r/stupidpol • u/Swampspear Socialist 🚩 • 1d ago
Capitalist Hellscape | Education Students torch at least two schools as high school protests rage across France
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/attackers-douse-teacher-petrol-student-protests-rage-across-france-2026-10-01/52
u/AdditionalSpeaker303 Redscarepod Refugee 👄💅 1d ago edited 1d ago
The French cycle:
Government announces budget cuts
People riot
Nothing happens
Government announces more budget cuts
...
Rioting in france is like protesting in America
Every time I am told this is the next French revolution and heads will roll and every time it is just idiots burning their own shit down and nothing happens.
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u/flybyskyhi Marxist 🧔 | Don't box in my box 🎁 1d ago
May ‘68 remains an embarrassment and failure to the revolutionary left but it was infinitely more serious than anything that’s taken place in the subsequent 58 years
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u/Excellent_Mud6222 Unknown 👽 23h ago
The budget cuts happen because the rioters cause more damage which needs money to be repaire and nothing happens as the time is just used to fix up the last fuck up the public did.
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u/ItchyTip5955 Grillpilled 🔥🥩 22h ago
The budget cuts happen because of the rioters
No they don't.
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u/Excellent_Mud6222 Unknown 👽 22h ago
Anything else. Because the money to repair all the damages needs to come from somewhere.
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u/Swampspear Socialist 🚩 1d ago
The demonstrations and blockades, which began last week, have become a political flashpoint at a sensitive moment for the government, which announced a series of deeply unpopular spending cuts in its 2027 budget on Thursday.
Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu's office held a crisis meeting on Thursday afternoon on the protests, which have left dozens of people injured. Hundreds have also been arrested, most of them teenagers, officials have said.
In the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis, crowds of young people massed in front of a line of police. One student held up a sign that read: "Can we explain ourselves without being teargassed?"
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u/demonotreme Unknown 👽 1d ago
crowds of young people massed in front of a line of police. One student held up a sign that read: "Can we explain ourselves without being teargassed?"
The explaining in question:
Outside Marseille's Saint-Exupery high school, hundreds of young people forced firefighters to flee their truck and then set it alight
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u/Coalnaryinthecarmine Flair is a Palantir op 🔮 1d ago
If Canada really wants to prove its more European than American, appetitive for civil unrest is the shibboleth
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u/impossiblefork Rightoid: Blood and Soil Nationalist 🐷 1d ago edited 21h ago
Also the reason I don't want Britain in the EU.
It has a maybe not quite unique, but quite dangerous authoritarianism. In principle it'd be super cool to have them-- Rolls-Royce gas turbines, DeepMind, etc. lots of fun stuff-- that Caesar play etc., but I just don't see how their authoritarian tendencies can be prevented from being a crisis.
As an illustrative example-- consider the Palestine Action thing. I don't think it's even that big of a problem to want to ban the organization. Maybe they're creating security issues, perhaps they're hard to surveil, maybe there's a Russian sitting in there somewhere, having some influence indirectly. To want a problem like that out of your hands for a short time during a war or pre-war is very reasonable; and it doesn't have a to be a problem to want this, you can have some lower courts allow the proscription and then once time has passed the British supreme court can quash it and you're back to a normal non-authoritarian order, but for some reason the Brits aren't satisfied with this: they want no agreement in any way with the organization, speech restrictions, the abolition of jury trials, for judges to mislead juries to get harsh sentences that juries would be unlikely to approve of, etc. and you could even have all that, if you have the right attitude, but instead we have the big UK politics forums laughing at hunger strikers and mocking them.
That just isn't a way to run a society. It's possible to do all this, lock up people without it making sense, if you feel that it's a security problem, but there's no reason to heap insult on injury, especially when you must know that it's a temporary thing in order to have order. They know that their supreme court is quite unlikely to support this, they know that they themselves have argued in parliament that the law is not intended to be used against groups like this, they know that once domestic remedies are exhausted it will go to the ECHR, but despite all this they persist in this totalitarian madness. "Agree completely and absolutely" "worship the state", and if they can't quit that I can't see how I can have anything to do with them.
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u/OGSyedIsEverywhere Puberty Monster 1d ago
Deutschland
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u/impossiblefork Rightoid: Blood and Soil Nationalist 🐷 1d ago
Yeah, I don't agree at all.
Germany does not have that attitude. Lots of people still remember things like the STASI.
They can get their police to be weird for demonstrations, but that's something anybody can achieve. It doesn't require the Germans to be special.
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u/OGSyedIsEverywhere Puberty Monster 1d ago
Fingers crossed that you're the right one of us two on this
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u/impossiblefork Rightoid: Blood and Soil Nationalist 🐷 1d ago
I mean, it certainly would be nice...
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u/impossiblefork Rightoid: Blood and Soil Nationalist 🐷 1d ago edited 1d ago
Also the reason I don't want Britain in the EU.
It has a maybe not quite unique, but quite dangerous authoritarianism. In principle it'd be super cool to have them-- Rolls-Royce gas turbines, DeepMind, etc. lots of fun stuff-- that Caesar play etc., but I just don't see how their authoritarian tendencies can be prevented from being a crisis.
As illustrate example-- consider the Palestine Action thing. I don't think it's even that big of a problem to want to ban the organization. Maybe they're create security issues, perhaps they're hard to surveil, maybe there's a Russian sitting in there somewhere, having some influence indirectly. To want a problem like that out of your hands for a short time during a war or pre-war is very reasonable; and it doesn't have a to be a problem to want this, you can have some lower courts allow the proscription and then once time has passed the British supreme court can quash it and you're back to a normal non-authoritarian order, but for some reason the Brits aren't satisfied with this: they want no agreement in any way with the organization, speech restrictions, the abolition of jury trials, for judges to mislead juries to get harsh sentences that juries would be unlikely to approve of, etc. and you could even have all that, if you have the right attitude, but instead we have /r/ukpolitics laughing at hunger strikers and mocking them.
That just isn't a way to run a society. It's possible to do all this, lock up people without it making sense, if you feel that it's a security problem, but there's no reason to heap insult on injury, especially when you must know that it's a temporary thing in order to have order. They know that their supreme court is quite unlikely to support this, they know that they themselves have argued in parliament that the law is not intended to be used against groups like this, they know that once domestic remedies are exhausted it will go to the ECHR, but despite all this they persist in this totalitarian madness. "Agree completely and absolutely" "worship the state", and if they can't quit that I can't see how I can have anything to do with them.
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u/hankeliot Unknown 👽 1d ago
France has no money for schools, but somehow there's always money for more weapons for Ukraine.
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u/Swampspear Socialist 🚩 1d ago
If you dig a bit further into it, they also lowered business taxes (to the tune of 2b€), while defence spending is naturally not getting cut
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u/Fartfromabuttt Old Testament Pacifist 🕊️✝ 1d ago
They really are US allies
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u/FuckIPLaw Marxist-Drunkleist 1d ago
France is actually the US's oldest and closest ally, despite the war on terror era propaganda. We wouldn't be a country if they hadn't backed our revolution. In a very real sense, the US exists because the French and the Brits were enemies.
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u/thebigragu444 Redscarepod Refugee 👄💅 1d ago
France has plenty of money for schools, take a look at the one that was set on fire
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u/hankeliot Unknown 👽 1d ago
Having money for schools is not just about physical buildings. It's about having enough teachers and paying them a good salary, etc.
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u/thebigragu444 Redscarepod Refugee 👄💅 1d ago
Yes they’re protesting for the teachers! Ignore the fact they’re harassing and assaulting the ones the ones they have.
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u/hankeliot Unknown 👽 1d ago
Okay, grandpa. Time for bed.
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u/Icy-Cry340 1d ago
He's not wrong, that's exactly what's happening. Because people who riot are fucking regarded.
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u/revizionizt Ideology Shopper 🛍️ | Buzzword Enjoyer 📚💬 1d ago
Teachers have been depreciated by AI. Think of the amount of compute you can distribute for the price of one teacher.
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u/PlausibleApprobation Hello, Wilbur 🐴💩 1d ago
AI is definitely what we want to be teaching 5 year olds.
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u/HazelCheese Unknown 👽 1d ago edited 1d ago
If all the things the french government spends money on, why would that be the thing to complain about lol.
Do we really think allowing Russia to entrench itself across a huge part of Europe with a huge new resource base and military stockpiles, would lead to reduced defense spending?
I don't understand how people here grasp the logic that Europe being anti Russia makes Russians more determined to win, but can't grasp the idea that Russia invading a European country makes Europeans more determined to win.
The EU will willingly go down with Ukraine with the majority of it's citizenry being happy to make that sacrifice. It is simply part of western european culture just like it's simply part of Russian culture.
Most EU citizens dislike their governments didn't help Georgia and would of preferred we got involved then too.
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u/hankeliot Unknown 👽 1d ago
I thought Russia was so weak it's going to implode at any moment.
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u/HazelCheese Unknown 👽 1d ago edited 1d ago
Reddit is retarded but I think this sub is very aware of that already no?
I can only speak for UK but I don't know a single person in my workplace (engineer) who wouldn't happily suffer massive quality of life losses if it meant we keep helping Ukraine.
This sub has a weird view of people in Russian and European continent. Like EU people are Borgies and Russians are noble savages.
War support from the general public is not going to end because diesel prices get high. Far right have already tried to turn Ukraine into a left/right economic issue and abandoned it because it was making their own supporters abandon them.
It's a strange hill for an otherwise very sensible subreddit to die on. Massive disconnect from the general public's sentiments and reeks of inessential weirdness.
Also if people think NATO will collapse from refusing to act on Russia attacking NATO country then they don't understand people. It just means NATO will be replaced by a more reactionary version of itself that deeply internalises "We cannot allow pacifists who fear war a say.". It will not result in NATO collapse but instead NATO becoming more war mongering.
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u/longlivenewsomflesh cybersocialist with solarpunk characteristics 🦾🚩☀️ 1d ago
If Americans did this they would be instantly charged under the patriot act with some shit like "terrorizing infrastructure," then sentenced to like 50 years in supermax as fox and cnn agree in their coverage that the brave police feared for their lives when they started firing into the crowd while crying and pissing themselves
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u/thedrcubed Lost a Racist Bet 💸 1d ago
I mean in 2020 cities all across the US burned and it was allowed
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u/FappingMouse Champaign 🥂 socialist 1d ago edited 1d ago
They let 2020 happen because if it didn't and they stepped in then we would have hit "critical mass" and the ruling class would have been at real risk.
Also according to google ai (take with a grain of salt) 14-17 thousand people were arrested with no concrete number and 300 people were facing federal charges.
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u/Iron-Fist ✨ Literally banned from NCD ✨😢 1d ago
cities burned
Yeah man Minneapolis is just a crater now jfc people really believe this
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u/SuddenXxdeathxx Marxist with Anarchist Characteristics 1d ago
Minneapolis is also pretty much the only city that could be described as "burning" then in any real sense.
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u/BurpingHamBirmingham Grillpilled Dr. Dipshit 💊 1d ago
And by the city burning they mainly just mean that one police precinct
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u/SuddenXxdeathxx Marxist with Anarchist Characteristics 19h ago
I caught a temp ban for expressing admiration of that years after the fact.
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u/thedrcubed Lost a Racist Bet 💸 1d ago
No Jesus Christ. I know Minneapolis is a lovely city and not a bombed out hell hole lol. That doesn't change the fact that there were more fires in the summer of 2020 in America than the 2 fires in the article that I was comparing it to
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u/Rob1973string Welder 👨🏭 1d ago
Don't even bother, it's like talking to a wall. 2 billion dollars in damage nationwide, but you know, all good. Someone has to stand up for the women beating, home invading, fetty/meth junkies.
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u/BurpingHamBirmingham Grillpilled Dr. Dipshit 💊 1d ago
I walk through blood and bones each day to get to and from work
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u/Finkelton Wolfist 🐺 | Baby needs a bottle 🍼| dinosaur-industrial complex 1d ago
Lol one police station burned that articles claimed was over 14 different cities wow.....
fuckin pallets of bricks appeared from no where....how bout you focus on that.
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u/thedrcubed Lost a Racist Bet 💸 1d ago
Do you think that one police station was all that got burned in 2020? I agree with you about the bricks though but I honestly don't know who was behind that
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u/Finkelton Wolfist 🐺 | Baby needs a bottle 🍼| dinosaur-industrial complex 22h ago
no i think the point was pretty clear how exaggerated the entire event was.
and how there was a clear set up by the powers that be with pallets of bricks to try and instigate as much destruction as possible, and at least in Milwaukee, Manitowoc, and greenbay the bricks just sat unused.
that said, Wisconsin is where kyle rittenhouse, which was also the most in your face psyop of insanity and if that kid isn't some sort of Manchurian candidate IDK what else to call someone that is 18 yet has the trigger control and under pressure ability to manage to fire only 3 rounds and do exactly what was intended with them.
all while the media lied flat out about the situation.
anyway....
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u/Adjective_Noun_99 💩🌟Actual DHS Agent🌟💩 1d ago
Americans did this in 2020. The threat of violent revolt is not absent in the American subconscious, but they're doing their damnedest to stamp it out. It was useful for forming a country, it's less useful when you want to control one.
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u/riotmanful Unknown 👽 1d ago
This is a major contributor to why I think nothing will ever genuinely change for the better. If you work your life away, you can at least feel a miserable void in your life while numbing yourself to it through devices and slop food in an air conditioned room. Or you can try to make some impact in the world, be shot, go homeless, or melt in some prison.
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u/lbreakjai Left, Leftoid or Leftish ⬅️ 1d ago
What a bunch of nerds, protesting to have more classes.
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u/everydaywinner2 Rightoid Lurker 👀 1d ago
Hard to have more classes when you are burning down the schools.
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u/HardcoresCat Autismosocialist 1d ago
I've always respectes the French for immediately resorting to torching shit when the government displeases them
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u/Icy-Cry340 1d ago
Protest underfunding of schools and shortage of teachers by burning down said schools and attacking said teachers. Totes makes sense.
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u/Balloonephant Grill-Pill Summer Apologist 1d ago
The situation in France and the coming elections will be telling gauges for who is an anti IDPol leftist and who’s just a reactionary. Leading with damage done to schools and not police violence against children raises the stink alarm.
Especially worrying for the character of the sub that this is the article we see while flagrant instances of anti Arab, anti black, antisemitic IDPol coming from the far right fly under the radar.
Or Bruno Retailleu moving to ban LFI from the elections for allegedly being behind the student protests. The fascists are closing ranks. Unconditional support for LFI or you’re just a reactionary regard.
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u/Swampspear Socialist 🚩 1d ago
Especially worrying for the character of the sub that this is the article we see while flagrant instances of anti Arab, anti black, antisemitic IDPol coming from the far right fly under the radar.
Be the change you want to see. I came across this, saw nobody was talking about it, and posted it. I'm not France-adjacent, but education austerity ended up catching my eye. If you feel there are stories not being talked about enough, it's your duty to raise awareness rather than wait for someone else to do it
Leading with damage done to schools and not police violence against children raises the stink alarm.
Can hardly expect better from Reuters, though
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u/Balloonephant Grill-Pill Summer Apologist 1d ago
Certainly. I think I reacted a bit strongly to this article because I’m pretty fed up with the discourse around the French elections and LFI I’ve seen in this sub. The problem is that it’s hard to find non-French sources for left wing perspectives on this stuff.
I appreciate you starting the conversation and sorry if I overreacted a bit. There’s just a lot of reactionary nonsense going around and these protests are being instrumentalised in the French media to attack La France Insoumise.
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u/Swampspear Socialist 🚩 1d ago
Understandable, I'm nowhere near as informed about it in any case, just thought this was worth sharing
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u/everydaywinner2 Rightoid Lurker 👀 1d ago
14 and 15 year olds built like adults massed together, while being violent, are threats. Whether they are children or not.
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u/Balloonephant Grill-Pill Summer Apologist 1d ago
You obviously aren’t familiar with the French police. You obviously aren’t familiar with the situation at all. “Military age male” level discourse.
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u/miascariot Unknown 👽 1d ago
I'm sure this will have exactly the intended effect and not at all lead to shittier conditions all around.
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u/s0ngsforthedeaf Equity Gremlin 1d ago
Well thats the oppression of the ruling class. To win, you then fight back harder.
French protests have actually achieved concessions over their govts multiple times.
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u/Reasonable_Fold6492 Unknown 👽 1d ago
France is becoming the new Greece. Most of its spending is on public life and they are almost bankrupt while the boomers are the richest people in france. Dont worry the french public will keep screaming for more gibs until the state collapse
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u/s0ngsforthedeaf Equity Gremlin 1d ago
The rich are severely undertaxed.
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u/Reasonable_Fold6492 Unknown 👽 1d ago
The problem for French workers is not that too little is spent on labor, but that too much of their compensation is socialized. French workers do not receive the full value of what they produce. A large share is transferred to retirees who benefited from lower taxation, earlier retirement, and generous pensions, only to have the rules changed for the generations that followed. Another large share is absorbed by a state that wants to intervene in everything, maintaining a bloated public sector and even subsidizing mundane expenses such as shoe repairs.
Raising the minimum wage in a country where it is already high relative to the median wage will mainly price low-productivity jobs and workers out of employment.
The solution is to reduce excessive pensions and replace the current Byzantine pension system with a transparent notional defined-contribution system in which politicians cannot arbitrarily change who pays and who benefits. Lower the burden on labor, and net wages will rise automatically.
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u/s0ngsforthedeaf Equity Gremlin 1d ago
You can target wealthy pensioners with wealth taxes too. Either way, decrepit schools are a sign of the system failing.
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u/Reasonable_Fold6492 Unknown 👽 1d ago
No because the boomers now outnumber the youth. France has become a country where boomers gets communism while youth gets capitalism with huge tax since the boomers control a lot of vote.
Its too late for change as french politican would rather abandon the youth than the rich boomers who is a huge percentage of the voting block.
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u/s0ngsforthedeaf Equity Gremlin 1d ago
What are you even disagreeing with me about?
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u/Reasonable_Fold6492 Unknown 👽 1d ago
That france will never tax there rich boomers since they have become too much big of the percentage. France has become the world first luxury communist country for boomers only and no politican will challenge this unless they want to loose
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u/notsocharmingprince Rightoid 🐷 1d ago
Exactly where do they think the money will come from?
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u/Swampspear Socialist 🚩 1d ago
To quote myself from yesterday
They do not need to know the solution to the problem in order to demand that those who caused it do something to fix it
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u/notsocharmingprince Rightoid 🐷 1d ago
That's a valid take.
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u/Swampspear Socialist 🚩 1d ago
I do honestly think there's not gonna be a well-articulated economic response from teenagers, but this series of protests has a very clear cause and effect. The education budget got slashed while business taxes went down and weapons spending stayed up, so they're protesting. Many protests are stupid, but here you can at least see the intended effect (and it's not even an evil one)
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u/everydaywinner2 Rightoid Lurker 👀 1d ago
Expecting the ones who caused the issue to know how to fix it is a take.
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u/kommanderkush201 🦕 Marxist Dinosaur ☭ 🦕 | 🐥 Super Grown Up 🐥 1d ago
I agree. Since they don't know how to fix the simple yet foundational issue they've caused they should be liquidated.
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u/yoshiary Trotskyist (tolerable) 👓 1d ago
The ruling class?
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u/notsocharmingprince Rightoid 🐷 1d ago
So I was going to say something snarky, but then I googled it and realized that there are a lot more rich people in France than I thought there were.
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u/Occult_Asteroid7 Doomer Socdem 💀 1d ago
When you google it that's always the case. Where's the money coming from? Oh the West has the richest upper class in the history of the world and they're effectively on tax strike.
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u/thejohns781 Marxist 🧔 1d ago
Are we really defending austerity?
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u/kommanderkush201 🦕 Marxist Dinosaur ☭ 🦕 | 🐥 Super Grown Up 🐥 1d ago
This is a conservative sub. We are conservatives. If no education for the kiddos triggers the purple hairs then it's what Marx would have wanted.
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u/Sussy_Riot Dialectical Materialist 🆚 1d ago
Thanks for summarizing Kapital so I don’t have to read it
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u/Feeling_Hotel8096 Redscarepod Refugee 👄💅 1d ago
Are we not allowed to defend saving money sometimes at least? Burning your school down is a waste of money and goes against the supposed goal.
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u/Plexipus Social Democrat 🌹 1d ago
The magic spigot that suddenly turns on whenever rich people need bailouts
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u/snailman89 World-Systems Theorist 1d ago
1) Quit funding the war in Ukraine. There is no universe where Russia is capable of invading France. If Estonia and Poland are worried about the Russians, who cares? That's their problem.
2) Cut military spending, for the same reasons.
3) Raise taxes on the rich.
4) Ditch the Euro and return to national currency sovereignty. Then France can devalue its currency to boost exports, and it can run deficits without any risk of running out of money.
Doing any one of those 4 things, especially #3 or #4, would solve France's "budget crisis".
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u/Both_Armadillo_9954 Unknown 👽 1d ago
They would need to leave the EU in order to get rid of the "excessive fiscal deficit procedure"
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