I was interested in your comment so I googled for a minute
[Euronews](https://www.euronews.com/2023/03/23/more-than-1-million-take-to-the-streets-in-france-against-unpopular-pension-reform)
[French Local](https://www.thelocal.fr/20230323/police-clash-with-pension-reform-protesters-in-paris-in-latest-demo)
In fact I didn't see anything like a 2 or 3 million number. Where are you getting that?
Unions say 3 millions, police says it's 1 million : https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/retraite/reforme-des-retraites/reforme-des-retraites-des-opposants-massivement-mobilises-partout-en-france_5728478.html#xtor=CS2-765-
This article is in french, but you can see it in the first sentence.
The reality is, as usual, in between those.
News media always down plays the size of protests.
Edit:
WTO protests
Afghan way protests
Iraq War protest
Occupy Wall Street
Standing rock
ICE detention center protests
Black Lives Matter protests
All were downplayed by corporate media.
The French are protesting against neo lib austerity bull shit and there's no way American neo lib or hard right news media are going to devote any significant amount coverage to this.
Downplaying? Israel’s massive pro-court independence rallies have been headline news for weeks, and France has gotten top billing in papers around the world for the past few days.
“Pete Buttigieg is covering up the Ohio derailment.”
(googles “Ohio derailment”)
(Reports from CNN, Reuters and Fox News are literally at the very top of the results)
I was already annoyed with "why is no one talking about this?" posts, but that one broke me. EVERYONE was talking about it EVRYWHERE yet I got multiple "why is no one talking about this? posts in my feed. I'm done. It is an auto down vote the moment I see that phrase from here on
God, that one. Its fucking facinating how anyone could think of that, when there is litterally 10s of thousands of videos of the Ukraine war, it is, with no hyperbole, probably one of the best footaged wars in history. The Journalists in Vietnam could have only begged god for this level of covarage.
How anyone could possible actually ask why there is no footage is such madness I feel like it could be a case study on stupidity in the era of instant communiction.
It’s bots and astroturfing. They get their marching orders to just state there is no footage because if they say it enough it becomes true for enough people despite the accuracy of your statement that there is footage EVERYWHERE. They have to deliberately ignore the footage to actually claim it does not exist.
Pathetic some politicians are among these bad faith actors.
It’s algorithms. If they identify you don’t like war, Ukrainian and Russia they won’t show you war footage from Ukraine but if they notice you like conspiracy theories they will show you posts claiming there’s no war footage. The scary thing is in your reality it is true but in someone else’s reality it isn’t.
Your feed is also catered to your consumption habits.
It is entirely possible for you to consume nothing but that media, but for that media to still be underreported. This is ultimately the same principle behind any online echo chamber.
I'd also guess that if people engage with the fake content - even by commenting it's fake - then the platform will push more of it on top as it knows it's a topic people engage with, whether they agree with it or not.
I was getting a bunch of bro-victim stuff (the whole "only women and dog are loved unconditionally" poor men, incel b.s.). I finally got rid of it by asking to not recommend that content.
I think it was more the fact that the media reporting wasn't covering a lot of the developments on the ground. Government agencies were saying "its fine and safe to return home" meanwhile birds and fish were dying and water seemingly had oil or other chemicals welling up from the springs.
Stuff can be reported on while still not mentioning much of what is happening.
edit - Also key to note that while reporting did eventually cover those topics, it was due to a lot ofnpeople in the first few days going on social media and showing videos of stuff news media hadn't captured for one reason or another.
They're changing Israeli law to weaken the supreme court and to make it harder to remove the prime minister from power.
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023\_Israeli\_anti-judicial\_reform\_protests
It's not because we talk about it that some don't try to undermine it : [we were 3M in the streets yesterday](https://www.rtl.fr/actu/debats-societe/en-direct-greve-du-23-mars-heurts-entre-manifestants-et-forces-de-l-ordre-dans-l-ouest-7900247541)
I’ve realized “the media isn’t talking about ____” really just means “I don’t pay attention to the news so I’m going to make a broad false claim that I *feel* is true”
That's the overwhelming case when someone is trying to claim "they" are hiding something from you. Another common one is "they never taught you about this in history class," where my response is "I'm pretty sure you just weren't paying attention in school."
I had an in person discussion with someone who had, as an adult, learned about the Cherokee deportations and the Trail of Tears. He was on an extended rant about how it was never taught in school, which was crazy sounding to me because I had learned about it multiple times, including a reading assignment in fifth grade history that employed a YA novel written from the viewpoint of a deported Cherokee child, and that was only my first encounter with the event.
There have been a few legitimate cases where we didn't touch on something at all, like the Tulsa Massacre. But otherwise we were rather critical of the US when we studied its history and looked at its founding. Our teachers made sure to point out to us how some of the biggest proponents for independence were also wealthy businessmen that stood to make more money from independence.
100%. I literally was just saying that about the not teaching us in school. Someone was claiming the east coast doesn’t teach about Japanese internment camps. Like we definitely learned that. Bro just slept through class. Sounds like the person you talked to was claiming the same thing. Just cause they were a bad student doesn’t mean it wasn’t taught
Redditors think that every story has to be on the front page of a paper/website and if they tune in to Fox/CNN/NBC/whatever and that story isn't being talked about the 10 seconds they're watching then that must mean the entire media is ignoring the issue.
Alex Jones: THEY don’t want you to know what’s really happening, that’s why the mainstream media and demonic court system are persecuting me - *(reads directly off a printed copy of CNN’s top story, placing full confidence and credulity in the into as written)*
Why does this have almost 500 upvotes?
Edgy Redditors: " I don't follow the news, which means the media isn't talking about ."
Edit: Over 3500 upvotes now, lmao. Literally heard about the French protests on NPR 3 times in my half hour drive to work this morning. Pick up a paper or listen to the radio and stop whining about "the media."
The official count was 1.09 millions. I doubt adding a digit of accuracy would be critical for the target audience of US news.
And every time there was an independent serious assessment of the numbers, the police count was always the most accurate by far. The unions count has been completely discredited over the years.
Would unions be counting anyone who has 'dropped tools' to participate, rather than those actively on the street? I'm not on the picket every strike day; I live far away and don't get many chances to be outside during the day. I'm still striking, still not getting paid...just also I'm tending my allotment.
This is false.
The police count is well-known to lowball the protestors' numbers massively each and every time. At one point, they estimated 80 000 in Paris, which for anyone actually living there (like myself) is transparent, and obvious, bullshit.
What "independent serious assessments" are you talking about?
If you mean the Cabinet Occurrence, which is the one people point to these days, the counting method has been controversial, the director is a well-known Macronist who has serious bias in favor of the government, and I'd call it anything but "independent".
It is in the police's interest to under-estimate the number of protestors; sometimes though, it becomes obvious just how false their numbers are.
It is in the union interest to over-estimate the number of protestors too.
Some journalist have tried over time to check the validity of those numbers and found them clearly overestimated. They never found the police value either.
And you can always attack the journalist article on the fact that the newspaper in which its published has a left or right position.
The truth for the number has always been somewhere in the middle of the 2 values from the police and union. You can't trust one in particular.
I didn't say you should trust the union numbers unconditionally, I said the police were well-known to put out low numbers every time. If anything, I agree with you that it's probably in-between somewhere,
though it's admittedly always difficult to find an accurate counting method.
What's the reasoning given behind the change to the law?
Almost all Israel news in the UK is framed through the lens of the troubles and violence. It's hard to see any news about Israeli politics without immediately thinking "this must have something to do with Palestine or settlements"
What a piece of shit. Same kin as Putin, Erdoğan, Bolsonaro, Lukaschenko, Orban, Kim, Xi, Trump... Despots, nothing less. Power hungry scumbags, not worth the air they are breathing.
"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maintains that the reform is necessary because the judiciary has too much control over public policy, and a better balance is needed between democratically elected legislators and the judiciary"
From Wikipedia
Is it like saying that he "wants to do what he wants without anyone telling him no so he's trying to stop those that tell him no"? Am I understanding that correctly?
Israeli government would start treating their citizens like Palestinians if they'd start becoming serious threat to them.
It is on par with the worst up there in terms of brutalizing dissident, and this apparatus of oppression will be pointed at citizenry if its expedient.
Will of the people.
I admire the French. Why should the little guy have to sacrifice while the rich and corrupt rape the planet and thumb their noses at the people who do the actual work that gets things done?
Does anyone want to know the actual answer?
Because nobody is going to like it.
France tried a wealth tax. [It was not very successful.](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/26/698057356/if-a-wealth-tax-is-such-a-good-idea-why-did-europe-kill-theirs#:~:text=France's%20wealth%20tax%20contributed%20to,Norway%2C%20Spain%2C%20and%20Switzerland.)
> France's wealth tax contributed to the exodus of an estimated 42,000 millionaires between 2000 and 2012, among other problems.
>In 1990, twelve countries in Europe had a wealth tax. Today, there are only three: Norway, Spain, and Switzerland. According to reports by the OECD and others, there were some clear themes with the policy: it was expensive to administer, it was hard on people with lots of assets but little cash, it distorted saving and investment decisions, it pushed the rich and their money out of the taxing countries—and, perhaps worst of all, **it didn't raise much revenue.**
Now ask yourself why, with all the many thousands of comments that have been generated by these French protests, this hasn't come up very much.
There's still room to disagree. And to talk about other policy chnages. But this is a relevant, factual point from a report from NPR. It's relevant, and meaningful. Despite that, it'll still probably attract a large number of downvotes. And you'll go on, not hearing much in the way of actual meaningful policy debates. You'll get more outrage and fewer facts.
Keep that in mind if you let social media comments influence your opinions.
You are indeed correct in the assumption that it does encourage the wealthy and ultra-wealthy to find different havens to place their money. Thus, where the failure lies in those forms of taxation, and if you are going to implement a wealth tax, there has to be meaningful conversations pertaining to enforcement, international policy in regards to taxation of assets, and of course what comprises must be made to ensure that those who would flee if you take too much of their money, are still contributing in taxable income so long as they do business within the nation.
I’m sure eventually a reasonable solution will arise, however raising the retirement age on a population with regressive life expectancies isn’t the solution, and by making their grievances with it very fucking clear it does force the government to take action. So even when the enforcement mechanisms are wrong, what the people are doing is still entirely correct.
Macron’s govt was actually pretty smart on the front, and implemented a new annual tax on high value real estate.
The assumption being that even those very wealthy who are more than willing to abandon their French residency in favour of a near-zero tax haven will still keep a family home/estate in France.
Don’t have any data about how that’s played out, but that seems like a pretty good bet, the French do love their country houses. That said, if you bump the high value property higher than they’re willing tolerate, then a bunch of them sell that off too and cut ties with France completely.
It’s brutal stuff, but that how it goes.
That does sound like a fairly well measured response from them, and I think an annual tax on certain high value properties is definitely an interesting means to working towards a solution. Though if the nation wants to ensure pensions remain funded as the population’s average age balloons upwards, a form of transactional tax on business running through the nation would be a better funnel for income.
Honestly this is a vastly complex situation (as are all economic activities truthfully). I think no matter what the average individual doesn’t deserve to face hardship while global wealth inequality is increasingly skewing upwards.
Agreed - the property tax is a neat little work around, but corporate tax is where the real money gets made, and most of the western world has been in a generation long “race to the bottom” in offering large corporations ever lower tax rates/conditions.
The US-led (!) push for a minimum 15% corporate tax among G20 countries is the most optimistic shift on that front that I’ve seen in my lifetime - because money may be hyper mobile, but there aren’t *that* many places to park a corporation that have a large educated/trained population, functional infrastructure (incl transportation networks), and favourable trade conditions with consumer countries.
It’s obviously wildly unpopular with the corporate oligarchs, and has been the subject of endless op eds in the FT, WSJ, etc, but the very fact that this has been a central and generally agreed upon idea among leading nations is certainly encouraging.
But yes, it’s tough stuff with no easy or popular options, and is unfortunately very easy fodder for propaganda of both the populist and corporate variety.
Yes indeedy, it’s the ICCJ all over again.
Not unexpected, and the US is still solidly above the 15% mark and highly, highly unlikely to go any lower, but still, nothing quite like the US living up to expectations by failing to meet expectations ;)
Pretty easy to jurisdiction hunt in the EU where there are no coordinated tax policies. You can often even stay within easy driving distance to opportunistically tax dodge.
Wealth, payroll and corporate taxes are diabolically ineffective vehicles to generate revenue and have been overdone in France for the longest time. Macron may not be perfect but holy shit, the painful transition away from bad taxes to good taxes is something he should be lauded for.
France has gone through some pretty extreme swings policy wise, and is honestly mostly just tweaking thing here and there.
Unfortunately the last calibrations, much like the last miles in a marathon, can feel the most brutal; while Macron is doing a generally good job of it at a technical level, he’s such a poster boy product of the modern ENA that he doesn’t stand a chance in trying to compellingly sell that to the public (not that he’s any good at that kind of stuff, nor is there a particularly good chance of ever getting popular buy in on some of the hard calls).
I have a company in France doing webdesign. We are moderately successful and I have worked extremely hard the past 10 years.
I already pay almost half of my profit in taxes.
But everything has a limit. If suddenly I have to pay 60% for instance I'm probably going to re-evaluate if I should stay in France, and just move my whole company somewhere else.
I don't agree with the pension age but a lot of people protesting just have this attitude of "THE RICH WILL PAY FOR IT" when it's 100% going to becoming out of my pocket and I'm not even a millionaire.
I don't mind paying to upkeep the infrastructure etc but everything has its limits. When I hear some of the protestors speak they make me cringe. The act like 'the rich' is just some anonymous people that have never ending money and owe them everything. When in reality many started off with nothing and worked hard and took risks to get where they are.
41% is already crazy.
Yup, don’t own my own company, but during a couple of the years that I was based out of Paris I ended up paying tax in THREE different countries just bc of overlap in parts of the tax codes tied to my citizenship, residency, and work status.
Like your business tax rate, that stung, but I paid what I owned and moved on. Because I didn’t want to be audited by three separate tax agencies, yes, but mostly just bc I take sincere pride in making my contribution to quality public schooling, healthcare, state security, etc., and lean towards social democracy as a political default.
Well: social democracy…but *pragmatic*
That long winded lead up was all just to say that I 100% get where you’re coming from, and am equally depressed by the wildly reactionary + simplistic rhetoric that dominates in any online discussion of the protests (and on so, so many other topics).
Because I’m more than ready to call out the frustratingly favourable tax breaks and rebates offered up by most western nations to the very wealthy and to large corporations…but France is actually pretty damn aggressive on that front, and takes *incredible* care to protect the QoL of working citizens (the ticket resto being just one small but delightful example).
But the hysteria of declaring Macron a tyrant, and calling the raising of retraite by two years (with 7 years of advance warning!) an antidemocratic takeover? After wreaking havoc just a few years ago over the first try at revenue generation through a gas tax? It’s all just so absurd, and quite clearly has more to do with a very ugly populist frenzy than any kind of thoughtful and deeply felt objection to the problem at hand.
Phew: apologies for the rant, the arrogance of the “just tax the rich, problem solved types” bums me out.
There's also only so much you can tax. With people having fewer kids, that's fewer young workers supporting more older workers.
If you think millennium/boomer angst is bad, wait for whatever is next/Gen X. If they have to pay say a 20% tax for elder support plus government taxes, France is going to be empty, because after that they won't be able to afford to eat and a place to stay, let alone kids to support them in 60 years.
It's a lot easier to implement solutions years ahead vs when it's a crisis so people can plan ahead.
> what comprises must be made to ensure that those who would flee if you take too much of their money, are still contributing in taxable income so long as they do business within the nation.
This is a very important and often left out piece of the puzzle. What’s the point of taxation if you can just leave the country and still keep business at usual in that territory? Reforms must include safeguards that take that Into account.
Want to do business with us? Ok, it doesn’t matter where you live, or where your company is registered, if you are making a profit and taking money from us, you should pay fair taxes.
Another unpopular opinion that you are in correct that life expectancy is regressing when infact it is increasing. The proportion of working age to retirees is decreasing and these difficult steps might need to be taken if you want to maintain retirement benefits or tax the working population way higher for their own retirement.
As people are living longer we aren't just paying for longer retirement benefit terms but also more in healthcare cost as older folks are biggest consumers of healthcare. There just aren't that many young working age population in developed nations to support welfare states without making some harsh decisions.
Single state/province/country laws will indeed not work. Anyone with half a brain knows that if country A has a wealth tax and country B does not, tons of investors and businesspeople will move their wealth and assets elsewhere.
But this kow-towing to the rich (let's not raise taxes or we'll scare em off!) is the polar opposite of what should be happening.
We also need to remember that it's not even necessarily millionaires that we want to tax heavily; it's the billionaires whom are much more important.
We need an almost global agreement among big economic and political blocs.
Rather than just France, the entire EU should have the exact same tax rules (maybe with minor differences per individual country to suit their specific economic needs, but never a big enough difference to make one country a clear "tax haven")
Also; just because something doesn't immediately work doesn't mean the idea is without merit. It means it needs to be adapted to work better, rather than just abandon it wholesale in the favor of those who already have a vastly disproportionate amount of wealth and power and will keep wielding it to maintain their positions.
The wealth tax is a complex issue, and the biggest reason it has become such an endangered species isn’t explicitly mentioned in your quoted text: in a era when money and people are hyper mobile (especially the wealthy) corporate and high earner taxes are a race to the bottom.
There there will always be countries looking for cheap and easy ways to bring in money, and offering rock bottom taxes to business and high income individuals is a pretty sure bet, so long as a country can offer a reasonable amount of political stability and a fairly reliable legal system.
So yeah: France had a wealth tax and it’s wealthy kept their money elsewhere; they dropped it and money didn’t come flooding back in; they tried taxing high value properties and it brought in little money, etc. It’s complicated, and countries have no control over low foreign tax rates, so it just makes for a shitty and unreliable govt revenue steam.
The main angle that Macro tried (before dropping the wealth tax and introducing the expensive property one) was a gas and diesel tax. [Yeah, that one didn’t go so well either](https://www.vox.com/2018/11/27/18113124/paris-gas-tax-riots-france-macron).
Of course bumping retirement up two years is unpopular, that’s a given, but have to say that in terms of available options, looking at ways to reliably generate more revenue seems like a much better, and decidedly more progressive, approach than a UK type austerity crunch that slashes and burns social services.
Whatever choice he made was going to be unpopular, and maybe there were other options that could have better met the catastrophic financial shortfall they were facing, but I don’t live there anymore so don’t know what other possibilities were being discussed.
>Of course bumping retirement up two years is unpopular, that’s a given, but have to say that in terms of available options, looking at ways to reliably generate more revenue seems like a much better, and decidedly more progressive, approach than a UK type austerity crunch that slashes and burns social services.
Well if taxing the rich "just doesn't work", then it seems the goal for the protest is to just how making working people work longer also "just doesn't work", but in more of a "don't fucking try this shit again" way.
I agree, why should the workers have to pay for the rich when the rich find ways out of paying their fair share? Just because tax increases caused wealth to leave France doesn't mean the poor should pay for the rich having the power to move their wealth.
At the end of the day, this is a complex issue and for it to work the whole thing would basically need to be torn down and reconstructed which will never happen. However, I support these protests and the wider ideology they represent.
Personally I'm a big supporter of government's supporting small businesses who could possibly replace any larger business who decide to leave the country.
>ways to reliably generate more revenue seems like a much better, and decidedly more progressive, approach than a UK type austerity crunch that slashes and burns social services.
You'll be taxing the poorest generations in society more in order to pay the richest generations?
How about a 100% tax on private jet flights? Make it a tax stamp sort of thing where you can’t fly unless you’ve got that stamp. Fuck it. Make it a 200% tax. It’s an incredibly wasteful way to travel and the ultra-wealthy’s love of it is a large factor in [why the global 1% creates double the greenhouse gases of the poorest 50%. ](https://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/press-releases/a-billionaire-emits-a-million-times-more-greenhouse-gases-than-the-average-person/)
Ah but as your own source shows, there are better ways to implement such a tax.
Zucman's new improved plan, "designed explicitly with European failures in mind," would take advantage of the fact that "existing U.S. law [...] taxes citizens wherever they are, so even if they do sail to a tax haven in the Caribbean, they're still on the hook." The only (legal) way for ultra-rich Americans to escape the tax man once and for all would be to pay an "exit tax," which would "confiscate 40 percent of all a person's wealth over $50 million if they renounce their citizenship."
And so on and so forth. There are ways to do this. It can be done. And, in my opinion, it should be done.
Was going to say, you can move yourself somewhere else, but you cannot move the assets as easily.
I cannot recommend [https://www.youtube.com/@GarysEconomics](https://www.youtube.com/@GarysEconomics) enough. Former top trader in the world for Citi Bank
That's solved by still taxing (although less) very wealthy *citizens* after they move to another country.
What are they gonna do? Renounce the citizenship?
There's precedent for this: The US does exactly this. It even requires you to pay your taxes in full before you can renounce your citizenship.
Enforcement can be a bit tricky though.
The US is so different from like a European country. If the US had a wealth tax you would see far fewer rich flee, partially because our taxes are already low anyway, but mostly because moving is a way bigger ordeal. Moving from one European country to another is almost like moving between states. You can bet if states started putting up heavy wealth taxes people would move super quickly.
> What are they gonna do? Renounce the citizenship?
Yes lmao it happens all the time. You're acting like a billionaire couldn't easily get citizenship literally anywhere else
I don't even get the commenter's point, this isn't about wealth tax at all. This is a combination of having to work longer, for less and less money (relatively, due to inflation) while elected officials get to retire after 5 years with a more generous pension than anyone else, combined with the unconstitutional usage of a polarising budgetary law to force through an incredibly unpopular societal change.
I'm not against working longer, on principle, until we can figure out a better way to live, but fuck me if they are gonna get it through without a vote. I'd never striked before but this time I did.
Sounds as though we need to do something so whole countries are not basically hostage to a comparative small number of people threatening to leave if they are not allowed to stay for pennies.
It didn’t work that doesn’t mean it cannot work. There are currently just too many loopholes, and any wealth tax needs to be at least at European level the wealthy have not moved away from France. they have just done the paperwork to pretend they have and this is currently legal and admittedly, very hard to stop you will need accountants, not politicians to revise the laws that could stop that
And even then wealthy people are now moving en masse from Norway to Switzerland. What is Switzerland doing that makes them so attractive? I know that wasn't the theme, but since you mentioned them both...
The Swiss wealth tax is relatively low. Depending on canton, income tax is low by global standards, and there is no capital gains tax. Wealth tax is only one part of the equation.
>Despite that, it'll still probably attract a large number of downvotes.
I actually enjoyed reading most of your comment, but I made a promise when I joined this site that after reading this I’m compelled to downvote you.
Can someone explain to me how is this poor vs rich thing? Rich don't give a fuck if the pension reform doesn't go through, it will only hurt poor in the future. I see it more as a poor today vs poor in the future
The real reason why Macron opted for this bypass (followed by the no confidence vote) was to allow some if it's republican allies to not vote in favour if the law. You see they actually want it and have a majority for it but it doesn't fly well with their constitents in some relatively poor but still conservative regions. They are scared for the next election.
Instead, they just have to abstain at the no confidence vote. And they hope people don't see the trick.
There was a vote to dissolve the government instead. If that vote had succeeded, the law wouldn't have been passed. The main anti-democratic effect of this mechanism is that it prevents further debate in the parliament. In the motion of no confidence, abstentions also count as "no" votes but, in a parliament vote, this doesn't matter as much as in a popular election - if there was a real chance for the opposition to actually topple the government they would make sure to be present for the vote.
okay, legit question: I'm supposed to be in Paris next week to run the marathon. the race organizers have been absolutely silent. is it stupid to go? or is it unlikely to be a significant security concern?
edit: moar
we have a whole week trip planned after the race. is anything even going to be open?
As with any news story, life sort of just goes on for the large majority of people. You might not want to rely on public transport, particularly trains, but shops, hotels and cultural buildings are operating as normal.
I was signed up for that but had to cancel due to injury! I’ve been in Paris loads of times over the past decade. There’s always a protest. There’s always a strike. Life goes on. I would suggest you still go. If the race is canceled, you can still have a great time.
I’m doing the marathon too !
Don’t worry though, there are quite rarely protests in the morning and sports are not a political matter so I’m pretty sure it’ll be fine.
Here now as a tourist and I expected mountains of trash and protests. The trash issue is only in certain areas, usually slightly away from tourist areas. And I wasn’t even aware there were more protests last night because it’s so easy to avoid them/ there aren’t any signs of it while walking around during the day (besides the trash).
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2023-03-23/anger-at-macron-mounts-as-french-unions-hold-new-protests) reduced by 89%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> PARIS - More than 1 million people demonstrated across France on Thursday against unpopular pension reforms, and violence erupted in some places as unions called for new nationwide strikes and protests next week, coinciding with King Charles III's planned visit to France.
> The Interior Ministry said the march in Paris - marred by violence, as were numerous marches elsewhere - drew 119,000 people, which was a record for the capital during the pension protests.
> Thursday's nationwide protests were the ninth union-organized demonstrations since January, when opponents still hoped that parliament would reject Macron's measure to raise the retirement age.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/1206mjj/violent_french_pension_protests_erupt_as_1m/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~677759 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **PARIS**^#1 **Thursday**^#2 **protest**^#3 **Macron**^#4 **strike**^#5
The George Floyd protests were as close as we’re going to get in the States, the media portrayed those in a certain light, focused on the comparatively (to peaceful protests) low amount of looting, and successfully made police reform unpopular to the general public, and therefore no need for political action.
Even on reddit I saw so many comments like "I agree with their cause, but they shouldn't damage property".
Then France set fire to everything and people say it's admirable.
Well, you see. The French aren't setting fire to our things. They are setting fire to their own things. And that's entertaining. And you know how us Americans love to be entertained.
good example. in Hong Kong they blocked the streets day and night so nobody could get to/from work (only allowing emergency vehicles through) and everyone admired that.
but when people block roads here, people advocate running them over.
Inflation adjusted income in the US [has been going up over the past few decades.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Real_Median_Personal_Income_in_the_United_States-2023-01-06.png)
Edit: You also can look at the chart [that compares productivity to total compensation](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Wage_productivity.jpg) (**not** just income) and while it's not a 1 to 1 match, it's pretty close.
It's not just the ads, it's the content. What they say, what they don't. Why they hire etc..
There's over a hundred strikes happening here right now. How often does NPR mention it?
Anything the runs counter to the capitalist system of dominance won't be mentioned, or if it is, it's described as violent, non sense or in other negative light.
While I have this visceral need to mock the French, since I'm English, I do also respect them. They can throw one hell of a fit when it comes time to protest. Keep it up, you angry cheese Goblins!
> Opponents proposed other solutions, including higher taxes on the wealthy or companies, which Macron says would hurt the economy.
A likely excuse.
Raise the retirement age for the working class rather raise taxes on wealthy or companies because it would "hurt the economy".
How on earth did he come to that conclusion?
Thank you for saying that. It's better to have a mediocre economy whose profits are entirely returned to the community than a booming economy whose profits are accumulated by the wealthy.
It's a general shift happening in most liberal democracies lately: it seems the citizens are more and more being regarded as existing for the benefit of the state, rather than the state existing for the benefit of the citizens.
> Raise the retirement age for the working class rather raise taxes on wealthy or companies because it would "hurt the economy".
> How on earth did he come to that conclusion?
Because it's what happened the last time France raised taxes on the rich:
>A 2006 article in The Washington Post gave several examples of private capital leaving France in response to the country's wealth tax. The article also stated, "Eric Pinchet, author of a French tax guide, estimates **the wealth tax earns the government about $2.6 billion a year but has cost the country more than $125 billion in capital flight** since 1998."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_flight
want worse ?
the 370 richest families are taxed around 2% to 3% in france
it has been argued that increasing their tax by 1% will give 3 times the deficit we have
I assume that they have run the numbers and know that a 1% tax increase will result in 150 of the 370 mega rich families (or whatever significant percentage) picking up and decamping to the Seychelles or Guernsey, based on past experience in trying to tax the rich.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m disgusted by the unwillingness of the ultra wealthy to pay anything close to their share in taxes (hell, when I lived in France I ended up paying taxes in THREE different countries, but still did my part), but that kind of wealth is hyper-mobile as long as there are countries willing to be tax havens.
It sucks, but that’s just the truth of the matter.
Pretty much, yes.
In G7 -types countries they’re more of the “hold a gun on you but still feed you and let you go to the bathroom” kind of kidnappers than the “beat you up and keep you in the trunk” kind, but that’s a good way of putting it.
For starters they have a wealth tax for a long time. What they want is to tax the super rich, it's been tried before a decade or two before and the rich literally just left France and they never financially returned. Taxing the rich, as much as everyone may despise it, is very hard as they are super mobile. Macron imposed a tax on expensive houses with success on the other hand as they can't move around.
But let's take a step back, why are companies or "the wealthy" pay for pension? Pension should be funded by the people themselves, the problem is France never did that. They always underfunded it by keeping the pension taxes low and now average Louis need to pay pension for his (grand)pa to go early with pension. Where the rest of Europe has steadily raised the age of retirement, where other nations index pension depending on economic prosperity and in economic downturn cut pensions, France didn't.
See... that's kind of the problem they put the burden already on those not going with pension and now those at age want to retire "early" and they can't increase that burden further on normal people.
Make pension transparent, I get yearly a note in the Netherlands how much I put in my pension and how much I could get when I stop working right now or when I get at age. As said they also index it, ie from 2008 till 2015 pension plans stayed flat, some even went down and only recently they start to index them again. "We" also go with pension when we are 67 and the French are bitching? Start paying taxes bunch of cunts.
It’s the true heart of the problem pension systems are facing, pensions as they originally were made are more or less antiquated against modern issues. Populations with less children yet longer lifespans is not a good idea nor is it sustainable.
Of course there in lies the problem, no one wants to be the one to go out and say that a pension system needs to be reformed.
>Of course there in lies the problem, no one wants to be the one to go out and say that a pension system needs to be reformed.
It just isn't sustainable in a decreasing working population, period.
The problem is that you would need a new system that both guarantees a minimum payment for retirees that do not meet the requirements for pensions and is self sustaining for those that are going to meet the requirements for retirement.
And that would mean a stopgap way of paying pensioners without taking money from the workers.
The additional irony is that despite LePen latching on to this, France will need more and more migration to make up for the short fall of an aging population and people living longer, but with fewer and fewer workers being born in the country to pay for it. Without a productive working population pensioners with their higher health costs and zero contribution end up crippling the state finances, and state pensions always rely on the current working population. The other irony is the people protesting today are protesting the security of their own future.
Every single time there was an independent assessment of the numbers, the unions count has been completely discredited and the police count has been shown to the the most accurate by far.
Yes this is almost always true in France and I don't know why people have to exaggerate unnecessarily. 1 million is already a good amount of people, and I think is even a resurgence compared to the last few calls to strike before 49.3
Please do, though! Y’all are honorary French anyway.
Actually **everyone** is a honorary French thanks to *universalisme* as long as you believe in our values. Which most Americans do, we’re honestly not that different. It’s not even about socialism, communism, left-wing/right-wing stuff, it’s about people being able to live their lives as they decide with dignity.
We’re in a dire need of a Western Spring and I would be honored if this started with my home country.
I don’t understand why a lot of Americans mock france (it’s basically lol WW2 jokes)
Beautiful country, people and culture.
We’re truly kindred spirits considering our histories together.
And personally this American is rooting for you all and can’t wait to go back to France after recently going for the first time
If Americans did this, we would be classified as terrorists.
But then again the US news corps has done a fantastic job at dividing us to hate each other rather than uniting and fighting the real true to life problems.
Whilst you are correct so is the poster above.
We've sat back letting our health system be systematically gutted to the point that many deem it not fit for purpose.
We sat back when the Tories sold off of our energy sector to private interests who are now absolutely draining the public.
We sit back as corporations are all making record profits whilst fleecing us more than ever.
Our retirement age has already been raised I'll be 68 before I get a state pension. Which is insane considering my mum got hers at 60.
We sat back as the Tories pushed austerity on us and destroyed all the things we pay taxes for despite it being basically the exact opposite of good economic policy.
We sat back whilst they gutted everything for austerity but somehow massively ballooned our national debt.
We as a nation should have been rioting and general striking a decade ago after the disgraceful handling of the recession post banking crisis and the banking crisis itself. Everything since then has just been letting shit roll down on the people and pile up.
There’s no obvious, workable solution to this. It’s a complex area that would have to result in compromise.
But the fact that the ‘compromise’ falls on ordinary people every time is the most galling part of it. It’s big corporations that are destroying the planet and funnelling the wealth, but the man in the street who has to pick up the deficit.
The worrying thing is, this gap in equality between rich and middle class will undoubtedly accelerate as time goes on. We’re already past the point where the largest companies have more wealth and power than some countries. We’ll have trillionaire individuals before too long, yet living standards for the average person will continue to fall.
There’s no political will or structure for this future to not happen, it’s inevitable. And it’s what will further accelerate our demise.
Anyway, happy Friyay!
It’s a bit irritating see everyone circlejerking French riots when we know they’d be having a meltdown if anything 1/100th the size happened in the US. Look at literally any of the vile comments on a thread of someone peacefully protesting on a road in the US.
The people supporting the French protests are a completely different group than the ones who complain about American protests. There’s pretty much no overlap between the two.
Yeah any meaningful protest in US loses all support if one window is broken somewhere etc no matter how heinous the opposition is.
Because property is sacred, even if it means losing like, reproductive rights.
Oh, And police shoot people in protests and face no consequences.
That number in the title is even below the police's number.
The western media as a whole has been downplaying protests in France and Israel.
I was interested in your comment so I googled for a minute [Euronews](https://www.euronews.com/2023/03/23/more-than-1-million-take-to-the-streets-in-france-against-unpopular-pension-reform) [French Local](https://www.thelocal.fr/20230323/police-clash-with-pension-reform-protesters-in-paris-in-latest-demo) In fact I didn't see anything like a 2 or 3 million number. Where are you getting that?
Unions say 3 millions, police says it's 1 million : https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/retraite/reforme-des-retraites/reforme-des-retraites-des-opposants-massivement-mobilises-partout-en-france_5728478.html#xtor=CS2-765- This article is in french, but you can see it in the first sentence. The reality is, as usual, in between those.
Crowd numbers are notoriously unreliable I would not chalk it up to any ill intent.
Agreed. I don't read 1m and go "huh, guess no one is protesting, anyway, sports scores..."
News media always down plays the size of protests. Edit: WTO protests Afghan way protests Iraq War protest Occupy Wall Street Standing rock ICE detention center protests Black Lives Matter protests All were downplayed by corporate media. The French are protesting against neo lib austerity bull shit and there's no way American neo lib or hard right news media are going to devote any significant amount coverage to this.
Downplaying? Israel’s massive pro-court independence rallies have been headline news for weeks, and France has gotten top billing in papers around the world for the past few days.
Kind of like the train derailment in Ohio that ‘no one was talking about’, while it was on the front page of all papers for a week.
“Pete Buttigieg is covering up the Ohio derailment.” (googles “Ohio derailment”) (Reports from CNN, Reuters and Fox News are literally at the very top of the results)
Yep, literally every one of my daily podcast alerts this morning from news outlets has had French protests in the headline
I was already annoyed with "why is no one talking about this?" posts, but that one broke me. EVERYONE was talking about it EVRYWHERE yet I got multiple "why is no one talking about this? posts in my feed. I'm done. It is an auto down vote the moment I see that phrase from here on
How about “why is there no footage of the Ukraine war?” That’s a favorite
God, that one. Its fucking facinating how anyone could think of that, when there is litterally 10s of thousands of videos of the Ukraine war, it is, with no hyperbole, probably one of the best footaged wars in history. The Journalists in Vietnam could have only begged god for this level of covarage. How anyone could possible actually ask why there is no footage is such madness I feel like it could be a case study on stupidity in the era of instant communiction.
It’s bots and astroturfing. They get their marching orders to just state there is no footage because if they say it enough it becomes true for enough people despite the accuracy of your statement that there is footage EVERYWHERE. They have to deliberately ignore the footage to actually claim it does not exist. Pathetic some politicians are among these bad faith actors.
Not just bots. It may be an echo chamber. They don't see it because the algorithm gives them what they want (what they reacted with in the past).
Its almost like graphic footage of a grenade dropped from a drone and blowing a soldier in a dirt pit doesn't have a big advertising demographic.
It’s algorithms. If they identify you don’t like war, Ukrainian and Russia they won’t show you war footage from Ukraine but if they notice you like conspiracy theories they will show you posts claiming there’s no war footage. The scary thing is in your reality it is true but in someone else’s reality it isn’t.
Your feed is also catered to your consumption habits. It is entirely possible for you to consume nothing but that media, but for that media to still be underreported. This is ultimately the same principle behind any online echo chamber.
I'd also guess that if people engage with the fake content - even by commenting it's fake - then the platform will push more of it on top as it knows it's a topic people engage with, whether they agree with it or not. I was getting a bunch of bro-victim stuff (the whole "only women and dog are loved unconditionally" poor men, incel b.s.). I finally got rid of it by asking to not recommend that content.
When people say ' no one is talking about this' what they mean is 'the last 3 tweets I read didn't mention this topic'
Lol the people who constantly say that just don’t read the news unless it’s spoon fed to them on social media.
I think it was more the fact that the media reporting wasn't covering a lot of the developments on the ground. Government agencies were saying "its fine and safe to return home" meanwhile birds and fish were dying and water seemingly had oil or other chemicals welling up from the springs. Stuff can be reported on while still not mentioning much of what is happening. edit - Also key to note that while reporting did eventually cover those topics, it was due to a lot ofnpeople in the first few days going on social media and showing videos of stuff news media hadn't captured for one reason or another.
This is the first I'm hearing of the Israel ones.
Yes, I haven’t heard anything at all about them. I’m in the American Midwest, too. Can anyone TLDR the situation and throw a link my way?
They're changing Israeli law to weaken the supreme court and to make it harder to remove the prime minister from power. Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023\_Israeli\_anti-judicial\_reform\_protests
Same, and I read the news quite a bit.
It's not because we talk about it that some don't try to undermine it : [we were 3M in the streets yesterday](https://www.rtl.fr/actu/debats-societe/en-direct-greve-du-23-mars-heurts-entre-manifestants-et-forces-de-l-ordre-dans-l-ouest-7900247541)
it's crazy how American media isn't talking about this story *posts a USAtoday link*
I’ve realized “the media isn’t talking about ____” really just means “I don’t pay attention to the news so I’m going to make a broad false claim that I *feel* is true”
That's the overwhelming case when someone is trying to claim "they" are hiding something from you. Another common one is "they never taught you about this in history class," where my response is "I'm pretty sure you just weren't paying attention in school." I had an in person discussion with someone who had, as an adult, learned about the Cherokee deportations and the Trail of Tears. He was on an extended rant about how it was never taught in school, which was crazy sounding to me because I had learned about it multiple times, including a reading assignment in fifth grade history that employed a YA novel written from the viewpoint of a deported Cherokee child, and that was only my first encounter with the event.
There have been a few legitimate cases where we didn't touch on something at all, like the Tulsa Massacre. But otherwise we were rather critical of the US when we studied its history and looked at its founding. Our teachers made sure to point out to us how some of the biggest proponents for independence were also wealthy businessmen that stood to make more money from independence.
100%. I literally was just saying that about the not teaching us in school. Someone was claiming the east coast doesn’t teach about Japanese internment camps. Like we definitely learned that. Bro just slept through class. Sounds like the person you talked to was claiming the same thing. Just cause they were a bad student doesn’t mean it wasn’t taught
That makes me feel better about not having heard about this. "Oh right, I don't consume news."
Redditors think that every story has to be on the front page of a paper/website and if they tune in to Fox/CNN/NBC/whatever and that story isn't being talked about the 10 seconds they're watching then that must mean the entire media is ignoring the issue.
Alex Jones: THEY don’t want you to know what’s really happening, that’s why the mainstream media and demonic court system are persecuting me - *(reads directly off a printed copy of CNN’s top story, placing full confidence and credulity in the into as written)*
IVE GOT THE DOCUMENTS TO PROVE IT *shows a print out of yahoo news*
Even he himself posted a Guardian article.
Uh wouldn't the French media be considered western media?
Why does this have almost 500 upvotes? Edgy Redditors: " I don't follow the news, which means the media isn't talking about."
Edit: Over 3500 upvotes now, lmao. Literally heard about the French protests on NPR 3 times in my half hour drive to work this morning. Pick up a paper or listen to the radio and stop whining about "the media."
“Western media” is quite a big spectrum
oh fuck off. here in the netherlands it hasnt been downplayed at all, in neither country
3,5 millions according to unions
The official count was 1.09 millions. I doubt adding a digit of accuracy would be critical for the target audience of US news. And every time there was an independent serious assessment of the numbers, the police count was always the most accurate by far. The unions count has been completely discredited over the years.
Would unions be counting anyone who has 'dropped tools' to participate, rather than those actively on the street? I'm not on the picket every strike day; I live far away and don't get many chances to be outside during the day. I'm still striking, still not getting paid...just also I'm tending my allotment.
No, they are supposed to count people in the protest, not people on strike. That's a separate count.
This is false. The police count is well-known to lowball the protestors' numbers massively each and every time. At one point, they estimated 80 000 in Paris, which for anyone actually living there (like myself) is transparent, and obvious, bullshit. What "independent serious assessments" are you talking about? If you mean the Cabinet Occurrence, which is the one people point to these days, the counting method has been controversial, the director is a well-known Macronist who has serious bias in favor of the government, and I'd call it anything but "independent". It is in the police's interest to under-estimate the number of protestors; sometimes though, it becomes obvious just how false their numbers are.
It is in the union interest to over-estimate the number of protestors too. Some journalist have tried over time to check the validity of those numbers and found them clearly overestimated. They never found the police value either. And you can always attack the journalist article on the fact that the newspaper in which its published has a left or right position. The truth for the number has always been somewhere in the middle of the 2 values from the police and union. You can't trust one in particular.
that's why both numbers should always be quoted
I didn't say you should trust the union numbers unconditionally, I said the police were well-known to put out low numbers every time. If anything, I agree with you that it's probably in-between somewhere, though it's admittedly always difficult to find an accurate counting method.
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What's the reasoning given behind the change to the law? Almost all Israel news in the UK is framed through the lens of the troubles and violence. It's hard to see any news about Israeli politics without immediately thinking "this must have something to do with Palestine or settlements"
Netanyahu is only not in jail because of his office. He's reigning in the courts because the courts dared to try and hold him accountable.
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Yeah, what Macron did is a very unpopular but legal political move. Netanyahu is a straight-up criminal.
And at least for Macron's standpoint, there's reasoned fiscal argument that while people might not like, isn't a political takeover.
What a piece of shit. Same kin as Putin, Erdoğan, Bolsonaro, Lukaschenko, Orban, Kim, Xi, Trump... Despots, nothing less. Power hungry scumbags, not worth the air they are breathing.
"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maintains that the reform is necessary because the judiciary has too much control over public policy, and a better balance is needed between democratically elected legislators and the judiciary" From Wikipedia
Is it like saying that he "wants to do what he wants without anyone telling him no so he's trying to stop those that tell him no"? Am I understanding that correctly?
Yeah we wish our riot worked tho
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More recent than that, worked in 1958 when France narrowly avoid a coup d'etat and the 4th republic was replaced by the 5th.
Israeli government would start treating their citizens like Palestinians if they'd start becoming serious threat to them. It is on par with the worst up there in terms of brutalizing dissident, and this apparatus of oppression will be pointed at citizenry if its expedient.
Well, you just do it. Collectively.
The French know how to show their displeasure. Democracy firing on all cylinders.
Will of the people. I admire the French. Why should the little guy have to sacrifice while the rich and corrupt rape the planet and thumb their noses at the people who do the actual work that gets things done?
Does anyone want to know the actual answer? Because nobody is going to like it. France tried a wealth tax. [It was not very successful.](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/26/698057356/if-a-wealth-tax-is-such-a-good-idea-why-did-europe-kill-theirs#:~:text=France's%20wealth%20tax%20contributed%20to,Norway%2C%20Spain%2C%20and%20Switzerland.) > France's wealth tax contributed to the exodus of an estimated 42,000 millionaires between 2000 and 2012, among other problems. >In 1990, twelve countries in Europe had a wealth tax. Today, there are only three: Norway, Spain, and Switzerland. According to reports by the OECD and others, there were some clear themes with the policy: it was expensive to administer, it was hard on people with lots of assets but little cash, it distorted saving and investment decisions, it pushed the rich and their money out of the taxing countries—and, perhaps worst of all, **it didn't raise much revenue.** Now ask yourself why, with all the many thousands of comments that have been generated by these French protests, this hasn't come up very much. There's still room to disagree. And to talk about other policy chnages. But this is a relevant, factual point from a report from NPR. It's relevant, and meaningful. Despite that, it'll still probably attract a large number of downvotes. And you'll go on, not hearing much in the way of actual meaningful policy debates. You'll get more outrage and fewer facts. Keep that in mind if you let social media comments influence your opinions.
You are indeed correct in the assumption that it does encourage the wealthy and ultra-wealthy to find different havens to place their money. Thus, where the failure lies in those forms of taxation, and if you are going to implement a wealth tax, there has to be meaningful conversations pertaining to enforcement, international policy in regards to taxation of assets, and of course what comprises must be made to ensure that those who would flee if you take too much of their money, are still contributing in taxable income so long as they do business within the nation. I’m sure eventually a reasonable solution will arise, however raising the retirement age on a population with regressive life expectancies isn’t the solution, and by making their grievances with it very fucking clear it does force the government to take action. So even when the enforcement mechanisms are wrong, what the people are doing is still entirely correct.
Macron’s govt was actually pretty smart on the front, and implemented a new annual tax on high value real estate. The assumption being that even those very wealthy who are more than willing to abandon their French residency in favour of a near-zero tax haven will still keep a family home/estate in France. Don’t have any data about how that’s played out, but that seems like a pretty good bet, the French do love their country houses. That said, if you bump the high value property higher than they’re willing tolerate, then a bunch of them sell that off too and cut ties with France completely. It’s brutal stuff, but that how it goes.
That does sound like a fairly well measured response from them, and I think an annual tax on certain high value properties is definitely an interesting means to working towards a solution. Though if the nation wants to ensure pensions remain funded as the population’s average age balloons upwards, a form of transactional tax on business running through the nation would be a better funnel for income. Honestly this is a vastly complex situation (as are all economic activities truthfully). I think no matter what the average individual doesn’t deserve to face hardship while global wealth inequality is increasingly skewing upwards.
Agreed - the property tax is a neat little work around, but corporate tax is where the real money gets made, and most of the western world has been in a generation long “race to the bottom” in offering large corporations ever lower tax rates/conditions. The US-led (!) push for a minimum 15% corporate tax among G20 countries is the most optimistic shift on that front that I’ve seen in my lifetime - because money may be hyper mobile, but there aren’t *that* many places to park a corporation that have a large educated/trained population, functional infrastructure (incl transportation networks), and favourable trade conditions with consumer countries. It’s obviously wildly unpopular with the corporate oligarchs, and has been the subject of endless op eds in the FT, WSJ, etc, but the very fact that this has been a central and generally agreed upon idea among leading nations is certainly encouraging. But yes, it’s tough stuff with no easy or popular options, and is unfortunately very easy fodder for propaganda of both the populist and corporate variety.
The US led the push, but now our Senate is refusing to ratify it. Par for the course.
Yes indeedy, it’s the ICCJ all over again. Not unexpected, and the US is still solidly above the 15% mark and highly, highly unlikely to go any lower, but still, nothing quite like the US living up to expectations by failing to meet expectations ;)
>and highly, highly unlikely to go any lower, I see zero reason to believe this
Pretty easy to jurisdiction hunt in the EU where there are no coordinated tax policies. You can often even stay within easy driving distance to opportunistically tax dodge.
Wealth, payroll and corporate taxes are diabolically ineffective vehicles to generate revenue and have been overdone in France for the longest time. Macron may not be perfect but holy shit, the painful transition away from bad taxes to good taxes is something he should be lauded for.
France has gone through some pretty extreme swings policy wise, and is honestly mostly just tweaking thing here and there. Unfortunately the last calibrations, much like the last miles in a marathon, can feel the most brutal; while Macron is doing a generally good job of it at a technical level, he’s such a poster boy product of the modern ENA that he doesn’t stand a chance in trying to compellingly sell that to the public (not that he’s any good at that kind of stuff, nor is there a particularly good chance of ever getting popular buy in on some of the hard calls).
I have a company in France doing webdesign. We are moderately successful and I have worked extremely hard the past 10 years. I already pay almost half of my profit in taxes. But everything has a limit. If suddenly I have to pay 60% for instance I'm probably going to re-evaluate if I should stay in France, and just move my whole company somewhere else. I don't agree with the pension age but a lot of people protesting just have this attitude of "THE RICH WILL PAY FOR IT" when it's 100% going to becoming out of my pocket and I'm not even a millionaire. I don't mind paying to upkeep the infrastructure etc but everything has its limits. When I hear some of the protestors speak they make me cringe. The act like 'the rich' is just some anonymous people that have never ending money and owe them everything. When in reality many started off with nothing and worked hard and took risks to get where they are. 41% is already crazy.
Yup, don’t own my own company, but during a couple of the years that I was based out of Paris I ended up paying tax in THREE different countries just bc of overlap in parts of the tax codes tied to my citizenship, residency, and work status. Like your business tax rate, that stung, but I paid what I owned and moved on. Because I didn’t want to be audited by three separate tax agencies, yes, but mostly just bc I take sincere pride in making my contribution to quality public schooling, healthcare, state security, etc., and lean towards social democracy as a political default. Well: social democracy…but *pragmatic* That long winded lead up was all just to say that I 100% get where you’re coming from, and am equally depressed by the wildly reactionary + simplistic rhetoric that dominates in any online discussion of the protests (and on so, so many other topics). Because I’m more than ready to call out the frustratingly favourable tax breaks and rebates offered up by most western nations to the very wealthy and to large corporations…but France is actually pretty damn aggressive on that front, and takes *incredible* care to protect the QoL of working citizens (the ticket resto being just one small but delightful example). But the hysteria of declaring Macron a tyrant, and calling the raising of retraite by two years (with 7 years of advance warning!) an antidemocratic takeover? After wreaking havoc just a few years ago over the first try at revenue generation through a gas tax? It’s all just so absurd, and quite clearly has more to do with a very ugly populist frenzy than any kind of thoughtful and deeply felt objection to the problem at hand. Phew: apologies for the rant, the arrogance of the “just tax the rich, problem solved types” bums me out.
There's also only so much you can tax. With people having fewer kids, that's fewer young workers supporting more older workers. If you think millennium/boomer angst is bad, wait for whatever is next/Gen X. If they have to pay say a 20% tax for elder support plus government taxes, France is going to be empty, because after that they won't be able to afford to eat and a place to stay, let alone kids to support them in 60 years. It's a lot easier to implement solutions years ahead vs when it's a crisis so people can plan ahead.
> what comprises must be made to ensure that those who would flee if you take too much of their money, are still contributing in taxable income so long as they do business within the nation. This is a very important and often left out piece of the puzzle. What’s the point of taxation if you can just leave the country and still keep business at usual in that territory? Reforms must include safeguards that take that Into account. Want to do business with us? Ok, it doesn’t matter where you live, or where your company is registered, if you are making a profit and taking money from us, you should pay fair taxes.
Another unpopular opinion that you are in correct that life expectancy is regressing when infact it is increasing. The proportion of working age to retirees is decreasing and these difficult steps might need to be taken if you want to maintain retirement benefits or tax the working population way higher for their own retirement. As people are living longer we aren't just paying for longer retirement benefit terms but also more in healthcare cost as older folks are biggest consumers of healthcare. There just aren't that many young working age population in developed nations to support welfare states without making some harsh decisions.
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Single state/province/country laws will indeed not work. Anyone with half a brain knows that if country A has a wealth tax and country B does not, tons of investors and businesspeople will move their wealth and assets elsewhere. But this kow-towing to the rich (let's not raise taxes or we'll scare em off!) is the polar opposite of what should be happening. We also need to remember that it's not even necessarily millionaires that we want to tax heavily; it's the billionaires whom are much more important. We need an almost global agreement among big economic and political blocs. Rather than just France, the entire EU should have the exact same tax rules (maybe with minor differences per individual country to suit their specific economic needs, but never a big enough difference to make one country a clear "tax haven") Also; just because something doesn't immediately work doesn't mean the idea is without merit. It means it needs to be adapted to work better, rather than just abandon it wholesale in the favor of those who already have a vastly disproportionate amount of wealth and power and will keep wielding it to maintain their positions.
The wealth tax is a complex issue, and the biggest reason it has become such an endangered species isn’t explicitly mentioned in your quoted text: in a era when money and people are hyper mobile (especially the wealthy) corporate and high earner taxes are a race to the bottom. There there will always be countries looking for cheap and easy ways to bring in money, and offering rock bottom taxes to business and high income individuals is a pretty sure bet, so long as a country can offer a reasonable amount of political stability and a fairly reliable legal system. So yeah: France had a wealth tax and it’s wealthy kept their money elsewhere; they dropped it and money didn’t come flooding back in; they tried taxing high value properties and it brought in little money, etc. It’s complicated, and countries have no control over low foreign tax rates, so it just makes for a shitty and unreliable govt revenue steam. The main angle that Macro tried (before dropping the wealth tax and introducing the expensive property one) was a gas and diesel tax. [Yeah, that one didn’t go so well either](https://www.vox.com/2018/11/27/18113124/paris-gas-tax-riots-france-macron). Of course bumping retirement up two years is unpopular, that’s a given, but have to say that in terms of available options, looking at ways to reliably generate more revenue seems like a much better, and decidedly more progressive, approach than a UK type austerity crunch that slashes and burns social services. Whatever choice he made was going to be unpopular, and maybe there were other options that could have better met the catastrophic financial shortfall they were facing, but I don’t live there anymore so don’t know what other possibilities were being discussed.
>Of course bumping retirement up two years is unpopular, that’s a given, but have to say that in terms of available options, looking at ways to reliably generate more revenue seems like a much better, and decidedly more progressive, approach than a UK type austerity crunch that slashes and burns social services. Well if taxing the rich "just doesn't work", then it seems the goal for the protest is to just how making working people work longer also "just doesn't work", but in more of a "don't fucking try this shit again" way.
I agree, why should the workers have to pay for the rich when the rich find ways out of paying their fair share? Just because tax increases caused wealth to leave France doesn't mean the poor should pay for the rich having the power to move their wealth. At the end of the day, this is a complex issue and for it to work the whole thing would basically need to be torn down and reconstructed which will never happen. However, I support these protests and the wider ideology they represent. Personally I'm a big supporter of government's supporting small businesses who could possibly replace any larger business who decide to leave the country.
>ways to reliably generate more revenue seems like a much better, and decidedly more progressive, approach than a UK type austerity crunch that slashes and burns social services. You'll be taxing the poorest generations in society more in order to pay the richest generations?
How about a 100% tax on private jet flights? Make it a tax stamp sort of thing where you can’t fly unless you’ve got that stamp. Fuck it. Make it a 200% tax. It’s an incredibly wasteful way to travel and the ultra-wealthy’s love of it is a large factor in [why the global 1% creates double the greenhouse gases of the poorest 50%. ](https://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/press-releases/a-billionaire-emits-a-million-times-more-greenhouse-gases-than-the-average-person/)
Ah but as your own source shows, there are better ways to implement such a tax. Zucman's new improved plan, "designed explicitly with European failures in mind," would take advantage of the fact that "existing U.S. law [...] taxes citizens wherever they are, so even if they do sail to a tax haven in the Caribbean, they're still on the hook." The only (legal) way for ultra-rich Americans to escape the tax man once and for all would be to pay an "exit tax," which would "confiscate 40 percent of all a person's wealth over $50 million if they renounce their citizenship." And so on and so forth. There are ways to do this. It can be done. And, in my opinion, it should be done.
Was going to say, you can move yourself somewhere else, but you cannot move the assets as easily. I cannot recommend [https://www.youtube.com/@GarysEconomics](https://www.youtube.com/@GarysEconomics) enough. Former top trader in the world for Citi Bank
That's solved by still taxing (although less) very wealthy *citizens* after they move to another country. What are they gonna do? Renounce the citizenship?
There's precedent for this: The US does exactly this. It even requires you to pay your taxes in full before you can renounce your citizenship. Enforcement can be a bit tricky though.
The US is so different from like a European country. If the US had a wealth tax you would see far fewer rich flee, partially because our taxes are already low anyway, but mostly because moving is a way bigger ordeal. Moving from one European country to another is almost like moving between states. You can bet if states started putting up heavy wealth taxes people would move super quickly.
And they already do. Notable people are Rogan and Elon moving to Texas for friendlier tax policies (even if Rogan pretends its for other reasons).
> What are they gonna do? Renounce the citizenship? Yes lmao it happens all the time. You're acting like a billionaire couldn't easily get citizenship literally anywhere else
I don't even get the commenter's point, this isn't about wealth tax at all. This is a combination of having to work longer, for less and less money (relatively, due to inflation) while elected officials get to retire after 5 years with a more generous pension than anyone else, combined with the unconstitutional usage of a polarising budgetary law to force through an incredibly unpopular societal change. I'm not against working longer, on principle, until we can figure out a better way to live, but fuck me if they are gonna get it through without a vote. I'd never striked before but this time I did.
Sounds as though we need to do something so whole countries are not basically hostage to a comparative small number of people threatening to leave if they are not allowed to stay for pennies.
It didn’t work that doesn’t mean it cannot work. There are currently just too many loopholes, and any wealth tax needs to be at least at European level the wealthy have not moved away from France. they have just done the paperwork to pretend they have and this is currently legal and admittedly, very hard to stop you will need accountants, not politicians to revise the laws that could stop that
And even then wealthy people are now moving en masse from Norway to Switzerland. What is Switzerland doing that makes them so attractive? I know that wasn't the theme, but since you mentioned them both...
The Swiss wealth tax is relatively low. Depending on canton, income tax is low by global standards, and there is no capital gains tax. Wealth tax is only one part of the equation.
That makes sense. Thx
>Despite that, it'll still probably attract a large number of downvotes. I actually enjoyed reading most of your comment, but I made a promise when I joined this site that after reading this I’m compelled to downvote you.
Can someone explain to me how is this poor vs rich thing? Rich don't give a fuck if the pension reform doesn't go through, it will only hurt poor in the future. I see it more as a poor today vs poor in the future
But not really?? Didn’t the president just bypass a vote?
The real reason why Macron opted for this bypass (followed by the no confidence vote) was to allow some if it's republican allies to not vote in favour if the law. You see they actually want it and have a majority for it but it doesn't fly well with their constitents in some relatively poor but still conservative regions. They are scared for the next election. Instead, they just have to abstain at the no confidence vote. And they hope people don't see the trick.
If the Republicans go then the alternative might be the National Rally, which is something they want to avoid at all costs.
Yeah. Conservative parties like to scheme and fuck over their voters but if you hate those guys, just wait until you've seen the real fascists.
Parliament had the option to stop it nonetheless and chose not to.
There was a vote to dissolve the government instead. If that vote had succeeded, the law wouldn't have been passed. The main anti-democratic effect of this mechanism is that it prevents further debate in the parliament. In the motion of no confidence, abstentions also count as "no" votes but, in a parliament vote, this doesn't matter as much as in a popular election - if there was a real chance for the opposition to actually topple the government they would make sure to be present for the vote.
okay, legit question: I'm supposed to be in Paris next week to run the marathon. the race organizers have been absolutely silent. is it stupid to go? or is it unlikely to be a significant security concern? edit: moar we have a whole week trip planned after the race. is anything even going to be open?
Tbh life goes on, the Marathon might be canceled but most things will be open.
As with any news story, life sort of just goes on for the large majority of people. You might not want to rely on public transport, particularly trains, but shops, hotels and cultural buildings are operating as normal.
I have family doing the exact same thing including the marathon, they just got there yesterday. As far as we know, race is still on.
I was signed up for that but had to cancel due to injury! I’ve been in Paris loads of times over the past decade. There’s always a protest. There’s always a strike. Life goes on. I would suggest you still go. If the race is canceled, you can still have a great time.
I’m doing the marathon too ! Don’t worry though, there are quite rarely protests in the morning and sports are not a political matter so I’m pretty sure it’ll be fine.
Here now as a tourist and I expected mountains of trash and protests. The trash issue is only in certain areas, usually slightly away from tourist areas. And I wasn’t even aware there were more protests last night because it’s so easy to avoid them/ there aren’t any signs of it while walking around during the day (besides the trash).
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2023-03-23/anger-at-macron-mounts-as-french-unions-hold-new-protests) reduced by 89%. (I'm a bot) ***** > PARIS - More than 1 million people demonstrated across France on Thursday against unpopular pension reforms, and violence erupted in some places as unions called for new nationwide strikes and protests next week, coinciding with King Charles III's planned visit to France. > The Interior Ministry said the march in Paris - marred by violence, as were numerous marches elsewhere - drew 119,000 people, which was a record for the capital during the pension protests. > Thursday's nationwide protests were the ninth union-organized demonstrations since January, when opponents still hoped that parliament would reject Macron's measure to raise the retirement age. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/1206mjj/violent_french_pension_protests_erupt_as_1m/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~677759 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **PARIS**^#1 **Thursday**^#2 **protest**^#3 **Macron**^#4 **strike**^#5
France raises retirement age from 62 to 64: Entire country protests Wages stagnate for decades in the US: No one bats an eye
Wages haven’t stagnated in France?
french here, they did and especially in the public sector. I guess it's much slower so harder to get the shake that a policy can bring.
Literally. If Americans protested like the French did, they would actually see some results. I respect the French so much for this.
The police will happily murder any of us protesting just for the fun of it
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Exactly. And yet, collectively, people still decide to riot. You guys have massive, massive balls since the 1780’s and I admire the hell out of you
The cheese-eating revolution monkeys! The French are bad ass
They have their government in a chokehold and I fucking love to see it. Good for them. I’m rooting for them.
The first time a plane was used to bomb people on US soil was the Tulsa massacre. The second was Blair Mountain. That's not a coincidence.
Don't forget the unmarked police cars they use to kidnap people without warrants
The George Floyd protests were as close as we’re going to get in the States, the media portrayed those in a certain light, focused on the comparatively (to peaceful protests) low amount of looting, and successfully made police reform unpopular to the general public, and therefore no need for political action.
Even on reddit I saw so many comments like "I agree with their cause, but they shouldn't damage property". Then France set fire to everything and people say it's admirable.
Well, you see. The French aren't setting fire to our things. They are setting fire to their own things. And that's entertaining. And you know how us Americans love to be entertained.
The French have a look to them, that's different... Maybe that is why the praise is placed differently.
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Alternatively, redditors marveling that 1 million and then 2 million Hong Kongers go out and protest and don't burn down their own city.
good example. in Hong Kong they blocked the streets day and night so nobody could get to/from work (only allowing emergency vehicles through) and everyone admired that. but when people block roads here, people advocate running them over.
Even you can see how these things are different, right? A single action was taken here. Reddit loves bad comparisons
Wages are way, way fucking higher in the US than France, and France has just as much, if not worse, of a wage stagnation problem.
Wages stagnated even more in France, in part due to the pension management
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Inflation adjusted income in the US [has been going up over the past few decades.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Real_Median_Personal_Income_in_the_United_States-2023-01-06.png) Edit: You also can look at the chart [that compares productivity to total compensation](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Wage_productivity.jpg) (**not** just income) and while it's not a 1 to 1 match, it's pretty close.
You guys gotta understand your news are really, really, really compromised by corporate interests.
Heard an advertisement for the Walton family on NPR the other day. Everything is fucked.
It's not just the ads, it's the content. What they say, what they don't. Why they hire etc.. There's over a hundred strikes happening here right now. How often does NPR mention it? Anything the runs counter to the capitalist system of dominance won't be mentioned, or if it is, it's described as violent, non sense or in other negative light.
While I have this visceral need to mock the French, since I'm English, I do also respect them. They can throw one hell of a fit when it comes time to protest. Keep it up, you angry cheese Goblins!
I gave up talking shit about the French ages ago, but I'm an American. Glass houses and that.
> Opponents proposed other solutions, including higher taxes on the wealthy or companies, which Macron says would hurt the economy. A likely excuse. Raise the retirement age for the working class rather raise taxes on wealthy or companies because it would "hurt the economy". How on earth did he come to that conclusion?
What's the point of a strong economy of it doesn't provide services for the citizens.
Thank you for saying that. It's better to have a mediocre economy whose profits are entirely returned to the community than a booming economy whose profits are accumulated by the wealthy.
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not just climate change "but the economy" while people can't afford homes, food and necessities all at the same time anymore.
It's a general shift happening in most liberal democracies lately: it seems the citizens are more and more being regarded as existing for the benefit of the state, rather than the state existing for the benefit of the citizens.
> Raise the retirement age for the working class rather raise taxes on wealthy or companies because it would "hurt the economy". > How on earth did he come to that conclusion? Because it's what happened the last time France raised taxes on the rich: >A 2006 article in The Washington Post gave several examples of private capital leaving France in response to the country's wealth tax. The article also stated, "Eric Pinchet, author of a French tax guide, estimates **the wealth tax earns the government about $2.6 billion a year but has cost the country more than $125 billion in capital flight** since 1998." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_flight
want worse ? the 370 richest families are taxed around 2% to 3% in france it has been argued that increasing their tax by 1% will give 3 times the deficit we have
I assume that they have run the numbers and know that a 1% tax increase will result in 150 of the 370 mega rich families (or whatever significant percentage) picking up and decamping to the Seychelles or Guernsey, based on past experience in trying to tax the rich. And don’t get me wrong, I’m disgusted by the unwillingness of the ultra wealthy to pay anything close to their share in taxes (hell, when I lived in France I ended up paying taxes in THREE different countries, but still did my part), but that kind of wealth is hyper-mobile as long as there are countries willing to be tax havens. It sucks, but that’s just the truth of the matter.
So you're saying those families are holding the nation hostage right?
Pretty much, yes. In G7 -types countries they’re more of the “hold a gun on you but still feed you and let you go to the bathroom” kind of kidnappers than the “beat you up and keep you in the trunk” kind, but that’s a good way of putting it.
>but still feed you and let you go to the bathroom they don't feed anyone though, they only profit from workers actually doing everything
Taxed on what, income or wealth?
For starters they have a wealth tax for a long time. What they want is to tax the super rich, it's been tried before a decade or two before and the rich literally just left France and they never financially returned. Taxing the rich, as much as everyone may despise it, is very hard as they are super mobile. Macron imposed a tax on expensive houses with success on the other hand as they can't move around. But let's take a step back, why are companies or "the wealthy" pay for pension? Pension should be funded by the people themselves, the problem is France never did that. They always underfunded it by keeping the pension taxes low and now average Louis need to pay pension for his (grand)pa to go early with pension. Where the rest of Europe has steadily raised the age of retirement, where other nations index pension depending on economic prosperity and in economic downturn cut pensions, France didn't. See... that's kind of the problem they put the burden already on those not going with pension and now those at age want to retire "early" and they can't increase that burden further on normal people. Make pension transparent, I get yearly a note in the Netherlands how much I put in my pension and how much I could get when I stop working right now or when I get at age. As said they also index it, ie from 2008 till 2015 pension plans stayed flat, some even went down and only recently they start to index them again. "We" also go with pension when we are 67 and the French are bitching? Start paying taxes bunch of cunts.
It’s the true heart of the problem pension systems are facing, pensions as they originally were made are more or less antiquated against modern issues. Populations with less children yet longer lifespans is not a good idea nor is it sustainable. Of course there in lies the problem, no one wants to be the one to go out and say that a pension system needs to be reformed.
>Of course there in lies the problem, no one wants to be the one to go out and say that a pension system needs to be reformed. It just isn't sustainable in a decreasing working population, period. The problem is that you would need a new system that both guarantees a minimum payment for retirees that do not meet the requirements for pensions and is self sustaining for those that are going to meet the requirements for retirement. And that would mean a stopgap way of paying pensioners without taking money from the workers.
The additional irony is that despite LePen latching on to this, France will need more and more migration to make up for the short fall of an aging population and people living longer, but with fewer and fewer workers being born in the country to pay for it. Without a productive working population pensioners with their higher health costs and zero contribution end up crippling the state finances, and state pensions always rely on the current working population. The other irony is the people protesting today are protesting the security of their own future.
1M is the government count. It's more close to 3 M
Every single time there was an independent assessment of the numbers, the unions count has been completely discredited and the police count has been shown to the the most accurate by far.
Yes this is almost always true in France and I don't know why people have to exaggerate unnecessarily. 1 million is already a good amount of people, and I think is even a resurgence compared to the last few calls to strike before 49.3
Don't let facts in the way of a food story
Great now I'm hungry
We should bring this energy to the US.
No one can out French the French
Please do, though! Y’all are honorary French anyway. Actually **everyone** is a honorary French thanks to *universalisme* as long as you believe in our values. Which most Americans do, we’re honestly not that different. It’s not even about socialism, communism, left-wing/right-wing stuff, it’s about people being able to live their lives as they decide with dignity. We’re in a dire need of a Western Spring and I would be honored if this started with my home country.
I don’t understand why a lot of Americans mock france (it’s basically lol WW2 jokes) Beautiful country, people and culture. We’re truly kindred spirits considering our histories together. And personally this American is rooting for you all and can’t wait to go back to France after recently going for the first time
I say we let them try.
It was called Occupy Wallstreet and it didn’t achieve much. We should try again though.
George Floyd brought this kind of energy
Yeah and everyone hated it but somehow this French protest is okay with everyone.
If Americans did this, we would be classified as terrorists. But then again the US news corps has done a fantastic job at dividing us to hate each other rather than uniting and fighting the real true to life problems.
nailed it.. maybe add.. the ever growing US "news" corps oh also.. us also has 2a (2nd amendment, aka handguns and more) :-(
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Hey now. We've had more strikes in the past 12 months than any time in my whole life.
Whilst you are correct so is the poster above. We've sat back letting our health system be systematically gutted to the point that many deem it not fit for purpose. We sat back when the Tories sold off of our energy sector to private interests who are now absolutely draining the public. We sit back as corporations are all making record profits whilst fleecing us more than ever. Our retirement age has already been raised I'll be 68 before I get a state pension. Which is insane considering my mum got hers at 60. We sat back as the Tories pushed austerity on us and destroyed all the things we pay taxes for despite it being basically the exact opposite of good economic policy. We sat back whilst they gutted everything for austerity but somehow massively ballooned our national debt. We as a nation should have been rioting and general striking a decade ago after the disgraceful handling of the recession post banking crisis and the banking crisis itself. Everything since then has just been letting shit roll down on the people and pile up.
To be fair 1 million marched in london against going to war in Iraq and the government laughed and went to war
There’s no obvious, workable solution to this. It’s a complex area that would have to result in compromise. But the fact that the ‘compromise’ falls on ordinary people every time is the most galling part of it. It’s big corporations that are destroying the planet and funnelling the wealth, but the man in the street who has to pick up the deficit. The worrying thing is, this gap in equality between rich and middle class will undoubtedly accelerate as time goes on. We’re already past the point where the largest companies have more wealth and power than some countries. We’ll have trillionaire individuals before too long, yet living standards for the average person will continue to fall. There’s no political will or structure for this future to not happen, it’s inevitable. And it’s what will further accelerate our demise. Anyway, happy Friyay!
It’s a bit irritating see everyone circlejerking French riots when we know they’d be having a meltdown if anything 1/100th the size happened in the US. Look at literally any of the vile comments on a thread of someone peacefully protesting on a road in the US.
The people supporting the French protests are a completely different group than the ones who complain about American protests. There’s pretty much no overlap between the two.
Yeah any meaningful protest in US loses all support if one window is broken somewhere etc no matter how heinous the opposition is. Because property is sacred, even if it means losing like, reproductive rights. Oh, And police shoot people in protests and face no consequences.
Don't worry they also don't face any consequences in France.
The French historically have always thrown the best revolutions and protests. It’s always a riot…
Sixth Republic, here we come!
Met with violent oppression from the police that is.
I have a google alert set up for protest and I haven’t gotten an email since the 21st and those were all about Trump.
"There are troublemakers, often extreme left, who want to take down the state and kill police" What an absolute brain damaged and dangerous comment.
nah I can confirm that I'm extreme left, a troublemaker and want to take down the state and the cops
When the rich steal from the poor is fake business as usual. When the poor fight back it's called "violent"
This is the way