SIf you want to experience the joys of space and suddenly float in the air, no need for a rocket. You can board a special Airbus which will perform a parabolic flight during which you will experience, for a few thousand euros, twenty-two seconds without gravity. It is inexpensive and relatively expensive (nor very ecological).
With “whatever the cost”, whether health or energy, the French government has become an expert in the art of economic weightlessness. With certain results, but each time at the cost of astronomical expenses and a painful return to earth. Witness the anger that has manifested itself at the gas pumps since the drop in the rebate on fuel on November 15.
All the European countries have tried to cushion the surge in oil prices this year by granting rebates on prices at the pump. But none has spent as much as France. The cost for the State will approach 8 billion euros, when Germany has spent just over 3 billion.
Traumatized by the uprising of “yellow vests” in 2018, France has spent almost as much to keep motorists rolling as to heat them with gas. A generous and effective initiative, but unfair. It favors the wealthiest and their big 4 × 4s, and contradicts the proclaimed policy of the fight against global warming. To avoid excessively violent weaning for the tens of millions of French people who have no other choice than the car to get around, a targeted system has been put in place. It will obviously be more complex and less effective, but a little more virtuous.
The reflection of France’s consumerist tropism
Thanks to this emergency device, tragedies have surely been avoided. This policy is “the life insurance of the French economy”, is accustomed to say the minister delegate in charge of public accounts, Gabriel Attal. It is, in any case, the reflection of the consumerist tropism of France. This “supermarket company”as described by political scientist Jérôme Fourquet, where Intermarché have replaced factories in our countryside, rushes to reduce the price of the super, but does not spontaneously think of companies.
It was only in October that the government proposed an energy aid plan for businesses, so targeted that its effectiveness will be limited. Hence the anger of the boss of the Medef, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, who notes that, when France promises to devote 10 billion to it, Germany, on the contrary, more productivist than consumerist, will commit 100 billion to it and will strengthen its competitiveness. Ask or offer, to each his priorities. But a new trade-off is emerging: consumption versus the environment. What choice will France make?