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The Gilets Jaunes of France

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Scout, Dec 9, 2018.

  1. Scout

    Scout Well-Known Member

    Police Deploy Armored Vehicles, Tear Gas Against Paris Protesters; Hundreds Detained

    This is fascinating. A leader is standing up to what he believes is correct and the economic problems it is causing for many is expanding to economic problems for almost all.

    Will he step down or back down?

    Environmental vs economics

    Sorry if this is a DB, I didn’t see anything on the front news page for it.
     
  2. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    It's a little more complex than environmental vs. economics. The reaction to the fuel tax is linked to a strong negative reaction to Macron's cutting taxes on the wealthy (who are indeed taxed up the wazoo in France), France has a high level of government services, but overall wages are low and the cost of living not so low. Worth noting that yesterday in Paris there was a much larger demonstration for climate change policies. But it didn't generate the pictures that the gilets jaunesdid so it was kind of ignored.
    The violence associated with the gilets jaunes are from a smaller but not negligible group of persons dedicated to street violence for its own sake who are drawn to vamp off of any civic protest movement. The French have a word for these people (translates to "breakers") but I forget it.
    Underneath all of this are two basic facts of French life. The eternal tension between Paris and the provinces and the tension between the country's real pride in its revolutionary tradition and the fact that at bottom it's still a bourgeois society at heart.
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2018
  3. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

  4. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member


    Un casseur?

    French Strike Vocabulary • French Today

    Une opération escargot
    is my favorite.
     
  5. Scout

    Scout Well-Known Member

    Thanks for the replies.

    I honestly feel if we don’t address fossil fuels, in 300-400 years we won’t have a plantet that has billions of people on it, if any at all. Maybe a few million. Maybe a billion?
     
  6. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    The war will take care of that.
     
  7. Vombatus

    Vombatus Well-Known Member

    Down to one million might be a good thing, for the planet at least.

    One small step... not for mankind.
     
  8. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    This part is it in a nutshell. France just surpassed Denmark as the highest taxed country in the world. It had a wealth tax -- instituted in the early 80s. The country has swung between socialists and more traditional, "conservative" (which is a relative term there) politicians. The game is. ... the socialists come in with the economic scapegoating. The rich are everyone's problem, everyone deserves so and so. ... and they get elected on their promises. After several years of people's lives still sucking, and business conditions getting shittier under their policies, they will swing back toward a Chirac or a Sarkozy. Until they get blamed for favoring "the rich" over the workers and the socialists' BS gets them back in power.

    The socialists put in the wealth tax -- as in you are punished for succeeding and accumulating wealth. Chirac removed it. The socialists took back over, and put it back in under Mitterand. It stayed in place until Macron got rid of it. During the decade and a half before that, anyone with any amount of money fled France rather than having their wealth robbed of then. It has taken a huge a toll on the economy, because with it went billions of dollars of investment. At the same time, the onerous work rules put on businesses, the excessive regulation of everything, and endless entitlements and government benefits, have had so many bad effects. It stifles any entrepreneurial impulse anyone might have, and discourages a lot of people from even working. It has created a huge public debt load, which has become a huge problem.

    Macron walked right into it. He has tried to be somewhat honest (as much as a politician is going to be) with people about how they have really hamstrung the country, and he did away with the wealth tax. People don't want to face reality, though, and his approval ratings might be negative. This is one of the many problems with socialist fantasy. They were able to promise a nanny state to everyone for a few decades, putting off most of the cost via monetized debt accumulation. Because they went so batty with the socialist policies, the taxes there became really onerous, too. Beyond what even an American can comprehend. And it's not just "wealthy" people. What qualifies there as wealthy is shockingly little -- if you own anything, everyone else has a claim on what you have earned. It has left anyone there trying to work hard, earn and save pissed off at the freeloading society they are a part of. And now that the freeloading is becoming impossible, and someone is telling the masses things have to change, they are revolting. So basically, it is just a giant country of pissed off people. But they really only have themselves to blame for it.
     
  9. tapintoamerica

    tapintoamerica Well-Known Member

    I think it's a little too soon for people to be protesting the new football coach of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Give the guy a chance.
     
    Twirling Time and garrow like this.
  10. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    Liberte, Egalite, Fraternitie. The egalitarian spirit of French society at large is far stronger than it is in the United States and a French pol goes against it at his or her peril. BTW, a French TV network did a poll. A little over 40 percent of the gilets jaunes surveyed voted for Marine LePen in the first round of last year's election. A little more than 20 percent voted for Melenchon, the doctrinaire Marxist candidate. Five percent voted for Macron. Granted that surveying such an amorphous and inchoate movement must have a very large margin of error, the poll does suggest these aren't people Macron alienated in office. They already were.
     
  11. Twirling Time

    Twirling Time Well-Known Member

    This sounds like the beginnings of the Tea Party movement here. At first it was a mishmash of people that only tilted right overall, but then the crazies took over.
     
  12. cjericho

    cjericho Well-Known Member

    Yeah totally the same. Ukraine votes overwhelmingly for independence from Mother Russia (those filthy dogs why would
    they want to leave Mother Russia). Despite the people voting for independence, the Russian backed candidate wins the
    election.
     
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