I’m not sure if any politician can give the squeezed middle classes in Europe what they want. However, it is weird how centrist politicians, who seem to consider themselves the intellectual elite, are so incapable of gauging the mood of their electorates. It’s almost as if they’re completely out of touch and/or don’t care.
Centralists say the right things to please everyone. But it’s a hard tight rope to walk and end up pissing everyone off.
If you look at taxation in France, between $30,00 and $82,000 tax is 30%. In the U.S., $30,000 is 12% while $82,000 is 22 percent.
That’s the problem. However, the French also don’t want their pensions and other state benefits hit.
From what I read, they don’t feel like they’re getting the state benefits they should with that tax rate. Or that the state benefits are not allocated to everyone in way people like.
That will be the case. It’s the same everywhere - the middle classes subsidise everyone else. In developed countries be poor or rich, otherwise you’re the shit in the sandwich.
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I think the problem is that if you delegate many aspects of your life (education, retirement planning, all-in health care, more than half of your country’s GDP) to the government, the government tends to become too big and needs to be cut back. This usually happens, in cycles. France has missed a couple of corrective cycles because of the super cheap interest rates and now they need a much deeper cut than in the past.
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…And yet the yellow vests chief demands seems to be both less tax and MORE govt support.
Anyway its obvious Macron and Co completely misread the mood out there when they planned to increase the cost of living yet again. Poor political skills , they should have hammered the rich (or look like it) first instead of giving them massive tax breaks.
All this other stuff trying to make it out as a culture war or anti EU…Don’t buy it. A lot of the violence is perpetrated by the hard left and right abd also local hooligans too. Social media is full of fake news.
Looks like France is stuck between a rock and a hard place now. Can’t raise taxes and can’t slash costs.
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Well this is what some of the protesters are out there for. It’s gorwn bigger than the original protests and it seems a lot of people from everywhere is upset about something. It’s not just about one thing anymore for sure. And that’s going to put macron in a bad place. He’s let this problem fester inside while being obsessed with trump, global warming and other virtue signaling grand gestures, and now the European army he wants.
I don’t see how macron can get out of this.
The previous two presidents had the same problem. I don’t see what can be done.
56% is astonishing. Is that really true? The UK usually hovers around the 40% mark. God only knows what East Asians make of European government spending.
Probably true as early childcare and schools and colleges seem to be practically free (after taxes ), also healthcare. I remember reading before that public early childcare and kindergarten in France was the best in the world …Maybe except for Sweden or Finland. In Ireland or some other European countries you’d pay average 600 Euro a month for childcare. Before tax that could be 800-000 euro a month of your salary…
France isn’t the only country in the EU where 3rd level fees are low though.
It looks like there were no attempts to get it down after the credit crunch:
Macron’s in a very difficult position. The UK had to go through ten years of austerity (which resulted in the Brexit vote) to get back down to normal levels of government spending.
Click the “max” button on that site for the full picture of the “government spending as share of GDP” problem
Edit: France has always spent like crazy, but there were always corrections in the past, as can be seen above. The problem is, like @BiggusDickus said, that the last correction was too long ago.
Again: Not sure what will happen to France once the interest rates go up. If they go into recession, it will be bad for all of Europe.
This is the chart for Germany btw
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Wow! That looks insurmountable. The trouble is once the electorate becomes accustomed to that level of profligacy it’s very difficult to get it down. A tax rise on fuel has resulted in rioting.
Spoilt little buggers, the French.
They could do worse, I reckon, than have a series of high-profile televised debates on TV with lower level ministers and public servants (Chief of Police?). It’d be time well spent. Not featuring wingnuts, but people who are actually capable of rational debate. It’d give people a feeling of “direct democracy” and both sides would be able to discuss weak thinking of the other side without bashing each other over the head.
France needs to shrink the State, and the topic of debate might be “how do we do it?”.
I completely disagree with @Brianjones that you can’t have your cake and eat it. The underlying problem is that while a business must find ways and means to achieve stated goals, a government doesn’t even need to formulate its goals clearly. It just needs to have a half-baked idea and then raise taxes to fund it. It results in very sloppy thinking.
OTOH I think the whole of Europe has dug itself into a massive hole with its single-minded crusade to get women into work and keep them there (AKA “equality”). This has enabled the State to take over a massive chunk of stuff that used to be personal, and tax people accordingly. I’m not sure how you climb down on that without telling women, look, if you don’t want to pay for “free” childcare via your taxes, you’re going to have to stay home and look after the little bastards.
Problem there is that women genuinely believe that because they’ve got some bullshit job at Wernham Hogg, they have a “career”, and that makes them “equal”. You can’t tell them they’re actually chained to a radiator, because they won’t believe you. Welcome to 2018, where freedom equals bondage. And nobody even had to set up a Ministry of Truth to make it happen.
EU also creating Privitized corporate Armies similar to the Americans Blackwater and XE which was the 2nd largest Army in Iraq that hardly gets shown on News.
seriously? For what purpose? Any reliable info about this?
How does the French state 'look after its citizens ’
to the degree they desire without tax revenues ?
So currently some French aren’t happy. They want lower taxes…But then you’ll find they still want free healthcare and childcare etc.
So rock and a hard place as far as I can see because you can’t drop the govt 56% of GDP spending rapidly without impacting the general conomy and earnings…which would increase the demand on social servicea…and there’s little space to increase taxes either it seems.
Yes, it is a rock and a hard place. Hence the suggestion to throw some ideas around on the TV. There is faulty thinking on both sides. If this is brought out into the open, people might start thinking.
I don’t know precisely how the French welfare state works, but in any system there’s always some low-hanging fruit. Stuff that is very expensive but has little real benefit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1US5_h2PkU.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LaSD8oFBZE
Let me try to find more. I saw a good documentary once about G4 which is one of the worlds largest security firm from Europe. How big? Well my apartment complex in Neihu uses G4S security too, they also have their own Privatized soldiers numbers in tens of thousands used in overseas conflicts include Iraq. According to this video G4s is the Worlds 2nd largest employer with over a quarter million staff, second worldwide only to Wallmart.
My friend who served as an Infantry Captain Platoon leader in the US Armys 1st Infantry Division said that Blackwater was definitely the 2nd largest Army in Iraq and often fought along side or provided protection, ammo, support to US Soldiers. Also many military jobs have been outsourced to private Contractor Armies including Protection of Generals and Base defense. There are dozens of these companies operating worldwide.
G4S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpO1YAyfLgc. according to G4s own video they employ over 500,000 personnel worldwide
The problem now is if the state cuts back on stuff and makes a mistake or the optics are bad…The govt is screwed. Very little margin for error. Really don’t know where they go from here. Borrow more money until bankrupt ? I don’t think they are allowed to go into more than 3% deficit a year though.