Looming Disaster
French (official) public debt is above 1,600 billions euros. In order not to add more insanity in here, I leave aside the unaccounted but very real 900 billions euros of future pensions for civil servants.
Let’s pretend it’s just 1,600 billions euros.
In France, our wondeful tax system applies to a bit less than 50 million independant taxpayers. You do the math and you get a whooping 32,000 euros per taxpayer. Knowing that the average revenue is 34,450 euros/household, one can easily see that it takes almost a full year of revenue to reimburse the public debt. During this year, of course, you don’t eat, drive, heat your kids, pay back your own debt or whatever you have to do.
Let’s pretend it’s just one year of revenue, not such a big deal.
Well, the fact is that only half of taxpayers do actually pay taxes on revenue (26.5 millions exactly). They probably are the only ones able to pay. Suddenly, the public debt per household jumps to 60,377 euros. Almost twice the yearly revenue. Again, if you can stay still, not eating, doing nothing, for a couple of years, that’s not a big deal.
Let’s pretend that 2 years of personal income to reimburse is not a big deal.
Politicians think it’s not a big deal because households in France have a very 15% savings rate that lead to 2,900 billions euros of liquid investments. Politicians look at this pile of money and think that it’s not a big deal to have such a high level of debt. The savings/debt ratio is 1.75 and France is a great country.
Let’s pretend it’s fair to steal 55% of each household savings to repay the debt.
France is really fucked.
