French Politics

…this is going to end up making France dangerously close to Frexit, right?

Instead of focusing on relatives that divide us, maybe we should try to find the absolutes that tie us.

I desperately hope not, but the fact that I've seen a lot of the "Gilets jaunes" ask for this has made me very suspicious toward them, even though I completely disagree with Macron's general politic and the way he handled this so far (wiz refusing to speak about it and letting the Prime Minister handle communication).

After spending some time on one of their Facebook pages, I'm beginning to see these "Gilets Jaunes" as a "Twitter revolution": people who would have been writing inflammatory comments have instead decided to to go out in the streets. Not my favourite kind of crowd, and possibly quite uncontrollable.

According to the Canard Enchaîné^note very well informed satiric newspaper, there was a note from the French police to the Presidency warning that this was going to last, and possibly gather strength as time went on. But Macron does not seem to have taken this seriously.

I'm finding myself worrying more and more about this. Revolutions are not an easy time to live in.

Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.

Well, they'd have to actually elect a eurosceptic for that to come anywhere close to happening, and IIRC both Melenchon and Le Pen have taken that off the table. Extremely unlikely despite there being a better case for France leaving than Britain.

Any kind of exit from the Eurozone has the potential to trigger a pretty massive economic shockwave, and although you could very much mitigate it with capital controls you do have to go around and physically change all of the money, which takes a lot more effort than breaking a currency peg. I imagine if it was actually done the parties involved would take lessons from the Velvet Divorce, that seemed to go relatively smoothly but faced a fraction of the problems a euro breakup would.

France can't really patch their economic troubles within the EU as it currently is for a number of reasons and they can't leave without massive capital flight, which they can't control because capital controls inside the Single Market were abolished with the SEA ages ago, which is what is causing a large portion of the problems. Wonderful catch-22, and I suspect after all the noise made during the Brexit negotiations about "not compromising the Four Freedoms" there will be little drive to reform, minuscule, inflexible and largely useless EU budget plans with added "conditionality" aside.

Edited by DeathorCake on Dec 4th 2018 at 9:57:02 AM

What, Le Pen has taken Frexit off the table?

Highly unlikely, it's one of the Single-Issue Wonk points the FN (or whatever it's called these days) runs on. Other than the politically incorrect race and immigration talking points, which only a vocal - but significant - minority gives a shit about.

But if she has - then French Politics has become even more insane than ever. You don't even need a Revolution to outcrazy this kind of madness.

I hold the secrets of the machine.

It isn't so much "taken off the table" than "let's not try to talk too overtly about it" because it's just not that popular among voters.

Unlike the British, French people are globally aware of the advantages of being in the EU, and how catastrophic leaving would be. Hence no political platform can hope to gain much traction by being openly for Frexit. (Boy, does that word sound dumb.)

He's suspending the tax? Well, probably for the best. His response to previous public outcry has been lackluster at best, silent or outright condescending at worst. According to the BBC, the movement has a wide branching of support, essentially cutting between politics, so not making any concessions and acting in a paternal, "I know best" way would probably be a very bad idea.

Its also leaderless, so

feels more like a conspiracy theory than anything.

The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer

Honestly, after the Brits finish burning their own country to the ground with Brexit, I doubt that anyone will use a EU exit policy as anything other than campaign promises they have no intention of keeping.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

What I've heard is that some extreme groups that advocated violence in the protests are now turning their attentions on anyone going moderate in the protests.

"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"

Le Penn tries to reshape the party into something which is electable for the mainstream - and guess what, the mainstream in France (and most EU countries) is clearly Pro-EU. So whatever she thinks, she won't openly run on it. Doesn't mean that she won't be a pain in the a... if she gets elected.

We should thank the Brits and the Americans...thanks to them, the EU is now more popular than ever. The Brits have demonstrated to everyone why it is so important and the Americans have shown that you can't trust anyone except your direct neighbour who is closely connected with you through nearly uncuttable business ties.

It would be more a of a revolt rather than a revolution, methinks. I have a pet theory that, right now, there are no conditions for a revolution in Europe or the US, because there is neither a deterioration of conditions (the way Marx said it), nor is there a substantial improvement of conditions and opportunities (the way Alexis de Tocqueville said it).

Edited by Quag15 on Dec 5th 2018 at 6:40:20 PM

And now Macron's backed down from the tax rise altogether. That's just great. What does this mean for the rest of the reforms he has planned? What reforms are still planned anyway?

To be fair, even Alain Madelin (who is by far the most outspoken defendor of neoliberal policies in our national political landscape) has said that the abolition of the Solidarity Tax on Wealth was both an economical and a political mistake on a historic scale that Macron should never have done ...

He has also said that seeing where the world is right now between new wave populism and BRE Xi T there is a neoliberal argument to be made in favour of renouncing the dogma of the 3% deficit ceiling to save the system from irreversible collapse ...

As a staunch neoliberal I admit that if even Alain Madelin says so, we can actually begin to panic for the defense of capitalism and democracy.

Liberty, equity, autonomy ! Proud neoliberal cuckservative whore ! Now for sale !

I'm impressed Alain Madelin could say things like that.

Yet I swear he did so, just today, on LCI with the economist Patrick Perri this afternoon ...

If we are at the point where Alain Madelin the supreme apostle of neoliberalism says that it is a sure sign that things have gone fuck-awry, man !

What terrifies me with this movement is that it is a polymorphic blob of all angers brewing for decades in which almost anyone can find something to eat and in this respect it is even more dangerous than BREXIT or Trump for capitalism and democracy.

Liberty, equity, autonomy ! Proud neoliberal cuckservative whore ! Now for sale !

I guess even ultra-right-wing crooks can see that abolishing ISF and then raising other taxes makes their "rob the poor to feed the rich" scheme too blatant...

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

Economic editorialists on BFMTV, yersteday, were asked about what should be done to squash the movement and they both said that something had to be given to the population to release at least part of the steam that's boiling inside the pressure-cooker.

The show host then said "Wow, that's weird coming from you ...", and one of the editorialists answered with a grave tone I have never seen from him : "When there is fire in the house you can't complain about the cost of water. Let's dampen the house enough first and we'll think of the cost later..."

I'm the first one who has predicted that the movement would fall silent the first Monday right after the first Saturday of protest on the 17th of November, which was why I didn't post anything in this topic at first but now I openly admit that I couldn't have been further away from reality. I have seen first hand folks from my own family and close friends who have been raised in a psychopathic level of self-discipline and moral responsibility going on strike for the very first day in their lives !

I don't know what's happening to this country, there are many things that coagulated around it and related events that seems ridiculous and irrelevant to me but I feel like the fundamental substrate of anger, however, is not going to melt any time soon and I can tell you that if something is not done to calm down the genuinely desperate ordinary folks I know personally, there is going to be either a revolution or worse - Mark my words ...

Edited by Nuup-Kangerlua on Dec 6th 2018 at 10:16:39 AM

Liberty, equity, autonomy ! Proud neoliberal cuckservative whore ! Now for sale !

So....Sixth Republic when?

I hold the secrets of the machine.

Sixth Republic never. We've all seen what Mélenchonisme (my person is holy !) really is and I for one would certainly not welcome him if he was to become my Overlord and if we go down that path it fuck sure won't get better.

Liberty, equity, autonomy ! Proud neoliberal cuckservative whore ! Now for sale !

What really frightens me about this movement is that it seem fuelled by any Internet rumour you can think of, including every kind of conspiracy theory. I mostly sympathise with their cause (Macron has done nothing since the beginning of his mandate to disprove his image of "president of the rich" and his steadfast refusal to give any kind of speech about the Gilets Jaunes sends a very scornful message), but browsing some of the Gilets Jaunes Facebook pages makes me feel as if I was reading a series of comments on an Internet page. I'm very concerned at the prospect of mobs of GIFT roaming the streets.

Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.

Well...France is doing really well this year in terms of economy. Isn't that what Macron promised? To give the French economy a kick in the butt?

But yeah, what worries me about the movement is that it is just driven by being "anti-macron", just like Germany has its "anti-Merkel" and Italy had its "Anti-Renzi" movement. There seems to be an effort to target EU leaders which are pro-European.

Problem is, a lot of people don't feel the effects of "doing well in terms of economy". But they "definitely see" the rich get richer and as far as I could notice, they don't seem to buy the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" bullshit.

Edited by Medinoc on Dec 7th 2018 at 12:06:54 PM

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

Didn't Macron cut taxes for Salary workers, too? "le baisse des cotisations" gave the average salary worker an extra €50 per month. Le taxe d'habitation (council tax more or less) has been cut this year by a third and will be abolished in a couple of years time...thats over €1000 per household in France.

Also, the tax cuts for the companies were, as far as I can tell, specifically tax costs for investments into the company. We are talking about investments which create jobs. Those are not necessarily the kind of "tax cuts for the rich" which translates into a nice new car or whatever, it's the kind of cuts which are supposed to target the economy.

The metric by which it's improved also matters. The US economy has technically been growing insofar as the stock market's been doing quite well, but the wealth disparity in the US has only gotten wider. If all you're doing is pouring money into institutions that already have more than enough to go around, that's great on paper, but it doesn't actually translate into any meaningful benefit for people who aren't already wealthy.

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

Well, France really needs to do something about its economy. Ideally in a way though that nobody gets left behind in the process.

I wonder...how are the unemployment numbers in France currently look like?