That’s why Italy is currently also interesting. They say screw the 3% rule, we make a big deficit and give everybody lots of money. If the EU lets it happen, France will try and go the same route in the future.
Why everything has to relate back to the US?
The situation in France and the US seems very different. Maybe some populism involved , that’s about it.
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There are a lot US citizens, it’s hard for most of us to relate to austrian memes.
It’s not a meme related to the situation in France to US political climate. It’s a meme about the media going off on US using tear gas on the border but not doing the same for protesters in France.
I hate to use the r word, but perhaps a referendum is the only solution. Very simple question:
Do you want lower taxes or better public services and state benefits?
France is in europe, so you’d need to use some “”“syrian refugee’”" in order to make the media care about the photo.
I was suggesting a debate because it really isn’t as simple as that. While people do need to understand that public services are at least loosely linked to taxation, there needs to be some public input on exactly how to cut costs, what services can be (productively) deleted, and how things need to change. There are a lot of clever people in mid-level management positions who would undoubtedly have some productive ideas based on experience (as opposed to random brainfarts produced during interminable meetings).
I think there also needs to be some debate about exactly what a “public service” is. If generous social support results in under-employment and social discontent, how is it even a “service” at all? When I (briefly) lived in France in the early 90s, my gf had a few friends who were professional layabouts. Most of them were perfectly capable of working; they just didn’t want to. At the time, France provided subsidized housing and something similar to food coupons, which meant that if you didn’t want to work, life was pretty straightforward. No idea if it’s the same, better, or worse today. British council estates were much the same in the early 80s. There are, I’m certain, sensible ways to provide low-cost, high-impact safety nets in the case of misfortune. Governments just seem singularly incapable of figuring out what they are.
Anyway: adding more taxes does not necessarily improve public services, as Communist countries (inadvertently) proved to most people’s satisfaction.
It’s difficult to gauge relative taxes between nations, but France is generally seen as second highest in the EU after Belgium.
I don’t know, I just feel that a consensus by the French electorate about which direction they want to go would help legitimise government policy. A referendum would obviously generate the debate you suggest and maybe focus minds.
At this point the yellow vest argument seems to be: taxes are too high, public services are crap, benefits are insufficient, and the cost of living is too high.
There’s one more solution:
Just transfer all the power to the Eu! It’s for the greater good!
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hahahahahahaha. What a knob.
He doesn’t seem to have realised that he’s just made an argument for not transferring power to people like him, simply by being Guy Verhofstadt.
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Well, apart from the “benefits are insufficient” bit, their observations are correct. I’m just not convinced you could boil that down to a sensible either/or referendum question.
No referendums, its too complex, unless they are very specific questions . A series of public debates isn’t a bad idea. Here’s the spending, here’s the tax receipt now tell us how it will work.
If Macron is smart he should come on TV and aplogise before being out of touch and announce that everybody will have a free bottle of wine and block of cheese for Xmas.
No, you couldn’t. Which is the flaw in any referendum.
I’d disagree that public services are crap. Every time I’ve been to France I’ve been quite impressed.
That would be a very good start indeed.
Of course, it wouldn’t exactly be “free”, but I guess nobody would notice 
Come to think of it, it would be pretty funny if he announced “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” and then handed out free patisserie.
Yes French public services can be really good. Was in Bordeaux a while back , they had free supervised activities for kids at the local lakeside. It was pretty awesome to be honest. They had three lifeguards for a small strip of beach. Absolutely no litter. Clean. Made Taiwan look really third world.
Also French towns and villages and roads seem pretty well looked after in general.
Taking a train from London to Paris is always an eye opener.
I took the TGV trains a few times as well, mostly good except one broke down for 4 hours ! Tickets were reasonably priced.
Not sure if I agree with the entirety of this, especially on public services and benefits. They agree that taxes are too high and the costs of living are too high.
That being said, the naivety of the French in their purest form, is that they trust the State a hell of a lot more than the private sector or a liberalised (in the Anglo sense of the word) state. It is why Macron infuriates them. He is dismantling parts of it (and why the protests will not stop just because of a few, minor capitulations) but without making the labour market truly flexible (and thus allowing for Anglo style meritocracy where it is relatively easy to hire and fire, which also means talent can truly shop for the best job!). It is still really expensive to hire even non-skilled workers in France. It is often said that Thatcher opened up city finance jobs to non-posh backgrounds, but Macron`s liberalisations are only benefiting his banker friends.
While I would agree that the 28 percent tax (that gets deducted from pay and covers health, unemployment, child care, child allowance etc.) is high, people from all sides of the political spectrum are fairly content with it. I mean, you can go on welfare and get half of your wage for almost two years (without that much bureaucracy compared with US or UK). If you are unemployed you get rail passes, etc, discounts across the board, etc. But Macron, is slowly removing these life-long benefits (and going after state benefits for rail workers etc.).
I see these protestors as being protesters against economic liberalization and systemic corruption (the latter of which has nothing to do with liberalisation, the opposite in fact, but has been a part of the dirigiste French educational and state for a very long time). They want to protect public services or reform them slightly to make them more accountable, lower taxes without harming the system (France`s whole government needs a Lean Six-Sigma exercise and cost cutting could be done without lowering benefits), ensure the status quo on benefits (or slightly strengthen them), and stop liberalisation (or adherence to Green initiatives) if it means a rise in costs (such as for diesel). They want reform of the education and hiring system, which is not meritocratic in the true sense of the word (very Latin here). There is a real Paris-countryside divide here. What infuriates the peasants more than anything, is Paris elites complaining they can not get by on 60K a year, when most in the countryside make no more than 20K.
Not all of these complaints are completed aligned or even logical. That is rural French populism for you. Remnants of Poujadism and very interesting to watch. But those who see Macron as arrogant, especially in taking the mantle of liberal internationalism (with Merkel and Trudeau) can not help but snicker at his low ratings and troubles on the home front.
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Admittedly I haven’t used Eurostar for a few years, but it always used to be snail-paced down to Ashford, then shit off a shovel after you exited the chunnel.
Macron having these huge problems on the home front, Merkel on her way out, and Trudeau having major pipeline problems. So much for the global internationalists! 
Contrast this with Italy, Hungary, Poland, Andalucía, etc.