Ainda a França, embora com aplicações mais vastas

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"(...) how do the French manage to take the whole month of August off, work 35 hours a week, take long lunch breaks, etc... and still maintain a standard of living similar to the rest of the OECD? Our answer is usually twofold:

First of all, France has historically been a very rich nation. The beuty of Paris, Versailles, the Loire Valley... all are testimonies to the amount of wealth creation which has ocurred in France over the past centuries. It takes a while for a country to move from rich to poor... Although France seems to be heading that way: within the OECD tables, French GDP/capita has slipped from the 4th position twenty years ago to 14th today.

But France is not just living off the fruits of its past; is has also been mortaging its future. In the past 15 years, government debt as a % of GDP has moved from +35% of GDP to +65% today. (...)

In France (and Germany, Italy,...), the low rates were used to stimulate private consumption. And, for the life of us, we do not know how to reduce public consumption painlessly."

Gavekal, March 22nd
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