Edit: I apologize to the French people. I did not intend to disrespect your innovations or appropriate your legislature.
The best part is that this year they've added smartphones, tablets and laptops to the list of taxed devices, which is ridiculous and pure greed. And the minister argued that the manufacturers will bear the increased cost themselves, which just adds insult to injury. She also said that other countries do that already (Germany was the example AFAIR, hehe), but she just conveniently left out the fact that Poland already has one of the highest VAT rates in the EU, so our devices will be even more expensive relative to their base price, than they already are.
Combined with universal suffrage and the welfare state to buy votes it is a recipe for decline and ruin.
The french state is bankrupt like all the other western democracies. They hide their pension obligations well, but that doesn’t change reality.
This system will continue to suck everything it can out of the young and the productive, because those are the incentives. There is no point at which it will stop, short of regime change.