Government has a negative impact on the economy through spending, taxes, and its budget deficits. The most hard-hitting impact does not come through taxes, as conventional wisdom suggests, but through spending—spending governed by ideological preferences, which determine what money is spent, where, and when.

The Costa government had promised a break with the austerity policies imposed by the European Union. But political analysts use the word “disenchantment” to characterize the policies of the governing party. The socialist Costa government is now paying for the effects of the pandemic on the Portuguese economy.

The UN Security Council meeting followed multilateral talks with the Taliban in Oslo, designed to illicit human rights assurances from the Islamist extremists in exchange for releasing needed liquidity and aid money into the country. With Norway as host, a 15-member contingent of the Taliban, humanitarian aid groups, and diplomats from the U.S., UK, and France, met for three days of closed-door sessions at a hotel outside the capital.

Zemmour regularly claims in his speeches his affiliation with the former RPR, and his desire to achieve a “union of the Right.” He hopes to gather within his candidacy all the families of the French Right attached to national identity, sovereignty, a certain economic liberalism, and a (moderate) social conservatism.

Standing athwart the emergence of a ‘literal society’ which no longer appreciates irony, nuance, or sarcasm, the intellectual Alain Finkielkraut’s embrace of high culture makes him a reactionary in today’s France.