French workers fight Macron’s government of the rich

This 10 October 2017 video is called United Power: 5 million French workers to protest Macron’s reforms.

Today, French trade unions organise protests everywhere in the country against the anti-worker policies of President Macron.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

The joint trade union federations that organize today’s action day say that Macron is doing a liberal [in the sense of pro-Big Business; not in the United States sense] course that increases inequality and favours a minority. This complaint is not unjustified. Research shows that the richest French people benefit most from Macron‘s tax plans. Economist Éric Heyer: “For pensioners, civil servants and part of the middle class they actually make things worse.”

From Jacobin magazine in the USA:

Macron’s Gift to the Rich

Cole Stangler

Surprise, surprise: Emmanuel Macron‘s first budget slashes taxes on wealth and guts social spending.

Anyone with lingering doubts about whether the moniker “President of the Rich” fits France’s Emmanuel Macron could safely put them to rest this month, upon publication of his first budget since taking office.

Last week the National Assembly, dominated by Macron’s En Marche party, approved a reform package overwhelmingly weighted toward elite interests. Its €7 billion of tax cuts included reducing France’s wealth tax, long a bête noire for the country’s right wing, by 70 percent and subjecting capital gains tax to a new flat rate of 30 percent.

Tellingly, the Ministry for the Economy and Finance withheld its own research on the impact of the reforms before the vote in the Assembly. But, by Thursday, they had fallen into the possession of the Socialist chair of the Senate Finance Commission and were released. Under the capital gains reforms, France’s wealthiest 100 taxpayers will earn an additional €582,380 per year on average. The top 1,000 will each get a modest €172,220. The rest of the country, on the other hand, can expect little to nothing. Forty-four percent of the total benefits will flow to the top 1 percent.