this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2026
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The problem is that they have too much debt and they can't just ignore it anymore. They can complain but they have to cut spending somewhere or increase revenue. Now they can raise the retirement age for everyone. Or they can take the money from the billionaires. But that still doesn't get you closer to lowering the deficit which is very high well over 100 percent of GDP. That means the protests are really just complaining that France doesn't have enough money but you can't keep the spending going as is without a lot of drastic cuts. All you can do is cuts now or kick the can down the road and hope something changes. Or just default on the debt and say fuck it.
The current state of French debt is manufactured to justify budget cuts left and right. We've had Macron for 10 years and the only thing he did was to add 1000 billion to it, and increase the wealth gap.
At some point we have to realise that these people are entirely responsible for the situation, and doubling down on their stupid neo liberal ideology will just make things a lot worse.
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Raise revenue you say? There's plenty of disgustingly wealthy people who could do with less wealth.
How does the billionaire and taxation problem in france compare to the us? I assume it's more "fair" but I know basically nothing about it
We're basically considered a tax haven for billionaires.
Read up on the so called Zucman-tax proposal. That would close down loopholes but it would still only fill around 10% of their deficit today, while costs will keep increasing
Damn... So what is the solution there? The EU bails them out (if they even can) and they try to boost the economy by... Doing what exactly?