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Francois Hollande

Socialism Rises Again



Last weekend, the people of France took a sharp turn to the left, and the rest of Europe may be on the brink of rebuking its recent tack toward fiscal responsibility. With Sunday’s election of French Socialist leader Francois Hollande, France has leapt backward toward the policies that have helped sink the continent in a sovereign debt crisis. Disturbingly, the big government platform Hollande campaigned on is all too familiar to the American people, and if the United States is not careful, it could suffer the same fate as its European allies.

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Hollande sailed to victory by appealing to an electorate dissatisfied with having to face necessary cutbacks, proclaiming that he is “proud to have been capable of giving people hope again.” That brand of hope called for a change from President Nicolas Sarkozy’s relatively conservative policies — in his first term, Sarkozy worked to reduce the number of public sector employees, eliminate the 35-hour work week, reform the university system and cut taxes. Hollande, by contrast, promised to raise taxes on big corporations and wealthy individuals, implement a top rate tax of 75 percent, increase public spending by 20 billion euros, raise the minimum wage, hire 60,000 more teachers, and lower the retirement age from 62 to 60 for some workers. He says he is “president of the youth of France” and believes that government stimulus, not cutting spending, is the right way to achieve economic growth.

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