As we can see during the debate the French focused more on their purchasing power. It’s an important sujet but in my opinion we didn’t talk enough about detrimental aspects in the future : education and the investment in new technologies.
Education is a great forgotten subject of the debate. While less and less teacher are applying, due to more and more terrible working conditions and low wages, we focus more on short term debates. However one of the most important causes of precarity is the low educational system we live in for too many years. Many companies complain about the lack of good mathematicians. But not enough people are concerned about the working conditions in schools, bullied pupils as well as teachers. That’s a fact that will have real consequences on the long run. France is likely to be more and more threatened as a great power. In a way it is logical : in my opinion the Western civilization is decadent, this century is about to be an Asian one, and the education system is just a symptom of that.
Second we didn’t talk enough about investment in new technologies. Of course the war in Ukraine is very important. But we don’t talk enough about semi conductors, artificial intelligence, the war on rare metals, the green economy, the data… all sectors that will have a detrimental impact in the future. We prefer too much to focus on immigration, on small sentences of politicians… While the yellow vest movement is the fact of population that are the victims of globalization, of desindustrialization and that are paying the lack of long term view of our politicians. Emmanuel Macron made a speech about the necessary investment in the technologies of tomorrow, and he insisted on the importance of the European Union. On both things he is right. But the reform of high school, with less importance accorded to mathematics is a bad choice to prepare France to this decisive competition.
Misfortunatetly the lack of prospect and long term vision of our politicians will be more and more paid in the coming years. In my opinion, the debate was not enough focused on really important subjects in the long run. Again we are too much stressing important subjects but with too short run impacts. It allows to respond to the standards of communication society. It is not preparing us to confront detrimental challenges in the coming years.
The observer 