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truedelphi

(32,324 posts)
Tue Jun 10, 2014, 03:24 PM Jun 2014

France announces its debt is illegal, hidden and should be torn up!

"The Guardian" has an international commentary on the findings of a French committee.


URL is here:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/09/french-public-debt-audit-illegitimate-working-class-internationalim


Debt audits show that austerity is politically motivated to favour social elites. Is a new working-class internationalism in the air?..

France made a decisive contribution to the reinvention of a radical politics for the 21st century. On that day, thecommittee for a citizen's audit (Link is here, but in francais http://www.audit-citoyen.org/) on the public debt issued a 30-page report on French public debt, its origins and evolution in the past decades. The report was written by a group of experts in public finances under the coordination of Michel Husson, one of France's finest critical economists. Its conclusion is straightforward: 60% of French public debt is illegitimate.

Anyone who has read a newspaper in recent years knows how important debt is to contemporary politics. As David Graeber among others has shown, we live in debtocracies, not democracies. Debt, rather than popular will, is the governing principle of our societies, through the devastating austerity policies implemented in the name of debt reduction. Debt was also a triggering cause of the most innovative social movements in recent years, the Occupy movement. If it were shown that public debts were somehow illegitimate, that citizens had a right to demand a moratorium – and even the cancellation of part of these debts – the political implications would be huge. It is hard to think of an event that would transform social life as profoundly and rapidly as the emancipation of societies from the constraints of debt. And yet this is precisely what the French report aims to do.

...

The report on French debt contains several key findings. Primarily, the rise in the state's debt in the past decades cannot be explained by an increase in public spending. The neoliberal argument in favour of austerity policies claims that debt is due to unreasonable public spending levels; that societies in general, and popular classes in particular, live above their means. But this is plain false. In the past 30 years, from 1978 to 2012 more precisely, French public spending has in fact decreased by two GDP points. What, then, explains the rise in public debt? First, a fall in the tax revenues of the state. Massive tax reductions for the wealthy and big corporations have been carried out since 1980. In line with the neoliberal mantra, the purpose of these reductions was to favor investment and employment. Well, unemployment is at its highest today, whereas tax revenues have decreased by five points of GDP.

Hence, the audit on the debt concludes, some 60% of the French public debt is illegitimate.
An illegitimate debt is one that grew in the service of private interests, and not the well being of the people. Therefore the French people have a right to demand a moratorium on the payment of the debt, and the cancellation of at least part of it. There is precedent for this: in 2008 Ecuador declared 70% of its debt illegitimate.

####

Of course, here in the USA, we have spending far beyond anything needed by anyone, (except the parasites who own the contracting DoD companies) for our Continual and Total Surveillance, The militarization of the police, and also the endless wars. (Twenty seven conflicts in Africa are supported by the USA as I type this.) So we are in much worse shape than France.


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France announces its debt is illegal, hidden and should be torn up! (Original Post) truedelphi Jun 2014 OP
A very interesting, REVOLUTIONARY theory! Demeter Jun 2014 #1
Well, there's 5 empty cells at Gitmo now. Fuddnik Jun 2014 #2
That would be Justice, indeed! Demeter Jun 2014 #3
Oh Fuddnik - truedelphi Jun 2014 #4
 

Demeter

(85,373 posts)
1. A very interesting, REVOLUTIONARY theory!
Tue Jun 10, 2014, 04:57 PM
Jun 2014

But then, the French are good at that.

I'd like to get a complete changeover at the Supreme Court before I tried it, though.

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