First one in October, I think. In September there were 2 oligarchs/technocrats who fell down and another had went out of his car on the middle of the road and decided to have a heart attack and die in a ditch outside Moscow.
We should maybe have a running bet as to how many it will be (only half joking).
When you have multiple political parties all obsessed with just only doing right by their ideologies and not thinking what really is effective for the country, you will not get anywhere. The way I see how democracy is turning out for some countries is that, they rather see the country fail than to find that exact equilibrium to make the country work., because ideologies are far more important.
How will the country work when you have parties all pulling in opposite directions? Unfortunately I don’t even think a new President will help if the parties will keep doing the same thing? Discussions, elections, referendums, all talk and time wasted on all these and nothing in reality ever gets done.
It used to be a feature of the extreme left and right whereby they would fall out over minor points of doctrine and spend most of their time fighting each other rather than a (supposedly) common cause. Think of the famous Monty Python’s “People’s Front of Judea” sketch.
This does appear to have spread to mainstream parties, possibly because they spend more time pandering to extreme elements.
It’s more fundamental than that. We have got to a point where there’s flagrant class war. The same people have to pay over and over again. Macron’s economic policies have caused this and now he’s attacking what has been fort for and won in the past.
This isn’t so much party ideologies it’s fundamental social contract.
There’s political power plays but that’s normal.
The problem is Macron and his political supporters in government won’t move on some fundamentals that all the center left, left, ecologists and far right want to keep for the people.
The ironic thing is this government was bought down by thier allies the center right, it was a self centered power play by the home minister 
.
It was all predictable and the only way forward is to have a presidential election and then legislatives. It’s the President who has blocked this not the political parties.
Are you saying that in the case of France, that there are some obvious solutions that is good for the country but Macron is blocking them?
Of course ‘good’ can be subjective, for me it should be effective for the country that is more important. What are those things you think that Macron is blocking? Curious because obviously you know better than me on the ground.
Is there enough money to do this. Admittedly, w/o knowing precisely the “some fundamentals”, I would suspect that there is just not the money to maintain them. Is it analogous (or linked) to retirement age, pensions and days off… these are the same issues all over Europe. Unless there is a real sneaky way to unclothe Peter to clothe Paul, we will have an issue somewhere.
There has been a relatively simple way put forward to get more money in the empty coffers of the state, the Zucman tax: 2% tax for every person owning more than €100 millions, on their fortune, not on their revenues. It wouldn’t overly hurt the concerned people, as they have saved a lot of tax money under Macron during the last decade, and frankly, it’s still relatively modest in the grand scheme of things for these people: losing 2 millions from 100… and it was put forward as a required act of solidarity asked of these people for the common good.
The result? Most billionaires and their lackeys went at war against this tax. The successive ministers named by Macron have all dismissed it, despite of being a relatively simple solution to quickly get a lot of money into the state coffers. That angered the parties on the left of the political spectrum, understandably so.
In the end, if everyone keeps strictly looking after his or her own interest, you’ll end up in this situation. Democracy can only function if there is a collective sense for the common good, at all levels of society. Once that sense gets lost, it’s curtains.
Sounds predictably familiar… 
Macron created the problem with his Renaissance Party by passing tons of stuff that benefitted the rich through decree (49.3).
Some examples ISF (fortune tax), habitation tax, changes in Taxe Foncière and giving out hand outs to big companies so they could pay dividends to the shareholders. This all without reducing dépenses.
Now they want to tax the most vulnerable to pay for all this shit.
What they want to do will just make the rich richer.
Economically it’s nonsense as it just blocks more money that won’t be used spent in France so will compound the situation. The biggest problem in France and probably the rest of western Europe is that there’s not enough growth because the ‘people’ haven’t enough money to buy what they used to. Yet there’s no plan to solve this and the discourse is the same eye blinding nonsense.
The major problem is that the Government hasn’t the votes to pass a budget yet refuse to make any concessions.
They try to force through by decree (49.3) their budget, which is Macron’s budget (the President has the power to accept or decline a (49.3). So those against the same unchanged budget vote a no confidence in the case of Bayrou he called a vote of confidence.
Reforms on retirement come into it but it’s not the only thing. As far as the budget itself is concerned making pensioners pay more tax is very unpopular.
Makeing people work for nothing is also unpopular. Work more for less, this is what is ruining us as then the money doesn’t go round and do the work.
The base is everyone has to suffer so the rich can get richer. If I could see some investments by the rich in the country then I might feel different but then if they were investing we wouldn’t be in this mess in the 1st place. They invest in stuff, like real estate, that doesn’t do anything other than block housing and keep wealth in the same hands. Cause and effect, yet they don’t pay a fair amount.
Time to wake up!
The major problem is buying power of the majority is on the decrease, we’re getting poorer.
I agree but it comes down to money - there just isn’t the money to go around, and filter down, to fulfil expectations of a majority.
There isn’t enough money because the rich are hoarding it.
Wealth taxes are never really that simple though, hence a big reason why we hardly see them. Macron got rid of the one in France in 2018. France’s tax take already contributes to 46% of GDP, by way of comparison in the UK we’re at about 37% and Switzerland I think it is just 10%. I appreciate that part of the argument for bringing one is that those who earn more pay lower marginal tax rates than those on lower incomes, but I think it’s far from a slam dunk that this proposal will resolve the issues it is trying to address (although I freely admit I have little knowledge of the political and economic situation in France).
Zucman has said that it could raise 15-25bn euros a year. Other economists think a figure of 5bn euros is more likely. Still a lot of money, but what impact will that have down the road?
Valuation of assets, particularly privately owned ones can be particularly tricky. A lot of people’s wealth is ‘virtual’ or at risk of fluctuations across the economic cycle. That 2% tax can do a lot of damage to the value of the assets they hold - and once it is implemented, how can those at risk from the tax be confident it won’t be raised or widened further? How much of a higher return does someone need from investments to offset that additional cost? Those impacted will probably make a greater effort to shelter their assets or move to another country.
My biggest concern with such discussions around wealth taxes is that it just becomes an easy excuse for having someone else ‘pay’. Just like how some can be quite flippant about cuts on spending without understanding the impact that the lower level of service, wages or benefits this would lead to has on individuals caught up in it.
Sort of like the developed world vs the under-developed world.
My worry is that the gap between the rich and poor is not a European thing in general, it exists locally everywhere, but between the average wealth in Europe (or the US or Japan) vs that of the less developed world is another level of strain that plays into any equation and cannot easily be insulated against.
Ah yeah, the neo-liberal myth of the ‘filter down’ or ‘trickle down’. Give the money to the rich, and it will trickle down through the whole society.
Since it was brought to the fore, this myth has been debunked by all kinds of economists, and also by reality itself. People like Macron who still seem to believe in this absurdity are now confronted with a very serious task on their hand to balance the accounts of their states.
I phrased that badly - I meant which ever way to cut it there isn’t enough money. Even the most equal of division, if that would even be palatable to most, would not be then enough to fulfil the expectation of most of the people receiving it.
Let’s face the situation as it is: since two decades, the super-rich have paid proportionally less taxes than the middle classes and the poor. They have been protected and allowed to flourish. From multi-millionaires, they’ve gone to becoming billionaires. We had the political discussion in Switzerland some years ago: in the late eighties, the gap between the poorest and the best salary was roughly one to seven. So, a bank director was earning roughly seven times more than a low class construction worker. Now, the ratio is roughly one to 500! Some people have been allowed to enrich themselves beyond any rational measure, and that absolutely needs to be corrected.
Now that we have come to the point at which the states have difficulty to balance their accounts in order to fulfil their social duties, it’s only fair that those who have become so immensely rich pay their part in order to stabilize the societies in which they live as well. Social chaos won’t help them.
Can/Do people see that far though and would they every agree? I agree that no one wants chaos but skirting it (or even plunging into it) is more desirable than giving away ones dough.
Money, get away
Go get a good job with more pay, and you’re okay
Money, it’s a gas
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
A new car, caviar, four-star daydream
Think I’ll buy me a football team
Money, well, get back
I’m alright, Jack, keep your hands off of my stack
