It's true that the French are notoriously difficult to govern. The fiscal situation is certainly poor, and there is a lot of debt. I would say offhand that it's a pinch better than that of the US financial situation in a few ways. The two exceptions are that (a) the debt is not issued in a currency they control, so they can't inflate/debase it away and (b) tax at all levels of government is already fairly high as a percent of GDP. Fairly steady for 40 years at around 43%. The US is around 25-26%, so modest tax increases would fix things fairly quickly.

A cynic might overgeneralize that, from a very great distance, the financial bonus from the end of the cold war was reallocated to social benefits in Europe (which now can't be taken away even if the military budget needs to be reinstated), whereas in the US it was reallocated to rich people, largely through tax cuts (which now can't be taken away because they have a lot of power).

Jim