So let's have a go at it.

The 5 hard truths are presented as things that are still debated in France, but vainly, as these things are there and cannot be discussed any longer, being the reality we live in.

Globalisation is certainly a reality, but there is nothing that would prevent a country from staying out of it. It may have a huge economic cost, but it's not impossible. We thus bump up immediately on the first hidden assumption behind this "reality": only the economy matters. Other non-monetary criteria do not even exist to determine policy. Quite a big assumption to make, really. Ask the Iraqis. Or the Ukrainians. I will note as well that the writers of this 'reality bite' are careful enough to say that "individual" countries cannot weigh in - which suggests that the EU has sufficient weight to do so, and impose other rules to trade. what these rules are naturally open to debate, and trying to say otherwise is just a cheap way to try to preempt this debate. In particular, should environmental protection or worker rights be taken into account to determine if dumping (selling below cost) has taken place?

Return on equity. Trying to make the fact that corporations and capital are currently taking advantage of the sudden abundance of labor (thanks to Chinese and Indian labor forces rapidly joining the global markets), and the corresponding relative scarcity of capital into a permanent reality is, one could say, a nice try. Nothing in the current balance imposes that it remain so forever. Those holding capital today are in effect saying: eliminate all taxes, regulations and rules that bother me, and I may come to your country (but may leave at any time, so don't even think of changing the rules after I'm in). And yet, all statistics show that investments take place even in countries that do not follow these 'rules', in significant volumes. So capital can be pragmatic and will go to places that provide good opportunities. These do not come only from low taxes. Good infrastructure, educated workforces, predictable (rather than light) regulation - all paid by taxes - also do wonders. There is thus no reason to listen exclusively to this self-interested discourse. As to the requirement that Anglo-Saxon rules for accounting and governance (hint to Germany: get rid of these pesky supervisory boards where workers - gasp - are overrepresented. Hint to France: get rid of all these worker consultation mechanisms. Hint to all: please hire more London-based lawyers and accountants), it appears to be little moren than an advertisement for services.

Budget rules. While I am generally sympathetic to fiscal rectitude, I'll just point to the example of the USA in the past 6 years to say that this is complete and utter bullshit. If a country decides that it has overriding strategic imperatives to spend a lot of money, it will do so with abandon, and the sanction of the markets will take a while to hurt. With the euro, I expect that the same would apply, should we ever get a government as irresponsible as George Bush's.

Ageing. While ageing populations are real, I don't see why this cannot be dealt with by tinkering with the system occasionally, and taking advantage of regular productivity growth. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with spending a larger portion of national wealth on older people if there are a lot more of them, and countries will find various ways to organize intra-generational transfers on a collective or individual basis. Saying that more work is the only solution goes again with the mindset the perpetual growth of the economy is an absolute requirement, something deeply ingrained in our systems, but by no means compulsory. (more on this below)

Monetary policy. Again, I'm personally sympathetic to a hawkish monetary policy, but I don't see why it's not a legitimate topic of discussion. I'll agree that the current institutional framework deeply embeds the hawkish p.o.v. and changing it would require currently unlikely new treaties at the EU level, but, that said, that does not make it an illegitimate long term goal.

Another, unstated, assumption is , of course: abundant energy will be available at all times. That a column summarising the core economic debates of the day does not have a single word for energy and energy policy (nor for climate change and its consequences) is quite typical of the "common wisdom" and its general cluelessness.

Government for, and by, the corporations does not seem to have much of an ability to look at the long term (the theme of ageing populations is just a gambit by the insurance industry to put its hands now on pensions/social security money). Demand will continue to come from workers (even if they are paid less); infrastructure will continue to be built by the government (even if they should not spend any money to do so), and energy will come from all these pesky foreign countries when they finally get the light and let our good corporations invest there and extract their poorly exploited resources.

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The 3 debates flagged by the above article make a little bit more sense. The topic of work vs free time is a very real one (and part of the larger debate on economics vs other priorities) and it's good to see it mentioned as explicitly. The discussion on inequality is also legitimate, even as it mostly avoids two underlying fundamental truths:

• it is possible to fight inequality, as France does and shows, despite all that's said in "truths" 1 to 3 above. It requires heavy government intervention, something that again does not fit well in the above model.
• And it requires funds, another subject best avoided, as it brings the vexing issue of the rich whether to tax them (impossible!) or simply to note that they are capturing most of the wealth created by the economy nowadays. Because if this is acknowledged, the question of "why growth?" comes up again: if it all goes to a very small minority, why do we need it? And the debate comes back to "share with us or do without growth - we don't have any anyway"...

Basically, the current wisdom assumes that we are in a situation where there is an endless supply of cheap labor in China (allowing to blackmail European workers with and get them to give up all their "privileges", and to blackmail Western governments with and get them to give up their scandalous attempts to tax and regulate corporations), and an endless supply of energy to make the underlying requirement for permanent geometric growth possible. Energy is the most visible, but that model also assumes an endless supply of other 'commons' that can silently, freely and endlessly provide all our resource needs and absorb all our externalities - raw materials, water, food, and pollution, carbon emissions, etc...

Without even mentioning the geopolitical risks created by the past 5 years of Bush trashing the rest of the world to frighten its domestic population and loot its treasury, I am also surprised by the lack of mention of the global asset bubble we are in. Experience shows that banking crises are the single most damaging cause of recessions (or depressions) historically, and the splurge of the past years puts earlier bubbles to shame. Consumer price inflation, and wage inflation are currently non-existent thanks to the global deflationary impact of Chinese manufacturing, but asset inflation, despite being ignored by (most) central banks, is very real and absolutely unsustainable, and has led banks and financial markets to make increasingly ludicrous bets, many of which will fail in the not so distant future.

So, will it be energy shortages or price peaks? A financial crisis? Or a major environmental breakdown in China? but I bet that in 10 years' time, the 5 truths above will look faintly ridiculous, like the gospel of a new (and then past) gilded age.