French Tantrum
Plus: Scavenging in NYC, Claude "solved" humor, the era of philanthropy, and more...
Rentrée, interrupted: The fall season is termed rentrée in France, referring to the return to work and school after summer breaks. But this autumn reset is different: People appear to be afraid France is spiraling into financial crisis, and protests—by students and unionized workers alike—have roiled multiple industries as citizens voice their discontent, with 90,000 or so protesting across the country.
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"On Tuesday, teachers and other public workers plan rallies against proposed wage freezes as the government labors to pass a budget," reports The New York Times. "They will join thousands of students who have blockaded schools to protest underfunding that has led to crumbling facilities and a shortage of teachers." Of course, it's not clear to these protesters how increasing funding for public services might deepen the fiscal hole the government finds itself in.
"The government says 215 students and 715 police officers have been injured since [protests] started," per the BBC. And polls are showing far-right Marine Le Pen performing rather well ahead of the 2027 presidential elections, further contributing to political tensions.
Currently, "the country's public debt stands at roughly $4 trillion, which is 119 percent of its annual economic output," noted the Times. "With rates on French government bonds spiking, the cost of servicing that debt is projected to increase to roughly $100 billion in 2027."
"On top of that, France faces higher healthcare and pension costs because of its aging population, as well as increased military spending driven by the war in Ukraine and the disengagement of the United States," the Times continued. Oil and gas prices remain high, mostly due to tensions in the Middle East. And France's 10-year borrowing rate has risen above 4.95 percent—the highest level since July 2002 (yet lower than the U.S.'s right now). The gap between French and German yields widened past 130 basis points, the largest since the eurozone sovereign-debt crisis of 2012. French 10-year yields now exceed Italy's—an ominous milestone.
In order to stabilize France's finances, the prime minister wants to freeze spending on select social programs and raise some taxes; the budget deal might go through, but is reliant on Le Pen's party (which holds 118 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly) to not sink the legislation.
All of this requires the formulation of a new consensus by a reluctant public: France cannot afford its welfare state, and no amount of violence in the streets will change that reality.
Scenes from New York:
At the risk of being a libertarian killjoy, I don't think that hosting scavenger hunts is one of the legitimate functions of the state. https://t.co/ylS3b1guRZ
— Chris Freiman (@cafreiman) October 5, 2026
QUICK HITS
- "The roughly 100 technology fortunes among the world's 500 richest people gained a combined $845 billion through Sept. 30, the most ever for the first nine months of a year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index," reports Bloomberg. "Fueling that surge were the same forces driving global markets: the artificial intelligence boom and soaring technology stocks, particularly in the US. Tech billionaires are now worth a combined $4.6 trillion, accounting for 36% of the index's wealth despite making up only about a fifth of its members."
- Televangelist Jim Bakker died yesterday at 86, after having served time in prison for financial crimes and having been embroiled in scandal over sex (claimed by the woman to be nonconsensual) with a 21-year-old who was a secretary in his Assemblies of God ministry. The Gospel of Matthew tells us, "You cannot serve both God and mammon." Bakker appeared to have missed this lesson, promoting prosperity gospel teachings and living a life of extreme opulence. Good, long reading on the legacy and tactics of Bakker, from Christianity Today's archives.
- On the Carnegies and Rockefellers, by Tamara Winter: "These great philanthropies also can't be separated from the era in which they were created: Protestant ideas about stewardship, the general Progressive Era reform culture, anxieties about (and outright hostility toward) dynastic wealth, reputational pressures on the new industrial rich, and limited U.S. state capacity [with respect to] education, public health, and scientific research, were all contributing factors to their inception."
- Exit interviews with employees from Anthropic, OpenAI, and DeepMind, courtesy of Asterisk and New York magazine. Enjoy this tidbit from an ex-Anthropic employee: "When I first joined, there was a Slack channel with a Claude that had been trained to solve humor. And they were like, 'Yeah, we solved humor. Here's the Claude. We've solved it.' And I was in the chat like, 'No, you haven't. You clearly haven't solved humor. What the hell is this?'"
- This Roundtable nouveau is definitely something to listen to when children are not around. Don't say you haven't been warned:
