This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, May 9, 2012. I'm Caleb Brown.

Austerity may have lost at the French ballot box this weekend, but the reality is that it's yet to be tried.

The popular whipping boy for austerity opponents Ireland has actually dramatically increased

the burden of government.

So says Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

How should Francois Holland be interpreting his victory?

He should count himself as very lucky because he didn't win, Sarkozy lost.

Sarkozy made himself personally unpopular.

Sarkozy never followed through on his reforms other than a minor increase in the retirement

age from 60 to 62.

Sarkozy, like Obama, I mean, Holland, like Obama was lucky that he ran when

his opponent had to defend a weak economy.

So there's really no... his opponent had to defend a weak economy.

So there's really no pro-Holland

and there I think there's anti-Sarcosy.

A repeated refrain that comes out of this election in France

is the quote unquote failure of austerity. How do you interpret that claim?

France hasn't cut government spending at all. It hasn't even cut government spending relative to

inflation. It's raised taxes, which of course is what austerity

really means to Europeans, is let's tax people more and keep government at the

same bloated size. And Holon says, oh we can't't have austerity, we can have spending cuts.

Well, there haven't been any spending cuts, and now he's actually arguing that France should adopt a

...