French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

Politically deadlocked, failing economy, with the judiciary doing political dirty work?

Government shutdown...convicted rapist as President.. ;-)

Seventh biggest economy with the 21st biggest population seems like an economy that punches above its weight. Plus a low GINI coefficient suggests there's less wealth divide than a lot of other places. Seems like they have a mature economy and don't need to grow forever like a tumor. Once you reach a certain point, optimizing for quality of life seems nice, and the French do seem to aim for that.

I think unfortunately both can be true at the same time, politically deadlock AND punching above its weight.

There's a lot to fix in France, and a lot of things going well.

While "quality of life first" remains true in spirit for a lot of French people, this hasn't been supported politically since 2000 (when legal weekly work time was reduced to 35 hours - many people do more but they are compensated for it). And even that law was an exception. In truth, France has taken the neoliberal turn of the 80s almost as much as other countries, and growth and competitiveness has been the only mantra of governments for 40 years. We're mostly protected by laws passed before the 50s.

"optimizing for quality of life seems nice, and the French do seem to aim for that."

Looking at economic trends, it does seem like optimizing for quality of life of the boomer generation at the cost of the future generations, which is not so nice.

Without major cuts to its welfare state (which is Europe's most massive one as a percentage of GDP), France's finances are unsustainable. The necessary tax revenue just isn't there and you cannot borrow indefinitely to spend on entitlements.

As of current trends, if something explodes the Eurozone, it will be endless accumulation of French sovereign debt. It is the same as once Greece was, but ten times as big.