The first is to reduce public expenditure

We like stealing ideas to our English friends. Even adapt them with more or less happy, as the examples show contrasting Thatcherism, the mini-skirt, sandwich and parliamentary democracy. Also was the choice difficult last week. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced two measures glossy drone to reduce the budget deficit, if not French world obsession. The first is to reduce public expenditure. Furthermore, it is the long term. The second is to increase taxes. Just over a year, "one shot" as say our English friends. President Nicolas Sarkozy has decided to import one of these two devices. In a surtaxée France, who claims control of against the Anglo-Saxon myopia, where the President repeated yesterday that "the strategy of tax hike is impossible", one could imagine that the choice would be to at the outset to saving measure. The severity could see the Government hesitate as the donkey of Buridan, and eventually die of budgetary asphyxiation. But the Elysee has chosen the increase of tax without any hesitation. This story shows what awaits us.

Of course, the tax in question is not neutral - but the tax is rarely neutral (especially in France, where the tax on income, takes the smallest portion of the national wealth of all developed countries). It should hit 50 bonus of the traders, inflated by strong activity in the financial markets... from the measures taken to save the banks. And the increase is not poorly designed: it strikes not traders themselves, but their employers, who will be tempted to stingy on the said bonus.

The same judgments apply however on the British measurement of reduction of public spending. It is indeed lower the wages of the highest officials, those earning more than 150,000 pounds per year (i.e. differences euros) of 20 over three years. They are of course many - just a few hundred. But it is a powerful signal. A way to prevent other officials, numbering in millions: they may also have to tighten their belts. Step, because it is stupid of cut in the treatment of the servants of the State in times of crisis, as it had shown the disastrous decline of 10 decided by Pierre Laval in 1935. Will but a little later, as soon as growth leave for good. In France, the message would be valuable for the millions of young people who rush on the competition of a public service which offers employment to life and apparently tempting wages.

But we, the French prefer falling from higher taxes, rather than the reduction of public spending. As if the State was the last cement of our identity. As if we had given up our glorious history of tax revolts. There were the height of the 14th, with the jacqueries and the revolt of the Maillotins and then the French Revolution to the XVIIIIesur background of taxes to strike, and the peasants rebellion against "the 45 cents tax" in the 19th century - an increase of 45 of all direct taxes. The 20th century was marked by the riots of the wine growers from the Aude against the creation of the tax in 1907, the violent speech from "green shirts" Raymond Dorgères in the 1930s and the protests of the craftsmen - Pierre poujade in the 1950s and Cid-Unati in the 1970s.

And since More nothing. The French pay nothing say their taxes, among the highest in the world. They appear to be taxable at will, as their ancestors were wrong to thank you. It is of course regret it. But it is a collective choice. And it is this choice, more than any what governmental speech, which reassure global investors and preserves the "triple A" State - that is, the best possible assessment of rating agencies on its ability to repay its loans in time and hour. However, doubt persists. Would the French also favour public spending if the income tax increased for everyone