a flat tax or a regressive one, so on this we simply have a fundamentally ideological difference. And, in any event, stimulus is not inflationary is the stimulative investments provide for increased prosperity in the future, which if done right would at least largely be the case. Any decent financial analyst can do the math - present value of cash flows at a proper risk premium of a state investment project, equal to today's outlays offset by tomorrow's benefits. If your NPV is, generally speaking, close to zero on the things you invest in, there's no inflation. So quite frankly, imho the inflation discussion is more than a bit of a red herring, and on a couple of different levels, given the subject and the gravity thereof.

Taxes of course can be increased. But unless you know something I don't, the UMP, the CDU/SPD, the Berlusconi and Balkenende governments are not going to do it until they've been tossed out of office, which in France is a long ways off. So, if you are insisting on tax increases to pay, today, for investments which are needed quite urgently, today, then you are saying that no investment should be undertaken under present circumstances. Here, it is you who is not being pragmatic, but rather, dogmatic. Where you accuse me of supposedly being (again) the objective ally of Sarkozy all the while borrowing his rhetoric on the real economy versus financial speculation, I would say rather that you appear to be hell-bent on worsening the crisis by doing nothing, and thereby condemning workers to even lower living standards, precarious housing, declining working conditions and greater overall exclusion and precarity, especially of the young and of minority workers.  

And in any case, where is your PS now on the subject, besides vague belly-aching about the bouclier fiscale which, even if repealed, wouldn't pay for anywhere near what what we are talking about.    

Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant