Macron cut taxes on the rich — just as the Republicans in Washington did. He cut spending — just as the Republicans in Kansas did. He weakened the trade unions — just as the Republicans did. Then he increased fuel taxes just as the price of fuel was increasing due to “market” forces.
That last act of economic insanity is not something the Republicans would do. They are not as stupid as the French “socialist” party.
The French ruling class decided that the proper way to reduce greenhouse emissions was to increase taxes on the working poor and retirees in the countryside. They can reconsider the wisdom of this program as they fly off to their next international conference in their private jets.
So, people from the countryside and the smaller towns of France are in the streets protesting Macron’s neoliberal austerity program. What began as an outburst of anger about the gas taxes is rapidly morphing into a more general protest over inequality, austerity, and social class. Some people in the French ruling class have taken to calling the discontented workers the “sans dents.”
And now this:
www.theguardian.com/...
It was the most important TV appearance of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency: the 40-year-old former banker had to prove to an angry nation that he was not an arrogant “president of the rich” and that he understood ordinary French people’s struggle to make ends meet.
Yet Macron’s choice to deliver his prerecorded speech on social inequality from one of the most opulent and golden rooms in the luxurious, 365-room Élysée Palace was not lost on gilets jaunes protesters who have been occupying protest barricades on rural roundabouts.
(snip)
Macron chose to announce his measures aimed at calming the gilets jaunes protests by speaking from the traditional presidential office known as the salon doré, with its gold decorations.
The Salon Doré!
Fellow citizens, I speak to you about inequality from my gilded throne in the Presidential Lounge of Gold!
Jeebus! Where do they find these clowns? One of the slogans spray-painted on the Arc de Triomphe last week was “We have cut off people’s heads for less!”