French left-wing firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon unveiled his presidential platform over the weekend. Voters angry about the cost of living will find plenty of nice-sounding promises. Too bad all of them would make France poorer — and, in the long run, voters angrier.
The leader of the France Unbowed party proposes to control the prices of food, energy and fuel. He wants to lower the retirement age to 60, undoing a reform that will raise it to 64 by 2030. He would restore France’s broad wealth tax, impose a minimum annual tax of 2 percent on fortunes exceeding 100 million euros ($112 million) and ban anyone from inheriting more than 12 million euros ($13.5 million). The government would confiscate the rest. Strategic industries would come under greater state direction. France would also abandon nuclear power, as well as NATO.
Mélenchon’s manifesto is the economic equivalent of treating a hangover with another bottle. His plans are a recipe for energy shortages, reduced investment and a sovereign debt crisis. The International Monetary Fund expects France’s economy to grow just 0.4 percent this year. Public spending already consumes 57 percent of gross domestic product.
For all the global attention Mélenchon’s platform is getting, most of the proposals are not new. Like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), he has been campaigning on the same failed economic ideas for decades. What’s different this time is that Mélenchon’s socialist agenda may find more purchase among a restive electorate after hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets in recent weeks. An October poll found 91 percent of the French pessimistic about their nation’s economic predicament.
With the first round of voting in the presidential race scheduled for April, there is a plausible scenario in which France finds itself choosing between Mélenchon and the right-wing Marine Le Pen. At the moment, she is favored to win a head-to-head matchup. A poll published Nov. 5 found that just 16 percent of French respondents view Mélenchon favorably, compared with 35 percent for Le Pen.
Alas, Mélenchon’s destructive ideas could make it to the runoff even if he doesn’t. His more moderate social-democratic rival, Raphaël Glucksmann, has a higher favorability rating but also advocates for taxing wealth and inheritances. Le Pen is no neoliberal herself. She advocates protectionism, state-directed investment and promises to shield French workers and industries from foreign-born competition.
If France’s center does not reconstitute itself, come next summer Europe could see one of its largest economies lurch decisively toward some version of economic nationalism on the right or state-led redistribution on the left. On the menu of French politics, two unappetizing options.
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