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Comment by carlm42 | Hacker News Reader

Citations needed.

Most of the claims made don't really mean anything without additional context, but the 60% figure seems approximately true: https://tradingeconomics.com/france/government-spending-to-g...

Interesting graphs! Looks like over the last decade it's been mostly flat save for 2020/COVID. Still: GP mentioning that as a "problem" and a sign of a "planned economy" is kind of an odd fixation. As if that money went into a blackhole or something.

Tricky to work out citational claims in the rhetoric, but

> France also has, officially, nearly 60% of its GDP that is public spending

That's fair

> [working in public sector is] the only way they can envision having a stable job.

That is the same globally. Except in countries where the public sector doesn't mean a stable job. Young people today are all about the hussle, gig work etc. People who just want to work to live have problems across the western world.

> France's public spendings have always been out of control

It seems to be quite stable over the last 10 years, other countries aren't.

> Education levels are down the drain

There's no data to support that

Heres some data:

https://www.imf.org/en/-/media/files/publications/fiscal-mon...

France spends 57.5% of GDP, way higher than Germany, UK etc

But its been stable for a decade (2016 = 57.4%)

Germany has grown from 44.7% to 51.4% in the same time

As for educational achievement, France scores about the same as Germany on PISA, it does better in maths than the USA but worse in reading.

Adult literacy overall is slightly below USA, looking at level 1 or below it's the same, but high proficency is slightly below OECD averages

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