I disagree, a lot of people here are quite aware that we are in very difficult financial situation, from all side of the political spectrum. The main issue is that there is a very big disagreement on how to solve it (i.e how/who to tax more, and where to cut spending). And with a fragmented national assembly, everything is at a deadlock right now.
We don't have issue with the math, we just disagree on what to fund to balance things out.
An example, 200+ billion euros are given yearly to large companies as tax breaks and the like, without the government asking anything in return. The senate had a report about it recently [https://www.publicsenat.fr/actualites/economie/un-cout-annue...].
Another example, the military and defense get a huge increase in budget. schools, hospitals, research, nearly every public service get a budget cut instead [ https://www.force-ouvriere.fr/non-aux-44-milliards-d-economi...].
Man, that must feel like the rug pull of the century for French taxpayers, given that despite these tax breaks, French companies like Airbus and ST are incorporated in the Netherlands and paying(more like, NOT) taxes there instead of France.
I'd be pissed too, and I'd want my money back.
Unless of course the purpose of those tax breaks was actually to keep some jobs in France and not see more of them move to cost efficient places like eastern Europe or north Africa.
If you build/design your products here then you use EU's trained labor, EU's infrastructure, EU's legal system, EU's defense, etc. then you should pay your fair share to support these facilities that help you be a billion dollar corporation.
But I have a hard time understanding how politicians figured that countries with widely varying tax regimes inside an economic union would work out for the countries with a taste for high taxes.
It makes no sense to me. Of course companies are going to choose the most favorable location to incorporate. Counting on companies to be "fair-play" or whatever the politician word-of-the-day is seems completely braindead to me. Unless there were some kind of backroom deals going on, which wouldn't surprise me one bit coming from the EU nomeklatura, and now they're trying to conceal it by blaming "the rich" / "corporate greed".
The left seems to want things we all want, but we're unsure how to afford them. They never seem to have math to back it up as taxes can only go up so much, and they are already some of the highest as a percentage of GDP in the world.
Can you point me to a real proposed solution by either side?
Is this the right metric: "Tax revenue (% of GDP)"?[0]
If so, France ranks 28 at 23.1% of GDP. The highest non-island developed country is Denmark at 31.4%. Denmark's GDP per capita is 1.5x France. New Zeland's GDP per capita is similar to France and their GDP to tax rate is 29.6% which is the fifth highest. Does New Zeland face similar problems as France? I think I agree with your implication that simply increasing the tax to GDP ratio is not a magic bullet.
In general, the data here is really interesting. Germany and the US have a pretty similar value, both averaging at about 11% in recent years. I would have assumed that Germany would have a higher rate. I wonder if this data is misleading somehow or if my assumptions were just wrong here. I guess one variable missing here is government debt, which is not a tax but is still used to pay for government expenses.
[0] Global: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS?most_...
France over time: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS?most_...
I'm not one to cheer for absurd taxation (which is a French specialty), but I understand why this setup does ruffle some feathers in France.
According to the votes that Le Pen and Melanchon are supposed to get, I would not say "a lot of people".