Posted on 12/11/2018 7:33:48 PM PST by aquila48
Protests and road barricades at roundabouts and toll-booths across France have continued, as many gilets jaunes demonstrators said concessions made by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, were not enough to calm their anger and sense of social injustice.
Anti-government demonstrators have called for further demonstrations in Paris on Saturday, after four weekends of protests saw rioting in the French capital and other cities and plunged France’s centrist president into his worst crisis in office.
Macron gave a prerecorded televised speech on Monday watched by more than 23 million people in which he announced major steps to address concerns that people in France could not make ends meet.
The minimum wage will increase by €100 a month from January, he said, and a planned tax on pensions under €2,000 a month would be cancelled.
But crucially, the president did not announce a U-turn on his pro-business policies. He stood firm by his decision to slash France’s wealth tax for the very rich. Many protesters had wanted a full wealth tax to be reintroduced.
Macron’s speech was never expected to stop the road barricades overnight.
The gilets jaunes protest movement – named after French motorists’ fluorescent high-visibility vests – began on 17 November as a sporadic tax revolt against what was seen as an unfair eco-tax on fuel but has grown into an anti-government movement against what people see as the pro-business Macron giving tax breaks to the rich and making life harder for the working poor.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
The thing has been hijacked by the SJW. Now it's about free stuff and soaking the rich.
Sorry folks, It’s ain’t the rich causing the problems. It’s all the free loading immigrants you have to support that are causing the problems. No rich people equals no jobs.
Kick him when he is down...
La Cage aux folles jaunes!
Pre-recorded speech? Way to exude confidence!
They want their government to serve them.
Not for their government to say, “Here’s some money. Now sit down and let government serve itself.”
Why? Just to punish the rich for being rich?
It’s time to ‘storm the Bastille’. After that, do a Dresden on Brussels.
“Why? Just to punish the rich for being rich?”
No, to get their money.
RN, the CGT and CFDT are anti Macron! Macron is a technocrat Tony Blair. There are many groups protesting. The majority aren’t libertarians! They still want the goodies. There was never a majority running around for less stuff from .fr
The problem in statist, highly bureaucratic, socialist systems - the rich are so because they have worked the system, because they are insiders and cronies of the nomenklatura.
Ever wonder why now America's wealthiest counties all surround Washington DC?
Les Deplorables
Good.
Crushing higher taxes were merely postponed another six months. They won't work any better then they the do now. And raising the minimum wage will do nothing effective. Nobody is hiring.
Demonizing "the rich" and taking all their money is not going to help either. There isn't enough.
France has run out of "other people's money" to pay for their socialist extravagance. There simply is not enough loot remaining in their economy to buy off the different factions which have been promised benefits. The factions are not taking kindly to being shorted. Too many people's lives depend on continued payments from the Government.
He really doesn’t have any constituency to speak of. That’s why his polls are around 20% (probably lower now).
On the economy, he has fairly sane policies - reform the labor laws so people can be hired and fired/laid off more easily, stop gouging the rich (eliminated the wealth tax), reduce tax on investment income, reduce regulations, fight national unions.
But this has created powerful enemies with the national unions and the envious class - the egalite’ crowd (their version of our SJW).
He has also managed to alienate all the nationalists with his coddling of immigrants and globalism. That’s the LePen constituency, a big chunk of the electorate.
And his warmist gas tax and “let them eat cake attitude” was the straw that broke the back of the average Joe.
“Too many people’s lives depend on continued payments from the Government.”
There is always hell to pay for anyone that ever tries to take away bennies.
The lesson here is, before you give out goodies, make absolutely sure you can afford to do so, FOREVER, because taking them back may cost you your neck.
The unions have been fighting him in the street for a while. This is nothing new. The carbon tax merely added more ammo. However, this idea that this is some freedom revolt is nuts.
‘They’ always want someone else to pay for the goodies.
I’ve been to France scores of times, but I cannot imagine how they perceive ‘social injustice’ as I compare it to my home country, The United States of America. We are a country of immigrants, some who descend from the unwillingly imported slaves. I can empathize with that. I don’t know what French injustice looks like compared to ours.
That said, I think it’s a good thing if the Gilets Jeunes are not biting on the scraps of cake Macron has thrown them. Because the people who cry about injustice in America are, imo, crying about the wrong things. We have more social mobility, more programs, more affirmative action, we have gay marriage, we have freedom of speech and wide liberty of action. So I am at a little bit at a loss for understanding most of American leftists complaints. We don’t have the patriarchy people say we have - sure there are the 0.01% of richest men, but that is not even the 1%. Men die 7 years earlier on average. Men are far more likely to be incarcerated. Men get heart disease at higher rates. Men die on the job at far higher rates. You cannot define a culture pointing at Bezos and Zuckerberg they are the anomalies not the norm.
It should be the big wide middle of all races, sexes, orientations and political stripes complaining about injustice in America. We have 3 tiers of justice - one for the poor, one for the rich, and one for the elites. France barely has the type of criminal justice system we have that crushes those in the margins. $400 speeding tickets, $98 parking tickets, tail-light stops to shake down the middle classes and search their cars, confiscation of property without trial... while the lowlife billionaires and heads of studios get their charges dropped and pleaded down the big fat middle get squeezed with thousands of dollars in court costs for misdemeanors. And that’s just one shard of an iceberg of complaints.
If the big fat middle is waking up in France, that gives me a lot of hope for what could happen here. Not that I want to see riots and destruction of national treasures, only that I wish people would wake up - especially the left - and realize how they are being played and paid for their partisanship with table scraps. They still get screwed in the end, but console themselves for ‘the crumbs’ they are allowed. Time for a social awakening.
I watched the video on Twitter of the French police dumping a guy in a wheelchair on the ground. It”s out there’and enough to make most anyone revolt.
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