The war cries coming from enemies of the plan put forward by French Prime Minister Michel Barnier for a first tentative straightening out of France’s perilous financial situation are reminiscent of Samson’s “Let me die with the Philistines!” (Judges 16:30). If France fails to get a grip on its deficit and public debt, the consequences will be paid by the voters of both leftist and rightist parties, which are trying – albeit separately – to bring down the Barnier government and, above all, to derail its recovery plan.

What is surprising is that anyone could be surprised at what is happening. The parliamentary bazaar of December 2 was the almost inevitable manifestation of the sum of a long and also a very long trends and of a shorter, decidedly petty, trend going on since the National Assembly was dissolved last June 9.

The long and very long trends consist in attempting to resolve any issue by covering it with public money. The public schools no longer work, and fuel discrimination and inequality? Let’s give more money to the teachers. The farmers are protesting because they say environmental protection measures make their lives harder? Give more money to the farmers. Industry X is doing badly and facing bankruptcy? Here’s more money for industry X. Are domestic violence cases spiraling out of control? Let’s give more money to police and psychological support groups. And so on.

In order not to upset the social order, all problems, from the biggest to the smallest, have been addressed by injecting public money. What is the Rassemblement National (formerly the National Front) asking Barnier for today? More money for pensioners -- and this despite the fact that, in France, pensioners are among the most protected categories: Le Monde calculates that if retirees were to receive what they paid in contributions during their working age, they would be getting 30 to 50 percent less than they do now. Nor is this surprising, considering that one in three registered voters is a pensioner, but among actual voters it is one in two.

This is just one example, but a significant one in a country in which fertility rates are falling faster than elsewhere: that rate has fallen from 2.03 children per woman in 2010 (the highest rate among older industrialized countries), to 1.68 in 2023, according to the INSEE Institute of Statistics (see chart).

As France and other countries continue to wage war on immigrants, the burden of maintaining pensioners falls increasingly on the dwindling number of those who work. A 2010 study from INSEE shows that in 2007 there were 86 people of “inactive age” per 100 of “active age” in France, but a reversal is expected by 2035, with the inactive (114) outnumbering the active (100).  However, the demographic situation has meanwhile worsened more than expected, so this ratio likely will worsen as well. The likely result: generational compromise at risk, and increasing ageism.