I'm not arguing here on the issue that the tax is fair or not (it is not, the burden is skewed even more heavily towards taxing individual wage labor and not capital/corporate profits/self employed labor). Simply the agregate burden is one of the highest, and still the budget isn't balanced without floating more debt every year.

Of course, Sarko is a dickhead to complain about this now, just after he cut taxes on the richest himself. But he read george w bush's "neolib political economics for dummies".

Still, raising and rebalancing taxes will not be enough: France will need to make honest assessments and cut some benefits and public labor. This will happen in the nearer future than most people think. A credit crunch has far reaching consequences. Lenders will not get fooled another time after the "Great Dollar Devaluation Heist", which is coming right now.

Pierre

It is very important that ET remains a place where dialogue and debate can flourish and remain within the bounds of common courtesy.  I happen to agree with Afew's position, but do not understnd the purpose of personal attacks.

I can't blame you for wanting to leave.

Hopefully there will remain a place here for you if you decide to return.  

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.

We've spent a lot of effort proving them wrong, and  it is wearying for us to see them presented as facts on ET, when they are nothing but. Now the fair reaction to you, a relative newcomer, would be to point you to the relevant diaries which collate these facts, but do bear in mind that we spend a lot of time fighting that accepted common wisdom, and that it grinds us down.

So please don't take us on faith when we make these assertions, they are fully backed by hard numbers from unimpeachable sources. A good start, if you have not read this, is this summary post, which made it into Le Monde (without all the sources): France is not in decline and the last thing it needs is 'reform'. another, earlier effort would be this: Actual facts about the French labor market

On the brain drain, may I point you to this:

On "assistés", to these:

Our agenda is not to be leftist, it is to change perceptions that are shaped on incorrect facts.

I hope you can still participate to this forum; for one I have much appreciated your input and insights. Do trust us a little bit when we make assertions here - they are usually backed by hard facts, and, if you have read some of our deconstructions in recent weeks, you should by now be aware that a number of things in the mainstream press are based on repeating the dominant narrative with little respect for the underlying reality - and constesting this does not make us "lefties" (note how this is intended as an insult in the media), or a cult, or something similarly easy to dismiss.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

If "ICU case yourself!" offended you I apologise. It was not meant as an outright insult, but as a flippant way of reminding you that casually speaking of France as an "ICU case" was in itself offensive.

You twice speak of "sleight of hand" and "slyness" on my part. Nothing of the sort. For instance, when I say "The famous mentalité d'assistés that anyone on the right trundles out without a second's further thought", I'm simply speaking from experience, since this is a French expression greatly used by French people on the right of the political spectrum. It was not a dig at you in person. When (in the CER thread) I said I was sorry if I sounded aggressive, and said "do get some rest" when you said you were exhausted, I was simply showing you some respect.

I'm not an ombudsman and I was not writing my comments in any official capacity. I'm a front-pager here, meaning I can post directly to the front page and have some editorial powers ordinary users don't have. If I write in that official capacity, I preface my comment with [ET Moderation Technology™] . (Front-pager duties are explained here). My comment above and my comments on your CER thread were written as from one user to another. Nothing in what I said implied I possessed any authority or rank over you.

You say you have "openly admitted to being right-wing". Fine. But you seem to be complaining that the general ethos of ET is left-leaning. There's nothing sneaky about that, it's clear and above-board. Please see this from the site FAQ:

European Tribune - Frequently Asked Questions

What's a progressive? What if I am not one?

"Progressive" is an political term used loosely to identify activists of the left, favorable to sound and fair economic and social policies, equality of chances, and the defense of personal rights. The European Tribune is broadly progressive, but welcomes all contributors regardless of political self-identification, provided that they be respectful of the mission of this site, provide principled disagreement and don't engage in trollish behavior.

(Please note that I am not accusing you of trollish behaviour.. :-))

So you are a conservative posting on a left-of-centre blog. What surprises me is that you don't seem to expect other members here to argue with you, to call on you to substantiate what you say.

Yet what you say (or what you draw attention to, in the case of the CER report) is likely to attract criticism here. You say  you hope to "start a debate" but, when the debate starts, it's not the kind you want. For example, you seem to think it beneath you to discuss facts (re the CER report), to present some facts to back up what you say: you reply that you don't do "data-mining", and you send me off to find stuff on the net. But I'm not the only one to ask you for some substance to support your allegations (and, in this diary, there are allegations aplenty). If you say something, then you back it up, you don't tell others to go looking in your place.

As for your diary above, it's framed in a way that suggests it's a comment on Charles Bremner and his view of Sarkozy. I think I'm quite within my rights in saying I'm not interested in that. My point is the casual assumptions, and the more than loaded language, that you include about France, and that, for me, make up the main thrust of your text. You seem absolutely certain of them:

our dear friends who are not French should know that part of the problem is caused by the French themselves who cannot go beyond the permanent 'assisté' mentality.

the sick man/ICU case of Europe

This is not Bremner, or Sarkozy, or CER, or your memory of what you think Barroso said, this is you speaking. What's so extraordinary about being asked to explain and provide substance?

So you say you will stop posting, well, that's up to you. There is no reason to delete anything, on the contrary, that would be unfair to what you have written and to the contributions of other members in the discussion threads. As for "we can delete", I think it was part of an explanation about what front-pagers can do. But the only stuff we delete, as part of maintenance tasks, is spam, or comments that get posted twice. Not your comments and diaries, T3C :-)

My apologies for coming late to this, I've only just spotted this thread has become controversial.  Many thanks for your kind words above, and may I also say that I appreciated your support when I got some abuse on Timesonline.

Please permit me to step back from the details of this controversy and make some more general observations.  

Firstly, all newspapers, blogs, community forums etc. have some general orientations - more or less tightly defined, and more or less tightly enforced.  We have both criticised Charles Bremner for his tabloid tendencies to personalise all commentary and focus almost exclusively on the many foibles of Sarkozy as being emblematic of France.  He has found a very comfortable niche market playing into British perceptions of France and no doubt receives something of a star rating with the Times editorial team for so doing.  He doesn't do heavy economic/political analysis and thus tends to report on and repeat the commonplaces of others.

ET aspires to be a less "populist" and more analytically inclined community who are less interested in personalities and more into underlying economic, political, sociological and environmental causes.  As such it's stock in trade is to challenge, and sometimes refute the "common sense" assumptions of popular political discourse.  In this context, challenging the notion of "mentalité d'assistés" is par for the course, although in a state as interventionist as France, it would not be surprising to find that many are dependent on the state in many ways.  Hell, we all depend on the state for law and order, so it depends on how that concept is used to criticise some and not others.

I too have "issues" with some aspects of ET's self definition:  Whatever its origins, I don't see the relevance of defining ET as some sort of European counterpoint to American liberal blogosphere.  Whilst I am full of admiration for Jerome personally, I think ET lacks a transparent structure and process for defining/agreeing editorial policies, resolving disputes, and representing the public face of ET in the real world.  

I hate the moral superiority of pre-defining ourselves as "progressive" when we should have the moral courage to allow the facts and logic takes us where they will - even if that means adopting a position others might type cast as conservative, Marxist, utopian, or whatever.  I sometimes find it very cliquish and prone to setting a higher standard of evidence for dissident views than those which set the "dominant narrative" within ET.  

I doubt it will ever become a very broadly based forum for a very large user population because we have a tendency to pay lip service to tolerance of diversity and yet give minority views a hard time.  For a forum which prides itself on evidence based argument and high standards of behaviour, too often ad hominum and personalised attacks do creep in.

Having said all that, I think you would be hard put to find a higher or more civil standard of debate anywhere else.  I think you have to be prepared to accept that your assumptions will be scrutinized, and tested against the evidence, and as newcomers here, our views will not be granted the same level of automatic approval as old-timers who have built up a certain status and with many friendships and shared understandings over the years.

I do hope you will stay because I enjoyed your posts and because I think ET needs to be more open to a wider range of views if it is to grow and prosper.  Some old-timers may resist this because they prefer it as a cosy club for the illuminated few - that too is their entitlement. Almost every week we have a spat where someone threatens to leave because they are unhappy with how they have been treated, and I have been there myself.  

But I hope ET will grow into something bigger than all of us and make a growing contribution to informed debate within Europe and beyond.  You too have a contribution to make to that, and you shouldn't let a tense exchange with one or two other members get in the way of that.  We can all be a bit precious about what we may feel to be an unfair or unsympathetic reception for our dearest thoughts.  I still have a few bones to pick with others!  The key thing is that we can all learn from the experience.

I hope you stay.

"It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."

Not that I was thinking of "axe-grinding" in connection with weaponry in any way...