Show HN: I built a dashboard of official data ahead of French elections • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: I built a dashboard of official data ahead of French elections

#21

Post by hef19898 » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 5:03 PM UTC

xwolfi wrote: post #5

thenaturalist wrote: post #3

Out of curiosity: What is/was your motivation behind this and how does it correlate to elections? My baseline assumption looking at this is that in all of these numbers, there are massive systematic, global - and hence exogenous to France or any single state - forces at play (like globalization, the Financial crisis and the following decade of inflationary money printing) which shape most of these indicators. Showing…

It's hard to say there's a direct causation. I left France myself because I felt the problems shown in these indicators were so deeply rooted in the French psyche that there was simply nothing to do. For instance, dropping the unemployment rate to a level akin to Germany would require us to see life like Germans do: practically, minding social cost of social welfare, admitting mistakes and correcting course rather th…

It needed Schroeder's Agenda 2010 and Hartz 4 to reduce unemploymebt in Germany. When that started, Germany was considered Europe's sick man. Whether or not it was worth it is a good question, we don't know what things would be without all of that. What is certain, so, is that Hartz 4 took a lot away from our social network. And we pay the price still today.

Re: Show HN: I built a dashboard of official data ahead of French elections

#22

Post by yorwba » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 5:27 PM UTC

turbinerneiter wrote: post #18

xwolfi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a French abroad, so maybe more detached, I agree with you ! Maybe the president could have an impact if he did anything a bit revolutionary, but since they never do and simply soft manage the country to prevent any huge swing, it seems like they dont matter. I guess we could say this is an accomplishment to manage to stick to european averages, one president could pull and Erdogan, move back to the Franc and explo…

I don't believe this to be a good thing. If voting differently doesn't make a difference, then why vote? Is it actually a democracy if elections don't have any impact? Just as an example: in Germany there is now a SPD led government, with the Greens and the FDP, after a long time of CDU led government. Many people voted to see some real changes, e.g. when it comes to environmental policies or social topics like wealt…

> If voting differently doesn't make a difference, then why vote? Is it actually a democracy if elections don't have any impact?

It's not that elections don't have an impact, they do, but you shouldn't expect that impact to manifest itself as large swings in aggregate statistics, for two reasons:

1. Those statistics measure the aggregate behavior of many individuals, most of which are not elected officials but ordinary people. Unless the government adopts a command economy and micromanages everything, they have only limited influence on what ordinary people are doing.

2. The people voting in each election are mostly the same and they're not going to suddenly vote all that differently.

If you want to know what kind of impact an election outcome had, look at things the government influences directly, where there are widely divergent opinions on what to do, and where the election coincides with a change in which opinion has majority support.

Re: Show HN: I built a dashboard of official data ahead of French elections

#23

Post by xwolfi » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 6:08 PM UTC

turbinerneiter wrote: post #18

xwolfi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a French abroad, so maybe more detached, I agree with you ! Maybe the president could have an impact if he did anything a bit revolutionary, but since they never do and simply soft manage the country to prevent any huge swing, it seems like they dont matter. I guess we could say this is an accomplishment to manage to stick to european averages, one president could pull and Erdogan, move back to the Franc and explo…

I don't believe this to be a good thing. If voting differently doesn't make a difference, then why vote? Is it actually a democracy if elections don't have any impact? Just as an example: in Germany there is now a SPD led government, with the Greens and the FDP, after a long time of CDU led government. Many people voted to see some real changes, e.g. when it comes to environmental policies or social topics like wealt…

Because it's a fallacy to think "change" is the purpose. If we cant fix the french mindset bar a terrible crisis, then the best to do is to soft manage the country like all presidents did since the americans showered us with money and made us believe we didnt have to work for it.

We could change, but how many decades of instability to move towards capitalism away from the nanny state ? Knowing us we d be communist before being individualist. I think Macron got it and is trying very slowly, that s good enough and I vote satisfied. Why always revolt and break everything ?

Re: Show HN: I built a dashboard of official data ahead of French elections

#24

Post by xwolfi » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 6:16 PM UTC

thenaturalist wrote: post #16

xwolfi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it's getting better, maybe not to the point I d come back, probably because like I smelled, Macron helped unwind some of our social rigidity, but from the look of it (my families and friends back on the motherland), he made so many people seethe with rage with his "we must adapt or die" attitude that he ravaged the moderate parties to the profit of the populists on both side who want to reassure that we c…

Hi there, first of all thank you for sharing your perspective! In your post and a different real life convo with a French friend of mine I am surprised to learn that he is similarly frustrated with the political process as you seem to be. He mentioned deGaulle set up the presidential election process the way it is today post WWII to weaken the impact of radical politicians like le Pen for obvious reasons. It seems th…

I guess we all want what we don't have. I'd trade the cuisine for German engineering because it feels somehow, in the grand scheme, what will matter eventually is to resist and compete with a Chinese democracy, centuries down the line.

For countries like France relying on past capital and stagnating, admired by productive germans who dream of our dilletante for sure, waking up next to a space faring, technologically advanced and politically enticing China, size of a small planet may I remind you, will be hard. Maybe we ll sell them poetry, but my guess is we ll deplete for good and rot away. We ll never manage to keep the nanny state, since to this day, we borrow from.. . China to finance it.

Re: Show HN: I built a dashboard of official data ahead of French elections

#25

Post by turbinerneiter » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

xwolfi wrote: post #23

turbinerneiter wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe this to be a good thing. If voting differently doesn't make a difference, then why vote? Is it actually a democracy if elections don't have any impact? Just as an example: in Germany there is now a SPD led government, with the Greens and the FDP, after a long time of CDU led government. Many people voted to see some real changes, e.g. when it comes to environmental policies or social topics like wealt…

Because it's a fallacy to think "change" is the purpose. If we cant fix the french mindset bar a terrible crisis, then the best to do is to soft manage the country like all presidents did since the americans showered us with money and made us believe we didnt have to work for it. We could change, but how many decades of instability to move towards capitalism away from the nanny state ? Knowing us we d be communist be…

Why do you think the french mindset is wrong?

I didn't find a great up to date source, but the latest number I saw - French median wealth is almost 3 times Germany. That's with the Germans earning more on average, working more, working longer and getting lower pensions.

Look at the decline of labour share.

We are outcompeting us to death. If French people work more, what are the Germans to do? Work even more? We will end up in a spiral.

How do you motivate people to work harder for less money? Just to make the economy happy? What's in it for the people?