The French pay the most taxes as percentage of GDP of all countries in the OECD. Macron behaved like a royal prince as if with 23% of the vote he had a clear mandate. I disagree with the author whom I believe is confusing the straws which broke the camel's back with the deep nature of who the Yellow Vests are. If the right leader comes out of this, there could be a very strong 'populist' wave.
Macron began by attacking the little guy rather than really doing away with the privileges of civil servants, hitting the wealth of the 1% and doing a serious job of fighting fiscal fraud estimated at 80 Euros Billion a year. His government is arrogant and insulting to the little guy. His MPs are amatures who allow him to rule by decree with no debate.
France needs a new Constitution which introduces proportional voting. Macron has an overwhelming majority in parliament with only 24% of the first round vote. France's biggest party, the RN, has 11 MPs only out of 577.
For those interested, I have written on this at my blog kazodaily in an article called France's 'Depolrables' Explained.
16
The Yellow West movement in France is a totally different movement with no parallel in modern political history.
It is not a right or left divide, nor socialism vesrsus capitalism, neither nationalism pitted against patriotism. It is a grassroot people movement emerging against neo-liberal economic barbarism imposed in the name of globalisation and privatisation.It is a common man awakening to combat ever widening inequality.
This is a struggle between 'haves-not' and 'haves' and can be traced back to evils of neo-liberalism so eloquently narrated by Karl Marx ,150 years ago ,in his doctrine ' dialectical materialism'.
Above all, Yellow West movement is the French genius and French uniqueness to response to a global crisis of the 21 st century engulfing the working class in each and every liberal democracy.
The USA response was rise of Donald Trump,a retrogressive step, the British responded in ' Brexit', Italy response has been an ultra' conservative' Salivini. Likewise, Hungary Viktor Orban rise , bordering fascism,and in Germany failure of Merkel gave rise to Neo -Nazi AFD.
In India rise of Modi taking neoliberal barbarism of previous Indian dispensation to communal, misogynistic decadence.
Thus, one finds each of the above response taking a negative tone.
In contrast French project a positive trajectory against failure of institutions, political parties and labor unions.
The Yellow West movement is a French version of Gandhi ' Satyagrah'. No violence please.
21
Macron can be rather snotty and elitist but he is overhauling a system that is unsustainable and was maybe a lovely idea of lofty ideals in the past century. Today France has extremely high taxes and uber generous social benefits comparable to those of Denmark but does not enjoy the same standard of living, solid infrastructure and social cohesion. It's a mess. The increased tax on diesel, another percentage point of monthly income going into the communal pot, is certainly painful but normal for France as free health care for everyone isn't well...free. It's just sad that the rallying point here is somewhat misguided: one's right to cheaper diesel, this most poisonous of consumables.
9
I can't help but think of Lincoln; "...government of the people, by the people, for the people...". Everywhere, certainly here in the US, this simple dictum has been confounded. The people are NOT represented by they Parties that claim to represent them. The societies that our grandparents built, and their grandparents before them, fall apart ( aided and abetted by those same Parties), the upper classes pick up the pieces and everyone else pays the price.
And, amazingly, the elites, who claim to be our rightful leaders, pretend to have no comprehension of what it is that everyone is so upset about.
Yikes!
20
It would have been useful to compare french numbers to other developed countries. This would show that in most criteria presented as grievances here (income distribution, poverty etc..) France does rather well.
Where France does poorly is in structural unemployment, economic literacy and hugely overblown government expectations and deceitful protections that turn against those they are supposed to help.
This has led to stasis (people terrorized in loosing their jobs because noone is hiring), permanent malaise and burgeoning of all kinds of alternative extreme ideologies (far right, far left and islamism).
The question and debate about what's the right balance between government action and private sphere has never been put on the table in an unpassioned way.
As long as that doesn't happen a majority of French people will feel only defiance towards government and authority.
17
The West is imploding, and it was entirely predictable.
Neoliberal economics, Globalization, MBAs, Management Consultants, Corporate Capitalism, maximizing shareholder value while also maximizing how much could be extracted from other stakeholders like employees and communities, and a technological revolution in Silicon Valley that is only just beginning and is about to go exponential all, in the aggregate, have bludgeoned the middle classes across the developed world.
We have barely even begun to reckon with the consequences of decades of reckless greed.
53
The French, like Americans, are fed up with high taxes! Ridiculous carbon taxes were voted down every time in the November elections yet the unhinged left still wants to impose confiscatory carbon taxes on an unwanting America.
6
@Larry Not quite. California voters rejected a gas tax repeal. Not everyone is indifferent to the future of the planet and the need to discourage fossil fuel consumption.
22
@Larry
This is what happens when taxes are lower for an income earned from stock investments at 15%, than for a worker earning 50k a year at 30%. The lower tax rate has increased shareholder demand, forcing high international competition to continue to drive efficiency and keep wages low. High sales tax? Yeah I hear you there. High property tax? Depends on the state you live, or county. High income tax?
Have you read analysis of the current tax bill that in some cases allows for a family earning over a million combined in small business and personal income to claim a tax credit?
When the current president of the U.S. introduced a tax holiday to repatriate the wealth that has been stashed offshore, with the excuse it would stimulate wage growth. It gave companies a holiday to buy back their stock - As the president continues to play roulette with the tariff tactics, causing revenues to slump to weather the shareholder freakout as dividends are cut on weak earning reports.
So when you say higher taxes. Just be precise about what taxes you mean.
27
@John Armstrong. The worker earning 50k you described already pays nothing in income taxes. The top 50% of income earners pay 95% of all income taxes. The top 1% earn 20% of all income earned but pay 40% of income taxes collected. President Trump’s brilliant tax cut went to people who actually pay taxes. Your entire premise is based on a lie. The bottom line is that the French don’t like cruel gas taxes any more than Americans do. Pay attention, leftists!
3
French "riots" have almost always been economic class riots.
The bread riots of the 18th century, long before 1789, were carried out by a huge class that simply could not afford to buy bread, a basic staple.
The realization of economic inequality is part of their ethos.
Perhaps this is why Thomas Piketty is so eloquent.
21
The conflict between the "urban elite" and the rest of the population seems to fuel both the left and the right. Seems like a circle. Both start at the same place (frustration) and eventually meet in a dictatorship of some sort. The left progresses from Socialism to Communism to Nationalism to Dictatorship: the right from Democracy to Single Party Rule to Nationalism to Dictatorship. Both sides look for a savior. It seems the instigating factor here is the larger population wants to maintain its present standard of living while the "elite" want lower others (not they're) living standards to pursue the goal of "Climate Change" regulation. A world wide approach to regulating everyone. Was a tough sell in Britain and is now a tough sell in France.
8
@Eddie Your "urban elites" are a myth, and they're just a convenient scapegoat for everyone, left to right. No one has to really define who they are, so everyone can make them think whatever suits their argument.
Ask people living in cities, whether they are rich (economic elite), educated (intellectual elite), elected officials (political elite) or whatever else, and chances are you'll realize they care no more no less about other people than the "little guy", the "larger population", the "white working class man" or whoever you want to oppose them.
11
" hatred of the “winners” in the global system..."
Yes - this is a revenge of the luddites. Macron is the best president the French have had in decades and is doing all the right things. Deregulation, removing privileges from protected professions, relaxing hiring & firing, protection of the environment. Inevitably, this roils those who want to maintain the status quo.
13
@Kai "Hatred" was the one word in Adam Nossiter's otherwise thoughful and documented analysis that troubled me. Talk to the gilets jaunes outside of Paris and you'll not hear them speak of hatred. Their "status quo," as you call it, is what others might call survival: having money for groceries at the end of the month, paying the electricity. It "roils" them? No, they simply want to live decently.
11
If all the problems of the world are caused by "income inequality," then North Korea would be the happiest, and most prosperous nation on the planet.
The real problem, throughout the world is...frustration. Frustration caused by over-promising, by both left-wingers who promise that taking from someone else, and thus making Them suffer, will somehow alleviate Your suffering, and by right-wingers who promise that tearing up at the sight of the national flag and shaking our fists at non-friendly countries will make you forgot about poor insurance coverage and a warming planet.
The answer? There is none. Life isn't fair - Deal With It!
12
The inconvenient truth is that every single French president since 1974 (Giscard d'Estaing) has approved the Public Budget under his watch to be at loss, EVERY SINGLE YEAR FOR 44 YEARS.
Every year, public spending exceeded public revenues, generating a cumulative debt of €2,300 billions today, that's 99% of current GDP !, to be paid by future generations.
And the French people let them do it, enjoying the benefits (free education, healthcare, earlier retirement at 60, lifetime employment for public servants etc.) while transferring the burden to the next generation.
It's like you, as a parent, borrowed more money every year to improve your lifestyle (new car, more holidays, bigger house/swimming-pool/TV), never paying it back, and told the banker "Don't worry, my kids and grand-kids will pay you back".
In comparison, a country like Sweden, often mocked as "the socialist welfare state", has been a lot more responsible with its citizens' taxes: more than half of the last 44 years public budgets were positive (thanks to a major reform in mid-90's), thus today its public debt is below 40% of its GDP.
As some French say "Hé la Grèce, on arrive !" (Hi Greece, we're coming to join you !)
20
@EricPB
I guess Japan, Singapore, Belgium and the US' future generations must have an even heavier financial burden coming for them if we look at these statistics https://www.statista.com/statistics/268177/countries-with-the-highest-public-debt/ . 2017 public debts in relation to GDP
And this link to take a look at the EU debts in beginning of 2018. (France is definitely in the top 5, but if you look at the previous link, it didn't even make it to the 2017 world rankings and is behind some of the world's biggest economies in terms of public debt/GDP. Last I heard of, Americans are not "enjoying the benefits (free education, healthcare, earlier retirement at 60, lifetime employment for public servants etc.)" yet have a public debt that is 105+% of the US' GDP.)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/269684/national-debt-in-eu-countries-in-relation-to-gross-domestic-product-gdp/
13
@VM you write "Americans are not enjoying the benefits: free education, healthcare, earlier retirement at 60, lifetime employment for public servants etc. yet have a public debt that is 105+% of the US' GDP." The difference is that France has spent its deficit budgets precisely on these public service while the USA has spent them on its military and empire.
25
"The uprising is instead mostly organic, spontaneous and self-determined. It is mostly about economic class. It is about the inability to pay the bills." WOW! Sounds exactly like the media's take on Trumpism, which has actually turned out to be about Russian bots and their easy friendships with Facebook and other social media enterprises.
I don't know what's going on in France, but I know NYT.
5
From Thomas Piketty's blog post Trump, Macron: same fight 12/12/17:
"Secondly, the refusal to tackle inequalities complicates considerably the challenge of addressing climate change. As Lucas Chancel has clearly demonstrated (Insoutenables inégalités, Les petits matins, Paris, 2017) the considerable adjustment in lifestyles to deal with global warming will only be acceptable if a fair distribution of the effort is guaranteed.
If the richest continue to pollute the planet with their SUVs and their yachts registered in Malta (tax-free, including no VAT, as the Paradise Papers has just revealed), then why should the poor accept the rise in the carbon tax, which is likely to be inevitable ?"
Seems a fair question to me.
http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2017/12/12/trump-macron-same-fight/
19
If things will just settle down and go back normal, that is the best path.
In the U.S. an unemployed person blames his or her self.
In France, people never find any flaw in their own actions. They are always looking to figure out who is to blame for their lousy situation.
12
Concerning what is said in this article, it can be considered an accurate assessment. But what is not mentioned, not referred to at all, is just as important: the role of the "casseurs" - "breakers" or "destroyers." This movement without a leader, without a declared ideology or political position, has played an important role in civic unrest in recent years. Composed, it would seem, of extreme-Right, extreme-Left, anarchist, royalist, and who-knows-what-other tendencies, it focuses on violence, chaos, destruction, annihilation. These are the demonstrators clothed all in black, faces covered, sometimes wearing body armor similar to the CRS (Riot Police), who have wrought extrme violence in Paris demonstrations over the past few years. Example? Attacking parked police cars, rocking or overturning them with cops inside, and setting them afire. Who are they? Where do they come from? Why are none arrested? How do they move around with weapons undetected? There are even paranoid theories as to their identity and real purpose. Any press analysis of the Yellow Vests must also examine the "Casseurs," who have been active for a year of more.
25
When Macron ran, he promised to modernize French labor laws to make them more business-friendly, but he also said that he believed the state had to ensure that the most vulnerable were not harmed by these changes. The stories of people with full-time jobs who can't make their wages last a full month make it clear that he's lost sight of that second promise. He needs to reverse the income tax cut on the wealthy and use taxes on luxuries or tourists to create more revenue and use that in ways that will help the average working-class French family.
82
@Jon This is a caricature and is just not true: minimum wage is quite high in France, and gets you healthcare and a pension to boot. People struggling when working on minimum wage either live in high cost of living areas (Paris), live far from their work and commute by car, are working part-time only, or are trying to provide for a full family on a single wage (obviously not mentioning here people who are just bad with money…).
While there is a lot more to be done on the cost of housing front (which would also allow people to not go living in faraway cities just to be able to afford something decent to live in, saving on gas and making them more employable), hoping that the government can make these problems disappear by taxing the rich more is just crazy. These two issues have not much to do with each other.
11
I don't mean to minimize the incredibly important, perhaps universal issues at play here, but I can't help noticing how wearing a uniform (yellow vest) seems to create a more visible unity of purpose than you normally see in protests. If this happened spontaneously, the politicians better take notice.
I hope the 1%ers of the world see these protests as the writing on the wall, and become motivated to ameliorate income disparity. What I envision, though, is Macron as a latter day Marie Antoinette saying, "They can't afford petrol, let them drive Teslas."
79
@michaeltide The yellow vest is a genius idea. Every French person has to have one in their cars, it's the law. No need to buy one, no risk of shortage! The yellow vest alone would stop me from discarding the movement as being devoid of some collective intelligence, however disappointing their spokespersons may be.
15
@Marie, I am actually encouraged by less-than-articulate spokespersons. It persuades me that this is truly a grassroots movement. I would have been similarly encouraged by the occupy movement if they had been less inchoate about what they actually were asking for.
8
@michaeltide they are protesting high gas taxes enacted to save us from globull warming. I hope the democrats see these protests as writing on the wall
4
This movement has no spokesperson, no leader, and therefore no message. The only thing these people have to say is “we are not happy and we want more”. There is nothing to analyze about it, because everyone comes with their own reasons. These reasons are very different from the suburbs to the rural areas, but also urban city centers (in Paris but also other French metropoles), all of which bring demonstrators. Whatever the government does, people will always want more (which is normal), and you will always have demonstrators to say “well that’s not what I wanted”, so what is the point?
It is a very sad aspect of France, where people protest just because they want more, but without having to deal with the practicalities of governing a country. When you actually defend (or oppose) a law, you have to deal with all the consequences: less tax means more deficit or less public services. Higher wages mean less competitivity and less incentive to invest. Taxing fuels means positive environmental (and economic) outcomes.
Another sad aspect of France is that people seem to accept that demonstrations are not about expressing a message anymore, but breaking things (literally or not: blocking roads, refineries and warehouses are about hurting the economy) to arm-twist the (democratically-elected) government into submission. A terrible way of doing things.
12
@Bob Robert It looks tome that they are fighthing against the neoliberalism; something similar to the BREXIT and Trump way of seing the nation first.The world economy was great for the capital but a nightmare for the workers.I hope it will remains in the political field because it may become violent fast...
3
@yves rochette “It looks tome that they are fighthing against the neoliberalism”. No: that is just in YOUR head, that is the meaning that YOU are giving to their action. They have no common message, and no leader or spokesperson to whom we could actually ask “What are you fighting against in the end?”.
There might be a lot of reasons for French people to be angry, but these demonstrations are expressing nothing else than simple anger. If they are not bothering giving any meaning to their protest, I don’t think journalists, politicians or you and me should bother finding it. This is a pointless exercise.
3
@Bob Robert
If you are that concerned with deficit, you don't start with suppressing the "wealth tax" (ISF) for the top 1%. (= 3 billion EUR yearly) In case you havent heard, our motto is Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Not Hail to the racist/sexist/uncouth "self-made" Thief who inherited $400 million from Daddy... Another sad aspect of France ? They don't believe in fairy tales like Americans ;-)
7
this is the invisible hand of the market at work. just like occupy wall street. i wonder how long it will be until the french government ends it.
1
@Ashley The French government should not treat it lightly...Louis XVI had loss his head following such a way!
3
Neoliberalism is failing, like everyone with a brain and a functioning knowledge of economics said it would. It will be replaced by fascism or socialism. I know which side I'm on, where will you stand?
17
@Angry Neoliberalism in France? Really? And the only alternatives are socialism or fascism? I mean: you don't define any of these (incredibly vague) words, so you can indeed claim anything...
5
@Angry neoliberalism will be replaced by socialism or common sense
@Bob Robert An investment banker turned President who in less than 18 months managed to leave behind him a trail of enraged citizens and turmoil unlike anything we have seen in the past 50 years. That's the French definition of Neo Liberalism.
4
C’est magnifique! The French invented human rights and democracy, and now they are leading the way again. Bon courage mes amis, et merci beaucoup!!
27
@Ari G No message, no proposition, no organization, and visibly no security. How is that leading the way?
9
"Too little, too late: That was the reaction of the so-called Yellow Vest protesters to the French government’s sudden retreat this week on a gas tax increase."
Well, since that's not a retreat from an increase in the DIESEL tax the continuing anger at the government is to be expected.
Many, more than half, of normal passenger cars in France use DIESEL, not gas[oline] (petrol).
4
@Yaj Except that if people demonstrate just because they are not happy in general, even scrapping the diesel tax increase would make no difference.
You are talking as if there were actual demands behind the demonstrations.
4
The Yellow Vest movement, at such an early stage and only a few weeks into the protests yet remain an amorphous movement.
To this day, no real nor charismatic leader(s) worth speaking of. In the meantime, following rallying calls spreading out via word of mouth and/or social media outlets cells form up all over the map then vanish out of thin air, which leaves little playroom for the government in its effort to monitor and anticipate its spreading.
Insofar, it's a grassroots uprising aka "jacquerie" thus shares traits with Occupy Wall-Street, however, runs against the stigmatizing and oversimplistic view drummed up by the French Press for it extends far beyond mere flash mob outbursts essentially composed of leftist and rightist ultras. Such reductionist picture fails to conjure up the wider spectrum and richer mosaic of political leanings at play here thus actually coloring the ranks of the mass rebellion.
5
@jeanfrancois That's because only the far-leftists and the rightist ultras have a real endgame here. Without any message or objective in the demonstrations, there is no point but wrecking havoc.
1
@Bob Robert Bob, I think that the message they are sending is unequivocally clear. They are rising against widening social inequalities and shrinking living standards. Their resentment towards Macron specifically (who has repeatedly shown his disdain for the French working class: "You need a job? Why don't you just cross the street?") is fueled by a profound sense of injustice and disappointment: More taxes for the retirees/middle-class, while alleviating the tax burden for the top 1%. As explained by Piketty, Macron's fiscal policy has proven to be more conservative than that of Sarkozy. For what? Eroding infrastructures, deteriorating public service, dwindling purchasing power, etc. Unlike many popular uprisings we have witnessed in Europe, the Yellow Vests haven't fallen into the trap of blind nationalism. We are yet to see what the next stage of this movement will look like and how the French government will contain it.
6
Yes - this one is different. A very flawed phrase used to describe almost any crisis, proven wrong many times in the past, but is right once in a while (maybe by chance). But I think this one is different.
In the past, the struggle between labor and management/owner classes was about who gets what share of the economic pie that they cooperated in producing. This took place in societies where demand for labor roughly balanced out with the supply of labor to produce output within the confines of the polity.
But this time around - because of technology and globalization - management/owners don't need the local labor (and with robotics - any labor) to produce whatever it is they are producing. The worker/consumers now only have economic value as consumers; they are being squeezed dry. Within the polity, the need for labor to produce output is badly misaligned with the labor pool - in numbers and training.
This is a societal problem: individual firm responding the marketplace pressures will not be able to solve this one.
This is unprecedented (i.e. "this time it's different") and we do not have a methodology to deal with this situation. Nor do we have a functioning political class to take one this on.
Good luck to us all!
17
@zhen
Yes, there is no mechanism in place to deal with the inability to pay bills; the only idea that would seem to work is guaranteed universal basic income as there will not be enough work available to support a society. People will still need food, clothing, shelter, medicine - the basics - and they will have every right to riot in order to get them. It is a biological imperative, and the sooner the rich realize this, the better they will be able to sleep at night. None of the upper class has any idea what it is like to go without the necessities; it is simply inconceivable to them, and they think that there are no consequences to the inequality that has developed, but the current state of affairs is only a foretaste of what will happen soon if the situation is not addressed - and it will not be hard to find addresses of the wealthy and make them the targets of reprisals. Such has always been the course of history when the population is told to "eat cake" when there is no bread.
26
@doctorart
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I don't know what the answer is - maybe UBI, maybe something else. Exploding (or imploding) France is a welfare state (30% of GDP goes into social services); but maybe the French are just mismanaging a good idea and it can be done better. Don' t know.
My bigger issue is that our societies are moving toward a crisis point and we lack political leadership to identify a solution before we get there. In effect, we are leaving fates of our societies to chance. Once we are in a crisis, some new equilibrium solution will emerge - the problem is that we can stabilize in a very ugly situation. Or not and it will all work out. But it will be a matter of circumstance and chance, not of strategy and intent. And that scares me. A lot.
7
This is not a single policy issue and the root is not limited to the gas tax as the media has been putting forth out there. This is classical economic class warfare.
The politicians, bought by the Bourgeoisie, are pushing their agenda to down the throats of the proletariats. The Proletariats, they say, have had it enough with this political economy. Thus, they are waging to the streets.
You can go ahead and repeal the gas tax but let's not kid our selves. you don't heal a deep wound with a band-aid.
19
@John
Yup. The mainstream media can't bring itself to just write a headline that says "regular people revolt against the kinds of people this newspaper praises at every turn."
12
Our ability to respond like this to articles in the Times is a result of the same technology that enables corporations to put production wherever it is cheapest, to replace workers with robots, to allow management to be wherever it likes. So in once generally prosperous countries, unions become ineffective, people without expensive educations have few and demeaning job options, and only those who can afford to cluster in financially thriving cities can see bright futures for their families. We have all per force bought into the wonders of digital technology, but we are now facing its very serious downside. My own recommendation would be to encourage localities to build communities that are roughly self-sufficient: as much as can be, these communities would grow their own food, work for their own neighbors, and create their own commodities. Let community replace profit; let corporate capitalism fade away.
31
@Milton fan
Full agreement with this view. The local economy movement is slowly growing in France, by the way.
11
Thank you for highlighting the difference between the more common populists of Europe and the yellow vests. Their anger may have some of the same roots but their answers to the challenge of globalism and unfettered capitalism are diametrically opposed.
16
@Elizabeth Frost But they have no answers! If you don’t have spokespersons or leaders, you don’t have a message. All you are expressing is your anger, but every single demonstrator will have a different reason to be angry, different solutions to propose, different laws they want to repel… Without even something as simple as anger about fuel costs in common, how can you say that this is about capitalism and globalism?
These demonstrations are completely pointless. Do you really think that the government is unaware of any of the issues that these people are talking about? And if you think they just don’t care you just don’t understand how governments work.
9
Very good article. The Yellow Vests is a spontaneous movement without centralized leadership. It has similarities with movements in Italy and the US, but very important differences, too. In France the movement is nation-wide and involves various sectors of the population. Also, in France, the central carrier of Western democracy, has for long accepted as normal within a democracy the open expressions of protest, which, in the US, particularly, rarely occurs. Protest marches are frequent and integral components of democracy for sectors that do not find expression in the established parties. In France, England, Italy, the US, there is the feeling and fear that their civilization is in decline, unable to solve its problems and watching helpless the decline of its institutions that carry with it the destruction of the global environment.
10
A very revealing article by Adam Nossiter. If the Yellow Vests do not ally themselves with any party (we should call it a "political solution") then they advocate anarchy:
"The Yellow Vests push politicians away and reject Socialists, the far right, President Emmanuel Macron’s political movement, and everybody else in between."
The language that they use is revealing:
“'Right now, give us more purchasing power,' Jean-François Barnaba, a Yellow Vest spokesman in the Indre administrative department, told BFM TV on Tuesday."
It's the implied subject of his demand, the "You" of the verb "give". The subject's vague nature (presumably it refers to "government") leads to chaos. It implies that the Yellow Jackets are alienated from a governmental process from which they want support for their demands. The Yellow Jackets do not understand that they must become government to get their demands addressed. Solutions aren't going to appear through anarchy.
Thus, the Yellow Jackets are making beneficial change that much more difficult to achieve. It's almost childish, without rational thought and with mindless violence.
It's a problem for our times. Historically, political solutions to inequality were addressed by conservative capitalist support of business to create jobs, or through socialism that created governmental functions to address inequity. With neither of these, the Yellow Jackets don't have much of a toolkit to fix their problems.
16
@Charles
Well, there seems to be a growing tendancy among the more radical factions of the movement to demand the dissolution of the national assembly and Macron's resignation. The Government would then be replaced with a horizontal nation-wide assembly of citizens consistently consulted on social policies. In other words, the 1789 revolution, confiscated by the bourgeoisie, would at last come into its own. We'll see what happens. Perhaps, in the end, brioche will be enough....
3
The author is correct. These protests are exactly like 1968. Don't call these protestors conservatives or populists: they are rejecting government that relies on a supposedly solid base of populists who never challenge the status quo, and thus prevent, or roll-back, all those horrible changes.
5
"The Yellow Vests, who have thrown France into turmoil with violent protests in recent weeks, want more, much more, and they want it sooner rather than later — lower taxes, higher salaries, freedom from gnawing financial fear, and a better life."
That's fully ok - if only the senat governs, panem et circenses are need in exchange.
"He is now trying to push through reforms to make France more business-friendly and competitive, as Britain did in the 1980s and Germany in the 1990s."
I feel this statement needs a correction by the author Adam Nossiter. In the 1990s Germany was in reunification mood (in doubt less business-friendly and less competitive [compared to West Germany in 1989]). In 2000 Germany was entitled the ill man of Europe (not for its business friendliness). Agenda 2010 was a (German; red-green) reform implemented in 2003 to 2005.
1
Sorry, it was fine until you wheeled out the flawed UKIP comparison - you miss half the point when it comes to the UK analogue. People here, middle and working class, have split and become disengaged with bureaucratic structures and an economic system that doesn’t help them. Now, some drifted to UKIP and focused their anger on the EU, migrants and a generic “globalism” that was ruining their communities and living standards (the ‘jobs going overseas’ argument). The others drifted to Corbyn’s Labour, with their main focus being on the same globalism, vanishing jobs and blaming the Tory Party for ruining living standards etc etc. One side is conservative, one side left wing, but they share a lot of the same arguments. The age old battle, one side focuses on class, the other race and nationality.
I’ve seen quotes from yellow jackets that mostly sympathise with the left wing version, and anger at low wages, high prices, lack of corporate taxes, profit over people and a lack of fairness - all motivating issues to your average (proper) leftie.
5
@Mat Eventually I've more a continental view on the UK but what disturbs you so much as to the comparison with UKIP (following in the article a comparison of the yellow vest movement with M5S)? In Italy the governement is actually a coaltion of M5S and Lega (in a essence a combination of extreme left and right). Translated to the UK this would mean a current coaltion governement of Corbyn’s Labour and UKIP. The one and only difference I see in-between Italy and the UK is that the parliamentary system of the UK differers from Italy so that both parties (Labour and UKIP) don't have a majority in the lower house.
The split you are describing for the UK is present also in Germany. Die Linke (extreme left) is against migration (because migrants are lowering wages) and AfD (extreme right) is against migration because they claim that Germans (and EU citizens) are losing jobs/social benefits. The only difference I see in their arguments is that die Linke does not use nation as an argument. Otherwise there is this "split" (in the middle and working class), and the same voters can be found both among die Linke and the AfD.
Similar to the UK with the only difference that the current German governement is not comitted to leave the EU.
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I suppose what annoyed me was that it ignored half the story, and that in its comparison to UK “anti-globalism”, it mentions only UKIP when most of the yellow vests I’ve read speak of anger at low wages, high prices, profit-focused policies and runaway corporatism - all anathema to actual UKIP policies which favour private enterprise over public (UKIP’s economic arguments are quite Thatcherite/Reaganite). UKIP manage to suck in support from Labour voters angry at migration to Conservatives angry at migration and ‘woolly’ economic policies, but then they’ve always been regarded as a protest vote and not a serious choice. They’re currently aligning themselves with the Far Right.
That is interesting about Italy and Germany. It doesn’t surprise me, but am not sure it would happen here. Possibly because the culture wars are quite intense around migration. Our electoral system makes such contradictory coalitions unlikely - but then I don’t know how the Italians do it, and also have so far kept UKIP with few MPs (at its maximum, 2).
It is odd. Having gone on for years about loss of jobs, low wages, puny business taxes and profiteering businesses, I am unsettled to find myself occasionally in agreement with Kippers. But then they mention race, migration, foreigners or Jews and the ground then is restored beneath my feet and the old arguments resurface.
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@Mat
My understanding of the "case Italy" is that Lega requested to reduce corporate tax whereas the coaltion partner M5S requested to increase social expense. This added up to a new indebtness ratio of 2.4% whereas the precedingn Italian governement had agreed with the rest of Europe (in doubt including the islands of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) that new indebtnesse will not be higher than 0.8%. I would have supported the claim of a 2.4% new indebtness claim of the new extreme right/extreme left governement. But, unfortunately, the EU is as the EU is, negotiations of the Italian (left-right) governement resulted in a compromise, which reads: New indebtness of the new Italian governement will be lower than 2.2%. The fresh money will not be spent for increasing social spending but for reduction of corporate tax.
May I ask you whether the UK is right to leave the EU, currently in the sense that the UK will pay for all (including an extreme left-right Italian coaltion governement) on expense of its voting rights?
I.e. Brexit (in the Theresa May version) means to be member of the EU without voting rights?
In doubt: Germany is willing both to a) pay and b) to vote.
In summary: Are you happy with Brexit or would you, rather, prefer, Ger-exit?
When the ten richest humans have more wealth than half the world's population, protests are inevitable and justified.
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@Paul Adams when Big Government imposes cruel confiscatory taxes, protests are inevitable and justified
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@Larry Hey Larry - you don't get it. The taxes being protested weren't "confiscatory", they were flat taxes on gas and diesel that would have the most impact on people with low incomes and low wealth. The protests actually _support_ reinstating a tax on wealth (ISF) that the government abolished upon taking office.
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I have been shocked by the widespread level of hunger and deprivation suffered by French families, and empathize with their anger and fear. Their plight and these riots are a cold water in the face reminder of similar conditions here in the United States, where more than 40% of households have to choose every month whether to pay for food, shelter, medicine or utilities. As citizens and as compassionate human beings we need, more than ever, to be active participants in making the fruits of our communal labors available to everyone.
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If you think Occupy Wall Street was spontaneous and not supported by those with a political/criminal agenda you are dead wrong. The Euro Thugs who travel around the globe to attack economic summits and the like were in full force to create as much havoc as possible and topple Macron's government.
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@marrtyy The article states that Macron is supported by, maybe. twenty percent of the French people.
Forget your Euro Thug theory, there are plenty of French discontents to create havoc for the Macron government.
And given the level of wealth/income inequality in France, revolution is justified.
Occupy Wall Street was sincere and spontaneous, but quickly co-opted by by those whose interests were in maintaining the status quo. The Occupy Movement allowed itself to be made to look ridiculous, being totally consumed with the insane demand of the right to camp anywhere.
May the "yellow vest" movement be stronger and wiser!
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This is a legendary standoff between the dream & the delusion initially outlined in Matthew7: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." So you're telling me it's as simple as making demands & they'll be granted? Something akin to holding the government hostage because you feel entitled to what people who actually pour sweat equity into their lives & you, posting photos to Instagram on your mobile phone or propped in front of the television watching endless sporting events, are on the same footing. If the people staging the protests in France poured as much energy into changing their own lives through education & sacrifice over destruction & rioting, maybe their grievances would disappear. They're at war with themselves, they're simply externalizing what's internal & why should the vast majority of people in France have to endure being sucked into their nightmare.
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@Dwayne Moholitny In the Ancient Regime, injustice was justified by birth right. To keep the peasants in place, the Clergy would promise a glorious Afterlife for those who had suffered and lived in rock bottom poverty all their lives.
In our Neoliberal societies, the 'hard work' mythology has replaced the uncomfortable (yet undeniable) fact that some people with no merit whatsoever (other than being born) keep accumulating wealth (without necessarily working for it; rentier class hello), while less fortunate people are fighting against all odds to make ends meet.
In my (relatively short) existence, I have travelled quite a bit and had the pleasure to mix with a variety of people. "Lazy," "grossly ignorant" and "insufferably entitled" exist on both sides of the fence. As far as suggesting that French people should "pour more energy" into their lives, I'd recommend checking online how French workers' productivity compare with that of their EU neighbors.
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Interestingly enough, it was the French economist, Thomas Piketty, who has studied and pointed out the fact that the US has the largest income gap or inequality than that of any Westernized nation. We should be swarming as the yellow jackets are today and paying closer attention. The French know a thing or two about revolting.
The 1% know that these sort of riots or discontent in the streets are infectious, so they try and quell them asap.
Wouldn't want 90% of Americans to get any ideas, just as our revolution in 1776 did exactly for the French in 1789.
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@Tim
Piketty also sees the problem as structural,and there is a ceratin irony here when, considering the anti-tax nature of these protest, he sees the solution as being implemented top down through government levy of progressive taxation.
While the populist David vs Goliath nature of these protests provides a stirring narrative, it is anti-progressive and retrograde in nature, a mirror of the Tea Party movement here, itself an outgrowth of the anti-tax, anti-government ideology that has taken root in the US since Reagan.
That movement has led us to a point where we are now politically dysfunctional, unable to engage in any meaningful public discussion of what we want, need, or are willing to pay for.
For progressives interested in addressing climate change, or "Medicare for All", or any number of other issues requiring government action for the public good, the Yellow Vest demonstration should give pause.
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@RD You are simply wrong to compare this movement to the Tea Party. The two are totally different. The French are not opposed to paying taxes. They even refer to income tax as "contribution" and tax-payers as "contributors". They understand that taxes pay for social services and have paid high taxes for years.
But they want taxation to be fair and progressive. Higher taxes for those who earn more. Lower taxes for those who earn less. Benefits for all, amounts based on income. In recent years, there has been a shift towards more regressive taxes, i.e.; sales and other taxes on basic goods, which hit the poor hardest. Also certain public services, which used to be available for all, are now limited to the poorest. This has created anger among the middle class, as people feel like they're paying ever more, but receiving less.
Macron came into office and immediately began pushing through unpopular policies, most notably the elimination of the so-called wealth tax. This was seen as a huge gift to the rich, when, at the same time, he rolled out regressive energy and gas tax increases.
BTW Piketty has written about the similarities of Macron's and Trump's economic policies:
http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2017/12/12/trump-macron-meme-combat/
Listening to the news tonight (I live near Montpellier), I heard some of the protesters talking about "direct democracy". Yes, there's a bit of the Che's "Let's be realistic, demand the impossible!" but who knows? I'll keep an open mind.
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I'm sorry, Mr. Nossiter, but the yellow vest movement has already been hijacked --- by left-wing and right-wing extremists wielding gratuitous violence against bourgeois commodities and anything standing in their way. I think its time to drop the romantic revolutionary euphoria and condemn the violence outright, in any article dedicated to this revolt. Even if the revolt is about economic class and even if the demands are socially warranted, the extremist violence by rioting thugs certainly is not. People were killed, cars set on fire. Is this what we want on the streets of Paris? Extremism, both left- and right-wing forms, even if "spontaneous," as you write, needs to be condemned loud and clear. Every time again.
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@Writer. Yes, a very important point. This article doesn't mention it, but there are 'casseurs' (breakers) who go to these protests in France with the sole intention of setting cars on fire, breaking glass-paned bus stops, breaking storefront windows and even looting them. These people, the breakers, are just out to have some fun, from their point of view. I wonder how much of all of this damage is from the breakers, and how much is from the yellow vest protesters. It's entirely unclear. Also, this article mentions the yellow vests demands (lower taxes, higher pay, etc...) but doesn't say how they propose to pay for these changes. Finally, the French call this 'the street that governs;' the USA doesn't have any equivalent. I'd expect that the French government will try to quash this uprising and reassert governmental authority. On verra bien.
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Liberals saving the world from climate change on the backs of the poor. Democrats are attempting the same thing here. It will fail.
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The accusation that "liberals are trying to save the world from climate change on the backs of the poor" is a predictable response from knee-jerk conservatives, but in fact, climate change is disproportionately affecting poor people in lower income communities in this and many other countries.
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@Martha
im sick of people supporting carbon taxes and the like. theres 100 major, multinational companies doing 70% of the worlds pollution, but who should we stick the bill to? oh, the poor and middle classes, of course!
hint: youre not going to solve climate change with feel good legislation like banning straws. hold the companies responsible accountable and leave us alone!
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"A billionaire chatting with his friends,
They've gotta stop and laugh.
We've really got those suckers fooled,
We've got 'em trained like rats!" - Anti-Flag
Kudos to the Yellow Vests. Wealth inequality is a growing global problem and it might take Revolution to reverse it. How can it be that the suffering of a country's citizens and their revolt against the status quo are “totally unanticipated by the parties’’? Are "the parties" that tone-deaf to the needs of their constituents? Or are they so addicted to the $$$ that flow from their plutocratic owners that they just don't care?
The (R)s bring us repeated rounds of (R)egressive "trickle-up" tax "reform". The (D)s extend those "reforms" and refuse to punish the Wall Street Robbers who crashed the world's economies.
Kill the Rich (metaphorically, of course)!
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Until France levels its playing field and stops treating the rest of its citizens like unwanted immigrants attempting to steal a better life, the county will remain as uncompetitive and ineffectual as ever
France has consistently refused to provide avenues of upward mobility for those not in the club; one that by design, is limited only to those who graduated from France's system of, Les Ecole Superieur. These are the handful of 'Harvards', established by Napoleon. The goal was to control leadership at the highest levels in business and government with his own people, educated and bred to his imperial standard. It worked only too well.
Even today, the first question these graduates ask about anyone else is, "Which school did they go to?" That's all they need to know. For the bearers of the green vests, if you're in you win and if your out you are so far out that taking the state down becomes the only goal. Sound familiar?
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France will be in deep trouble for years to come. Some of their social programs and their labor laws make it a forever uncompetitive country.
Have a look at labor laws: the book pertaining to them is about 6 inches thick.
Unemployment is high, and unemployment benefits last too long: up to three years. An employer cannot fire an employee. There was a modification, meaning they now allow cdd (contract for a defined period), but you cannot rent an appartement or borrow then.
What is the solution: stop all immigration, unless the new immigrants are guaranteed a job. Cut the length of time one can receive unemployment benefits. Benefits should be conditional to re training after months. Cut gaz taxes. Impose a moratorium on energy, as the consecutive increases penalized the low and middle income earners.
Impose strict penalties to employers who hire illegals.
Deport all illegals.
Cut taxes for middle income class.
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The gilets jaunes are for the moment correctly focusing on "economic fairness." Unfortunately, this concept is incomprehensible to traditional politicians (Obama, Macron, Theresa May) who are deeply indoctrinated (Harvard, ENA Oxford) with the idea of a virtuous meritocratic capitalism. Generally, the discontent that this movement represents is co-opted by unscrupulous charlatans (Trump, Orban, Bolsonaro), and the corporate media also plays a role in deflecting people from the real problems of an economy that only works for the ownership class by misrepresenting and discounting politicians who actually take their demands to heart (Sanders and Melenchon). Still, the protests are a hopeful development.
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If Europeans can't pay the bills, imagine how Americans struggle financially who carry the extra burdes Europeans don't pay lke exorbitant medical bills and college tuition. Our anger is not yet driving us to burn cars and trash tony shops but we surely have more reason to despair.
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@Sherry While I agree with you that not having a socialized medicine safety net is expensive for Americans, both economically and spiritually, countries like France and Canada have much higher taxes to cover those safety nets. The people do pay for it one way or another. It is more expensive though, the way we do it in the US. The costs are absorbed less evenly and the working middle class takes the brunt while we give tax breaks to corporations. Federal taxes on personal income is not really legal n the US. The documentary, "America, Freedom to Fascism" by Aaron Russo, documents well that the Founders of America only intended corporate profits to be taxed by the feds. We have it backwards.
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@Sherry, The key word is 'yet'. It's coming.
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@RCJCHC
Sorry, but the Founders of America were against corporations altogether pretty much. Not that they were pro-lower classes, far from it. As John Jay, a main author of the Constitution and original Supreme Court justice put it, put it, America should be governed by those who owned the place. The Southerners wanted the country to be run by the slaveowners, the Northern founding fathers by the rich merchants and bankers. The South won out by using Jefferson's deceptive rhetoric about "democracy," something the Constitution was written to prevent. Taxwise, they wanted all federal taxes to be essentially sales taxes, paid by the lower classes, and tariffs. Income taxes at the federal level were illegal until the Twentieth Century.
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A brief but very good explanation and examination of the forces that have brought about the sudden explosion of the "Yellow Vests" movement, but one question foremost in my mind remains unaddressed: Why "Yellow Vests," when the vests they are wearing are obviously GREEN, of the sort worn by construction workers and traffic police? Are these people afraid of being identified with the Green (environmentalist) Movement? Or is the Yellow Vests movement truly color-blind? Thanks in advance for a more plausible explanation.
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@AEK in NYC - the hi-visibility color is one commonly used in the bicycling community, too. Half my bicycling friends claim that it is "green," and half claim it is "yellow." Like a political ideal, the color must be a matter of one's perception.
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@AEK in NYC There are significant differences in how color words are applied in different languages. What English-speakers would call purple would be blue in some other languages, and what we call orange might be called red. These vests are clearly in the range that French speakers consider to be yellow.
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@AEK in NYC, As if this makes a big, huge difference. The sentiment is still the same.
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This is a clear sign that politics as we know it, as are practiced in a lot of countries are dead, or dying! To explain this phenomenon through the prism of political appartenance is again, wrong, an archaic concept!
The poor, the disenfranchised the world over are not responding to political slogans any longer, they want results, economic justice, their necessities addressed! That can only be accomplished through management. Hence the need to switch from a political style of running societies to a managerial style, akin to what we see in say, Singapore.
Singapore, to a high extent, shows that the life of its citizens can be improved immensely and quite rapidly when the government acts with competence and pointed resolve.
The paradigm of political governance as we see in many countries is obsolete.
Social & Economic Management is different: it seeks practical, lasting solutions and it delivers results. Scandinavian nations demonstrate this new way of governance; true, their good fortune lays in the fact that being rather uniform in culture application has been facilitated.
But Singapore, with its mix of ethnic groups and cultures is the true example of how social-economic management can yield extraordinary results. Granted, with perhaps less harsh corporeal punishment of "erring" individuals...Still, the proof of their societal and economic success is in the... pudding.
And they do have a lot of it! Voila!
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While I sympathize with the demands of the protesters, I can't condone the use of violence or force in any circumstance. Violence and force are shortsighted tools that attract attention at the sacrifice of sustainable change. Even if a violent revolution is successful, it's only a matter of time before someone else comes along with a gun. Lasting change happens through a reform of conscience. Destruction of property and forceful acts of violence are terrorism. Using the threat of violence to demand greater wealth happens all the time - it's called armed robbery. The wealthy elite can be toppled, but it will take brains, heart, dialogue, sacrifice, and conviction - not force.
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@Jackson It's worth pointing out, though, that what we are seeing is very far from revolutionary violence. I can totally sympathize with somebody whose car is burned up, and yes, that's a violent act, and the feeling of harm is going to rankle for a long time. But it's definitely in the realm of violent gestures. Now, someone being run over, or killed by a tear gas grenade, is a different story.
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@Jackson, Even though I share your abhorrence of violence, I can not think of a single instance of the wealthy elite being toppled sans force. What is in amazingly short supply, though, is a coherent follow-up to spontaneous uprisings.
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@michaeltide The Montgomery bus boycott is one of the best examples of successful nonviolent protest in modern history. The one thing more terrifying than loosing blood to a rich person is loosing money. It will take a lot of work to get past the worship of money, but once that happens, it’s over.
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This is a global problem, caused by income disparity between the rich and rest of us. Democratic potitical systems are no longer democratic, but are controlled by the rich and corrupt to enrich themselves on the backs of the people.
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@ad
Indeed, global money sloshing around, distorting real estate and finances, every thing it touches. Rents of all sorts - housing, insurance, taxes - exceeding income. What if instead of taxing automobile transportation, the tax was on flying and wire transfers and foreign investments?
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We all need to drastically reduce the use of Carbon based fuels. The reduction of use will reduce demand and lower prices. Taxing them is absolutely necessary.
The regressive nature of user taxes means the taxing authority has to give them back in a progressive way.
Macron hasn't done that.
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@HL Just making sure I understand. You want to tax the bejeezus out of people so the government can turn around and give the same people their money back?
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@Sum Gai
Yes.
It seems complicated, but it's not. They instituted this tax in the most regressive way possible, because Macron is a servant of the rich and doesn't have the guts to do the right thing and just tax the people doing the damage upstream.
Of course Macron did it a stupid way, because he's a stupid person.
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Despite coming into power without the backing of an established political party, Macron is still blinkered by the assumptions of the same ruling class.
He does not know to respond because in his world, these problems do not occur, and worse, he cannot imagine that there are no ways for a large section of society to pull themselves out such situations.
There are many ways to introduce a tax that combats fossil fuel usage, and the details matter. Getting these right depends on imaginative policy.
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Perhaps this is not a right wing movement... yet it's obvious target is Macron, who is to some, one of those last leaders of liberal democracy. And one of the main complaints of the yellow vests is the climate inspired increase in fossil fuel taxes. In other words the target is still the "oblivious elites" elected or not. Clearly, the sense of stagnation and declining fortunes among vast numbers of French people are behind this movement but I would hesitate to characterize where this will go. My sense is that its too new of a movement to make any sweeping judgements or, even, to predict if it will continue on a serious level. But its a bit hard to say this movement is entirely "progressive" from the point of view of the so called "liberal elite."
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Macron is "Minnie me" Trump, slash taxes for the rich, and let large general taxes make up for it- the same way we will have to do for Trump's first round of rich guy tax cuts. Thomas Picketty says that salary increases and job benefits were condensed to squeeze out the disparity of the upper class enrichment.
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