M. Faure's Dilemma
The economic disaster which looms over France, like the one with which we in Britain are familiar, is a long-term legacy of the war—or rather of the last two wars. The rearmament programme has intensified it, but there is nothing new in the general pattern. Neither is there anything new in the general pattern of remedies which M. Faure is urging on the Assembly, nor in the resistance which these remedies are encountering. Taxation must be increased, but the French Socialists, no less than their British opposites, are determined that taxation shall be made painless for their electoral sup- porters. In other words taxation must be linked to' a sliding scale of wage increases which would nullify most of the effect of the new tax rates. Two other remedies, a slowing-down of the rearmament rate and an increase in American aid, have been conceded at Lisbon, but though they -narrow the gap they do not close it. There remains only a fresh devaluation of the franc, which would only put off the day of reckoning by a few months. Of course there is one solution in France which is so obvious that it hardly gets mentioned. This is that Frenchmen should pay their existing taxes. If they did, there would be no real need to think up new ones.
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