It might be useful to try and dissect what the leader of the Left grouping in the current election run up stands for so here is the Wiki page for Jean Luc Mélenchon who has cobbled together a union of the Left to fight the election. Though some of the elder statesmen from the old Socialist party have declined to join him.
It is in English.
This is his manifesto. How it gets paid for is an unanswered question! (For the presidential, so has changed but gives his direction).
Voici les principales mesures du programme de Jean-Luc Mélenchon :
INSTITUTIONS
- Convoquer une Constituante afin de passer à la 6e République
- Instaurer le Référendum d’initiative citoyenne (RIC) pour révoquer des élus, proposer ou abroger une loi et modifier la Constitution
SÉCURITÉ ET JUSTICE
- Augmentation de l’aide juridictionnelle
- Retour des tribunaux de proximité
- Confier au Parlement l’orientation de la politique pénale
- Légaliser et encadrer par un monopole d’État la consommation, la production et la vente de cannabis
ÉCOLOGIE
- Inscrire dans la Constitution le principe de « la règle verte », selon laquelle on ne prélève pas davantage à la nature qu’elle n’est en état de reconstituer
- Garantir une distance maximale (de quinze à trente minutes, en voiture ou en transport collectif) entre tout lieu d’habitation et les services publics essentiels (école, gare, hôpital, bureau de poste)
- 200 milliards d’euros d’investissements écologiquement et socialement utiles
- Renationaliser la SNCF, refuser la mise en concurrence des lignes de transport, rouvrir des petites lignes de train
- Renationaliser les autoroutes
- Planifier le passage à 100 % d’énergies renouvelables, sortir à la fois du nucléaire et des énergies fossiles ; rénover l’ensemble du parc immobilier
- Instaurer une agriculture relocalisée, diversifiée et écologique et créer 300.000 emplois agricoles
- Garantir l’accès à l’eau courante potable à tous les habitants des Outre-mer
- Interdire les fermes-usines
- Œuvrer à la création d’un droit international de la biodiversité marine
ÉCONOMIE
- Bloquer les prix des produits de première nécessité
- Adopter une 6e semaine de congés payés et la retraite à 60 ans, passer aux 32 heures pour les métiers pénibles et de nuit, puis engager leur généralisation
- Établir la garantie d’emploi
- Porter le SMIC mensuel à 1400€ net
- Instaurer un quota maximal de 10 % de contrats précaires dans les PME, 5 % dans les grandes entreprises
- Abroger la réforme de l’assurance-chômage et indemniser les chômeurs dès le premier jour
- Rétablir l’ISF
- Instaurer un impôt sur le revenu en 14 tranches
SOCIAL
- Compléter le revenu de chaque personne pour atteindre le seuil de pauvreté
- Réquisitionner l’ensemble des logements durablement vides pour loger les SDF
- Rembourser intégralement les dépenses de santé
- Assurer l’autonomie financière des personnes en situation de handicap
CULTURE
- Porter le budget consacré à l’art, à la culture et à la création à 1 % du Produit Intérieur Brut par an.
ÉDUCATION
- Augmentation de salaire de l’ordre de 30% pour tous les enseignants
- Assurer la gratuité de l’éducation publique : cantines, transport, périscolaire, manuels et fournitures
- Garantir aux bacheliers l’accès sans sélection à la formation de leur choix
- Création de 500.000 places en crèche et autres modes de gardes adaptés
- Service citoyen obligatoire avant l’âge de 25 ans, rémunéré au SMIC pendant 9 mois, avec bilan de santé, permis de conduire et formations
EUROPE
- Proposition aux États et aux peuples européens la rupture concertée avec les traités actuels
- Retrait du commandement intégré de l’OTAN
He seems to have dropped the idea of creating 500000 more fonctionnaires.
Of course this is designed to get votes from LePen but will he be able to do so.
Some of his constitutional changes are probably not practical but would definitely favour the demagogue and les gilets jaunes though with the new level of SMIC they would all probably be holidaying in Spain!
It is though a question that has to treated with great circumspection, because most people simply don’t know what it means. Brits especially - because it’s one of the UK media’s favourite Tory myths - tend to fall into the classic error of trying to understand national finances by analogy with business or household budgets. But to understand the ‘how it gets paid for’ question you have to ditch this false analogy - and instead think about…
- the fact that when a business or household spends money it goes out of the business/household - but most money ‘spent’ by governments simply continues to circulate inside the country - and is taxed every time somebody earns it or spends it, over and over again
- there is in fact a sense in which for a whole economy money does grow on trees - money is in fact created out of nothing all the time, by both banks and governments
- unlike businesses/households, when governments ‘borrow’ money, it is, or can be from themselves (since the central bank is actually nationalised)
- the old ‘monetarist’ idea that inflation is rooted in the money supply has been comprehensively ditched by later analysis (and real economics - ie. economic history) - what matters most is the relationship between the money supply and productive capacity - as long as this relationship is developed properly over the long term, how much governments spend is irrelevant.
In other words, the ‘how it gets paid for’ question is not answerable in principle by looking at what a programme will ‘cost’ - only by looking at its effects on the whole ‘ecology’ of an economy.
And of course the over-arching question has to be whether it will enable the radical transition to a sustainable economy, or not. If not, well… the whole society falls apart anyway.
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Oh goody, Geof, I’ll remember that when I have to fork out for my outrageous tax bill?
Why do you think your tax bill is ‘outrageous’?
Are you still in the UK?
Not been in UK for 26 years and then only briefly. But it is outrageous compared to the previous year.
I can’t help thinking, though, that the reason quantitative easing did not cause inflation was that it all ended up in share value - i.e it made the rich richer rather than causing inflation because it simply increased their wealth, not their spending.
Admittedly productivity has been going steadily up in the UK over the last 25 years - but it has slowed considerably post 2008.
Output per hour worked compared with 2020 as %age
Source Trading Economics + ONS data.
Not talking about any particular country…
If I received an unexplainable “outrageous” tax bill one year, I would ask the authorities to tell me how they had arrived at such a situation…
Seems only reasonable to me.
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One man’s “outrageous” tax bill, is another’s relief that it isn’t higher 
Yes, Stella I am going to do that; last year I had correspondence with the big cheese at the local impots who kindly sorted out a problem for me so I am gonna do the same this evening.
Duh!! We are not all wet behind the ears thank you. Looking at Mélenchon’s set of policies there is not enough balance and not enough that will generate a stronger economy. I wasn’t going to bother will tedious analysis since the chances of them getting much power are somewhat unlikely.
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This surely depends what you mean by…
I’ve just read the programme of our local left alliance candidates alongside LREM’s - the left’s environmental priorities are really much stronger - and very much higher profile in the programme leaflet, which is revealing I think.
He has some comendable ideas but is a bit of a nutter, certainly not getting my vote. He’ll screw the economy and make France less atractive to foreign investment too. There need to be big reforms to the system but not what he’s proposing!
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I see him as being always the bridesmaid, and never the bride (or is it best man and never the groom 
)
I still recount the occasion he complained about E Macron shortly after he was elected President (in his first term) and he held an important international conference at the château de Versailles. J-LM dissed him for doing so - calling him out as pretending to be King of France 
It’s an historic building and was entirely suited to the occasion as a showcase for France.
Is this man not proud of France, perhaps?
It’s certainly true that in the UK ‘quantitative easing’ went mainly into asset values - but this is a general tendency in the UK economy anyway.
The effects of the 2008 financial crash have been rippling out in many directions - including the discipline of economics itself. The failure of the mathematical modellers to foresee the crash, or subsequently explain it, has been one factor in turning many economists back to history - studying what actually happens rather than theoretical models. Japan has been ‘printing money’ for well over 20 years - for most of which yen inflation has been negative - it was -0.7 in 2000 and -0.02 in 2020, having peaked (briefly) at +2.75% in 2014.
This is just one example - but generally, as soon as economists look at real-world evidence, at what really happens, many previous theoretical constructs - eg. printing money causes inflation - just evaporate. Most important representative of the new thinking probably the great French economist Thomas Piketty - whose latest book is called Time for Socialism…
Why are people afraid of a left wing governament?
Not affraid of a left-wing government, just Mélenchon! 
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I would welcome a left-wing government, but I too have reservations about Mélenchon - although when I told my daughter I thought he was a bit maverick she roundly told me I should vote for the best programme - and I had to admit it was probably his (I don’t have a vote anyway - though she does). One interesting aspect now though is whether the left alliance will rub off his edges - particularly in relation to the EU, which is what concerns most people I think.
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The optimism of youth! Also need the ability to get things agreed, in place and operational.
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