For a very long time, in France, the political powers have enjoyed requesting reports. More precisely, they have requested them since the early 1780s, when the new monarch, who would meet a tragic fate, constrained by a major food, economic and fiscal crisis, demanded several senior officials, economists and bankers to provide recommendations with respect to the modernization of agriculture, the tax reform and the attraction of foreign talents and investments.
As everyone knows, the political powers at the time, convinced of their eternity, quickly stored and set aside these reports in the drawers, where they came out again only after a revolution caused by their inaction, under the initiative of a general having recovered a country that has been bled dry and ruined.
Over the past few years, it is back in fashion. For the same reasons: the political powers are well aware that the country is threatened of decline and that they will have to take action. They hesitate and ask experts to validate their intuitions; then do not dare to take action and bury the report which, though, only says what they already know.
As in 1780, the country is overindebted, the poorest people do not get enough to eat and are unable to get care; and the wealthy are getting richer in a scandalous and ostentatious way. As in 1780, the holders of annuities are well connected to the political powers so they can protect their privileges.
In 1780, the major issue was the ability to supply the country with bread. Today, the problem is the same, all things considered: how to remain competitive in order to supply the country with everything that it buys from the rest of the world.
As in 1780, the reforms are known: improve social mobility; promote the economy of intelligence; remove the ruling classes who sit on their annuities; accept technical progress and all its consequences.
These principles were found in the reports of Turgot as well as those of Necker; as they are also found, the most recent ones, in those which are being debated at the moment.
And the reforms required are the same: penalize fiscally all forms of conservatism. Encourage the spirit of entrepreneurship and wealth creation; promote a lean State to make it more efficient; reduce the cost of exportable products; foster social justice. This implies not a sudden shock, but stubborn action around a single idea: the fostering of success. Educational, social, economic, financial, scientific, artistic. In a country accustomed to favor the average, and penalizing anything above, unless it serves the prince, such a shift is difficult. And though reports, one after the other, see it as beneficial, nothing is happening.
If, as in 1780, these reports become, ultimately, not a way to prepare a decision, but an exemption system from the decision, the country will be tense. At the slightest incident, the people will demand to be heard. And if they are not authorized to do so, they will challenge those who, from the left and from the right, pretended too much to exercise power to deserve it really.
There is little time left to act for those who are governing today. They need to set a clear course quickly; and explain why, in a world irreversibly opened, competitiveness is the other name for standard of living, and redoubled effort the condition for survival. In a country so harmonious as France, so average, in every sense, it is against nature. Unless we understand that we are at risk of dying.