Tssk, tssk.
Theses dudes were not more "self-proclaimed" socialist than you, actually, it was a global agree in the french left, that did'nt come from some people specifically. And you must assume what people in you camp say.
No, you don't. In fact, logically, you shouldn't. You don't assign people to camps and then just take their word on whatever they say about the constituents of whatever supposed camp you assigned them to.
Especially if we consider that socialist compared France to URSS because they underestimate the severity or the situation, or conciously lied about it. I never took what they say as right, it was ironic, but you should relax your anus and stop to be an uptight socialist to really understand it.
I understand what you said. The error I highlighted in it still stands. You have not addressed it.
No. There's not any year where France is not less free than the year before. Placing equality before freedom, socialist is driven by nature to eliminate freedom.
I'm trying to figure out how that's an answer to what I just said.
Anyway, I'll point out that in the first world many, actually nearly all of them are considered by most standards to have more socialistic economic policies than the USA. However, many of them also have healthier and more robust democracies, less censorship, more lax laws regarding drugs and sex, etc... That would seem you at least partially contradict your supposed correlation between socialism and a lack of freedom.
Democracy matters only when the elected leaders preserve capitalism and freedom. Not if they use their power to control economy and society. And the more the country is socialist, the more they control it and the worse the situation is.
You missed the point entirely. This was not intended to invite a discussion of the flaws and merits of democracy, I was merely submitting democracy as an example of a possible additional factor. The point was that there is more to a country than just being more or less socialist. That is ridiculously over-simplified. Democracy is one of innumerable other factors that could be involved in the prosperity of a nation.
As I ever said, the weight of the state was extremely lower in the 70s than today, and it's correlated with an higer prosperity and an almost inexistent unemployment. You're wrong.
But even France today is better than the USSR, right? That also doesn't actually show that the golden mean isn't true. Would you say France in the 70s was less socialist than contemporary USA?
And I'm baffled because I'm pretty sure that by a good lot of measures France is doing better compared to the USA now than it was in the 70s.
And while I know the CIA may not be the most sagely commentator on this, here's the very first thing the their page says on France's economy.
France is in the midst of transition from a well-to-do modern economy that has featured extensive government ownership and intervention to one that relies more on market mechanisms. The government has partially or fully privatized many large companies, banks, and insurers, and has ceded stakes in such leading firms as Air France, France Telecom, Renault, and Thales.
That would be the exact opposite of what you claim is going on.
Proof that socialist don't understand anything about economy.
It is not a clear term, practically nothing is. By academic standards that is a term you would have to define. That I want to know what you mean does not prove that I don't understand or believe what you mean. It's not possible to tell those things if I don't know what you mean in the first place, and I feel it would be a waste of time for me to start guessing several different things you could mean by "creating wealth" because there
are several different things people tend to mean by that.
You ignorance is clearly blatant. Did'nt you know that the level of insecurity, unemployement and poverty in France had exploded in the 80s and that it's correlated with the burst of socialism? More techologically advanced? Yes, there's flat screen, computer, I-phone and I-pod, but that does'nt mean that the global quality of life is better, and France knew theses technologic advanced with a significant retard in comparaison with less socialist country.
I would point again to the above quote, but that's besides. I just made a comment about the entire world over the span of hundreds if not thousands of years, and you countered me with something about France since the 80s. Obviously you are giving me too small a sample to be relevant. Do you know what a trend is? Like, if there's a 20 year downward trend, the trend line may go up and down throughout those 20 years but still ultimately decline overall between the start and end of those 20 years. If you can understand that, you can understand why your reference is too trivial to counter my point very well.
Hem. The almost constant growth of the state's weight have'nt done anything postitive, just muffled the economy and society and ancouraged irresponsibles behaviors.
Then why oh why has the global historical trend manage to completely contradict that?
)
But I don't want to choose between talking to you guys and not oppressing third world countries! 
