It is a joke: inflation reduces the burden of public debt. And more generally, the state's accounts would benefit. "We must give the money back to the French," proclaimed the National Rally at the time of the 2022 presidential election. Fuel prices were then at their highest and VAT revenues exploded. The demand has now shifted to food.
The suspicion of a profiteering or even inflation-making state rests on two indisputable mechanisms. The first relates to tax revenues and social contributions, the bases of which are indexed to prices. VAT collection is growing in line with consumer prices, and income tax, like the CSG, is seeing their mass increase with wage increases, even if the latter are lagging behind.
As for public debt, its alleviation, supposedly linked to inflation, is another phenomenon. Debt has certainly continued to rise...
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