures. The current talking point is wealth taxes, but also land value taxes and transaction taxes are options too.

Also the idea of balancing an economy like you would your own personal finances needs to die anyway. Countries can borrow with terms of up to a century. That is a very different game from a 5 year loan or even a 35 year mortgage, and talking about it in the same terms is so disingenuous
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Also because when you're talking about something the size of a national economy, having your earnings go up by more than than your borrowing is the REAL game (and something that's much more normal for a country to do than an individual person). All countries have debt - investors WANT countries to have debt because government bonds are such a key underpinning element of the global economy and private pensions. The important thing is making sure economies/revenues can continue to grow by more than that debt does, rather than cutting off growth at the knees in a self-defeating attempt to 'get the debt down'. It's a bit like selling off the car you need to go to work because of panicking about your debts....only to find out you suddenly don't have quite as much work anymore now you can't get there.

(in total fairness, all this is less relevant to any specific discussion around pensions, although state pensions largely go to people who are less well-off and spend what money they have anyway, so ergo they mostly just go straight back into the national economy)
 
I haven’t been paying attention but was shocked how close the polls have Le Pen when I saw them last night. Don’t do it France.
 
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Listening to a podcast about the election, it makes me feel sick to hear how Le Pen has ”improved” her image and how well liked she’s supposed to be now among ”normal” people as opposed to the arrogant Macron.
 
I saw a Twitter thread from overnight throwing scorn on the polling. They're crowding (pollsters correcting towards the mean rather than publishing their outliers), which makes it difficult to judge how much variability there actually is, which again I'd take provisionally as a bad sign for everyone but Le Pen
 
Isn’t Len Pen’s party practically non-present in the Parliament? (Or am I mistaken?) Maybe if she did become President she’d be rather restricted.

Although fuck that because I believe the President is more in charge of foreign policy which is where she might do more damage.
 
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I don’t know if you can say the UK is moving to the left ideologically. It’s just that Boris is such a walking PR disaster that people are inevitably getting sick of HIM.

But the increased likelihood of Trump being re-elected in 2 years (or Ron DeSantis which would hardly be better) plus resurgent nationalism across Europe has me very, very worried. It seems that in virtually every country the story is broadly the same - the left is embroiled in culture wars and establishment vs progressive dogfighting while the right lurch further to the right and benefit from the malaise.

I really want to see some green shoots here but they’re increasingly hard to find.
 
RaspberrySwirl said:
Listening to a podcast about the election, it makes me feel sick to hear how Le Pen has ”improved” her image and how well liked she’s supposed to be now among ”normal” people as opposed to the arrogant Macron.
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It's shocking really. She owes Putin 11 Million Euros but people don't seem to mind here
 
France votes twice, and in the past has always voted in large numbers against the Le Pens by the second vote, let's hope it'll be the same this time around. Can't believe people are so gullible as to think the Marine Le Pen really has changed her views..the only thing thats' changed is that she's smiling like an idiot at every opportunity . It's supposed make her look 'relatable'.. all it does is make her look like Chucky
 
I’m sure it will be uncomfortably close. It doesn’t matter so much what happened last time - Macron was a candidate of change, now he’s the status quo. And 2002 was so long ago and it was a much less sophisticated Le Pen.
 
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VoR said:
I don’t know if you can say the UK is moving to the left ideologically. It’s just that Boris is such a walking PR disaster that people are inevitably getting sick of HIM.

But the increased likelihood of Trump being re-elected in 2 years (or Ron DeSantis which would hardly be better) plus resurgent nationalism across Europe has me very, very worried. It seems that in virtually every country the story is broadly the same - the left is embroiled in culture wars and establishment vs progressive dogfighting while the right lurch further to the right and benefit from the malaise.

I really want to see some green shoots here but they’re increasingly hard to find.
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I agree the UK isn’t going to elect a full-throttle socialist government (although it came close enough in 2017) but it has come off the boil of where it was a a couple of years ago.

Also, if I learned one thing from my time in politics, it is just how fickle the voting public are (look at me for a start! :D). The pendulum can so easily swing back. I would really try not to catastrophise - it’s not good for mental health if nothing else.
 
Kratz said:
I agree the UK isn’t going to elect a full-throttle socialist government (although it came close enough in 2017) but it has come off the boil of where it was a a couple of years ago.

Also, if I learned one thing from my time in politics, it is just how fickle the voting public are (look at me for a start! :D). The pendulum can so easily swing back. I would really try not to catastrophise - it’s not good for mental health if nothing else.
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I'd say something that's always a silver lining in the event far right types get in is that most don't tend to be all that great at actually governing and usually get thrown out at the first opportunity. Orban and Modi are basically the only ones that have managed to consolidate power, and they both had governing experience beforehand.
 
Yeah, well Le Pen has benefited from the far-right candidate Eric Zemmour who is basically a Trump with no filter to appear more moderate. She’s also regularly posing with kittens :) While Macron continues to insult the poor regularly.
 
Of course, basically NOBODY'S been good at consolidating power in France either - if Macron loses, they won't have had a two-term president since Chirac, and even he was seen as only getting that because he was lucky enough to end up facing Le Pen Sr the second time around rather than Jospin, who got whittled down to third by basically every left winger possible running for president that election (who would've likely backed him if he'd ended up top two)
 
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Betfair currently gives Macron a 73% chance of winning the second round compared to Le Pen’s 26%. It’ll be interesting to see how much that changes in the next hour.
 
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Thank god for a 5 point Macron lead. I think most of the really even second round polls were based on only a 3 point one?
 
Is there any polling for a Macron v Melenchon second round? You know, just in case.
 
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