The other night while watching the french riots on one of the cable news stations, one of the talking heads in reference to France called it a “quasi-socialist” nation.
I have two questions:
1.) What policies does France have that keep it from being a “full”
socialist nation?
2.) Also is France transitioning itself to be more, or less socialistic then it was in the past?
The short version is that the government of France has a massive social welfare program and controls at least a quarter of the economy. It also has many more and more restrictive regulations of business than in the US. It isn’t exactly socialist, but it clearly has strong tendencies that way. Also, the French have a strong tendency to take to the national government their problems, even if the national government doesn’t really have an interest in them one way or another.
As for the second question, even the French don’t seem to know that. The government has belatedly recognized that their social programs are financially unsustainable, because of a shrinking and increasingly disaffected population, but they are having a hard time dealing with the issue openly. The current riots is not going to help matters; a large portion of the ruling party seems to want to buy the rioters of with more money. Problematically, France can ill afford more social programs now.
The French don’t believe the state should own all the means of production, so factories, businesses, farms, etc. are in private hands (although there are some exceptions/government-owned industries… isn’t Airbus part gov’t owned?).
Smiling Bandit has provided a good definition of what “quasi-socialist” means when used with some objective meaning. Another term sometimes used for this sort of system is “welfare capitalism.”
It’s definitely worth noting, though, that it’s often a code phrase for extreme right-wing talking heads that means nothing more or less than “more inclined to provide some sort of social assistance and/or regulate business than I think is proper.” Even when there is no true socialism in the dictionary definition sense present whatsoever, it provides a useful sound-bite slam for them.
(Thanks to SB for rising above temptation and giving a useful definition!)
Only indirectly: France owns ca. 15 percent of EADS which owns 80 percent of Airbus.