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French PM may scrap two public holidays to reduce country’s crippling debt (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/world@lemmy.world
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France’s prime minister, François Bayrou, has proposed scrapping two public holidays as part of radical measures aimed at reducing the country’s ballooning deficit, boosting its economy and preventing it being “crushed” by debt.

Outlining the 2026 budget on Tuesday, Bayrou suggested Easter Monday and 8 May, when France commemorates Victory Day, marking the end of the second world war, although he said he was open to other options.

The centrist prime minister said: “The entire nation has to work more so that the activity of the country as a whole increases, and so that France’s situation improves. Everyone will have to contribute to the effort.”

France is under pressure to bring its public deficit, running at 5.8% of GDP, under the 3% figure required by EU rules, and to rein in €3.3tn of public debt – on which the annual interest, of €60bn, could soon become its biggest budget outlay.

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[+] -19 points 1 year ago (11 children)

France has "only" 40 billionaires and also has the second-highest marginal tax rate in the EU at 55.4%. I know billionaires are the favourite whipping boy of the left and of Lemmy, and I support taxing them in general, but it won't fix this problem.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago

    hahahahahaha!

    That comment is going to be wildly unpopular.

    For starters, ONE billionaire is too many. A billion is a ridiculous amount of money. Saying France has "only" 40 is so incredibly disconnected.

    Nobody should be able to amass this level of wealth. And those who do, do it through sheer human exploitation and lack of ethics.

    The fact that they get to have such incredible wealth while the rest of us are struggling to make ends meet, and governments need to cut social services due to lack of funding is criminal.

    All the money is pooling into these peoples' hands and you're not asking yourself why? You don't think that taxing that amount of wealth even a little might help anything?

    I'd really like to hear why.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Yeah and all of the global corporations worth hundreds of billions that do business there everyday without paying tax and obfuscating revenue through being "based somewhere else." We need a global corporate tax. Plain and simple.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago*

    The rich structure their affairs so that they don't pay income tax, so that high marginal tax rate doesn't apply to them but instead hits mostly the upper middle class.

    There's a whole industry for Tax-avoidance and even Tax-evasion catering for "high net worth individuals" (i.e. the rich).

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I think what matters more is wealth disparity not actual wealth when discussing countries outside of the US. How much more wealthy are they than the average person in their country. You can't just focus on wealth in terms of US dollars because there are parasites in each country with varying degrees of wealth in comparison to the average American billionaire.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    The dollar is the global reserve currency, so yes, by default we focus in terms of US dollars. It is also American globalisation which created these people. There's this cool new thing thing called History we in Europe study, it allows for current events to be contextualised. It's a pretty hip thing with the kids, you can learn more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History.

    Edit: There should not ever be an

    average American billionaire.

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  • [+] -6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    In my opinion, the government shouldn't be offering services left and right, just what's necessary.

    If people want freedom, that's fine, but the government isn't going to take on many responsibilities.

    If people want comfort, that's fine, but they should follow the rules the government imposes.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Yeah like after World War 2, when the government imposed The New Deal and the economy worked and the middle class were able to exist and have a family with a single full time job whilst having 90% corporate tax for higher end earnings?

    Or, during Reagan and Thatcherism when the government imposed the neoliberal nightmare that gave us the 2008 crash and put every single country in the world into debt we have never been able to escape and defined the future of the next 3 generations after GenX?

    What about during Covid, when the world governments imposed "relief" through gifted billions to the ruling class as subsidies they never paid back?

    The government imposed all of these. It's not freedom if there is no class mobility. Dynastic wealth is monarchy. Lick the shit off the boots, like a good citizen and jog on.

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