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Paris under siege: Tear gas, fury on the Champs-Elysees

20 Comments
By JOHN LEICESTER

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Fuel is as much a necessity as food. Carbon taxes on fuel that people need is foolishness.

0 ( +6 / -6 )

The protests are not so much about higher fuel taxes as about inequality. Macron started out his reign by lowering taxes on the wealthy (around 3 billion Euros) and wants to make up for that loss of government revenues by imposing higher taxes on fuel around 2 billion Euros in revenue).

However, the poor and working people need their car to go to work, take children to school and doctor, more and more so as the government is closing public transportation, post offices, hospitals etc. in smaller towns and villages (not "profitable"...) 

The ordinary French refuse to pay for the rich so that Macron can look like an environmental hero...At least they seem to understand what is really going on....

16 ( +17 / -1 )

Complex sets of issues at play here. Good luck to the French people. Alternatives to burning so much oil and gas must be found. French oil companies like Total have too much 'power'.

If Macron needs to tear gas his citizens to stay in power he's lost the right to govern.

Is this another 'the 'west' is worse than Russia' argument? Extending that lost-ther-right-to-govern principle to Russia, Putin (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/03/23/here-are-ten-critics-of-vladimir-putin-who-died-violently-or-in-suspicious-ways/?utm_term=.0d5fe4bcc89f

should have long lost his right to govern. Although given his popularity in Russia, perhaps the majority of Russians want a return to the days of Stalin and the czars when the state murdered millions of their feloow citizens. In addition to Putin, your same principle can be applied to dictators like Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud, Xi, Kim, Duterte and so many others.

1 ( +5 / -4 )

Further evidence that neoliberal bankers beholden to the wealthy and preaching austerity for the proles aren't the antidote to figures like Trump.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

@Jcapan

As a liberal myself I agree with you. Macron is out of Rothschild and these taxes will have no impact on the crowd he runs with. They have a major impact on those that need to drive to work every day. While Macron travels in limousines, private jets, etc. now at the expense of the French taxpayer the citizens are going to have an even harder time making ends meet. I am not sure if this excuses people burning and destroying property but I can understand the frustration.

It is the same issue with a lot of these people. Recently (last week) Arnold Schwarzenegger stated in Poland if he could he would go back in time and "terminate" the discovery of fossil fuels. On the other hand the Terminator owns a Bentley, Gulfstream III, H1 Hummer, and numerous other carbon belching vehicles. Bernie Sanders tells us all how much we need to stop consuming but he spent over $300,000 in private jet travel in October.

I believe in human caused climate change and I also see steps being made in the right direction. The next steps are to re-write the Paris Agreement so that it brings China and India into the game or it will be almost as useless as a non-binding agreement is.

If the recommendations in the United Nations special climate report come to fruition (A carbon tax of $5,500 per ton in 12 years which is equivalent to $49 per gallon of gasoline or diesel) then you will really see some action from the streets. Heck I even think that would bring the Japanese to protest as well.

People are waking up to the fact that these taxes are regressive, overwhelmingly impact the poor and middle class, and have little impact on the so-called "elite".

The future may very well be a world where the super rich rule over an impoverished slave class of humanity burdened by taxes and fees imposed by the rulers.

7 ( +7 / -0 )

The fuel tax thing is just used by the media. There are many groups. Many agendas. Just they all hate the govt and rich astrocrates so they are united.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

Just read the following from Angelique Chrisafis, Paris bureau chief for the Guardian:

Dan Lodi, 70, a Corsican retired furniture salesman, lives in the Paris banlieue. He has come to Paris every Saturday since the gilets janues demos began. “I was on the May 1968 barricades in Paris for three weeks when I was 20 and now I’m a gilet jaune aged 70," he said. "In France we’ve been having revolutions since 1789, we got rid of the king but we’re still fighting because the rich still have power and inequality is still there. In 68, everyone was behind us, we paralysed the economy with the largest strike in modern French history. So we need everyone now to get on board & demonstrate. It’s not enough for the government to promise little tweaks, they need to rethink economic policy. I’m against the violence, I'm staying away from tear-gas. But I understand some people’s view – they think that in May 68, the government only listened when we picked up paving stones & started throwing them. I’d rather the government listened to peaceful demonstrators. My pension has shrunk because Macron increased taxes on pensioners, my children can’t make ends meet. My 20-year-old grandson is here today because he sees no future, even as an IT student. The government has to start listening.”

2 ( +2 / -0 )

French cops are rounding up high schoolers now. Macron is in deep trouble.

0 ( +3 / -3 )

Protests have spread to other European countries now. Nobody likes a carbon tax.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

@proxy Nobody likes a carbon tax.

Nobody? 100% of the world opposes carbon taxes? Only partisan extremists (and those paid to push their agendas) think in all or nothing terms.

Only supporters of big oil and gas corporations and governments that control oil and gas, and of course their money backers, want to allow big oil to continue to dictate world policies and continue to pollute.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Macron is a two-faced hypocrite, using tax-payer money to jet around the world.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

I confess to not understand what is going on in France, at least as far as the why of it all. If the people do not want gas taxes to go higher, they should be able to express themselves, but it is unfortunate that they feel the need to resort to violence. Is that the only way they can be heard? People here in the US often complain about our gasoline taxes, although they are among the lowest in the world.

Interestingly, the gas tax in Japan is about 90cents US less than in France. Also, there are a number of countries that have higher gas taxes than in France, including

Greece

Turkey

Israel

Italy

Germany

the UK

Netherlands

Finland

Sweden

Norway

1 ( +1 / -0 )

I don't understand why you would want to make fuel more expensive at a time when you have 1.4% growth and an unemployment rate close to 10% and likely significantly under-reported.

I support action on climate change but it needs to be a largely technological solution, like renewables, like electric/hydrogen cars, like energy saving evolution in product design and the built environment etc etc.

The other issue is of course that these so called eco-taxes are going straight into general revenue. They are not being spent necessarily on technological change like I outlined above.

France is in a bind. They need to get the cost of living down, but by the same token they have debt of 97% debt/gdp, just marginally better than the U.S percentage, so there is no way the overall tax take can be cut without heavy reduction in services.

The solution is firstly to conduct a complete government spending audit, from local to national government and eliminate any spending that is not achieving its goals, that is seen as wasteful, providing a poor return or that can be feasibly cut with little political fallout.

Secondly, you might want to look into broadening the tax base if necessary, collecting more small taxes, but cut the actual rates in areas that directly impact every day cost of living, like fuel. Unless you cut spending, you certainly cannot afford any net tax reduction, not with 97% debt. That is a very scary level.

Lastly, you gotta look into cutting that unemployment rate. What area's is France strong in? push that hard. What area's could France do well in with a bit of investment? push that. What structural problems are there?

1) Audit 2) Broaden tax base 3) Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

@PTownsend I stand corrected. The people getting the tax via the government collection agency like it.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Could it be that President of France, Emmanuel Macron, his La République En Marche! has finally been called to account?...

Well, would it be disingenuous to suggest that Emmanuel Macron is and has always been the opposite of an political stated quantity, the anyone but Le Pen vote?.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Paul Joseph Watson gives a brilliant report on the Yellow Vest Rebellion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EHIcpSxdv4

-3 ( +0 / -3 )

I spent 4 weeks touring France and the disparity between regions is immense.

Small villages in the countryside were rundown and lifeless.

Distances to major towns were significant.

Diesel cars meant at least people can travel economically.

Macron’s stupidity impacts these people and hits their bottom line but he wouldn’t know about that....

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

As much as i sympathize with the yellow vests, i think they're failing to address the elephant in the room, the French welfare system itself which is too complicated, too expensive and yes too generous. Pretty much everyone in france is on social benefits meaning everything is free or near free. Free healthcare, free education, generous housing subsidies, child benefits, unemployment benefits and other 'social services' payments etc. That's millions of entitled ppl living off social benefits (that's why the unemployment rate has always been around 10%, why work when you can get more $ staying home!? Biz are closing cause they can't find workers ffs!) Being unemployed in france doesnt necessarily mean 'looking for a job'.

Imo most french - including the yellow vests- still don't get that the current social/financial system is unsustainable; less taxes (most taxed country in the world btw) means less social benefits, is it what you want, yes or no?

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Saw one protestor holding a placard with Frexit written on it.

One of the frustrations in Britain was the amount of bureaucracy and corruption and waste in Europe and the feeling of inability to do anything legally about it. It is possible that this kind of deeply suppressed impotent anger is also a factor driving these demonstrations.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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