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Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action. |
On April 17 2018 02:10 Liquid`Drone wrote:
automation. there's no point in working as long hours as we have in the past, or for as long as we have in the past (choose one of those) when there is less meaningful work to be done. That working hours in the west are about the same as they were 100 years ago is a tragedy, imo.
That's definitely not true, we've cut working hours immensely
Also automation hasn't delivered productivity increases to the point where we can just cut work down that heavily, in fact productivity growth has slowed down over the last fifteen years. The situation with the rail workers is that they have a really strong lobby that gives older, unionised workers unsustainable advantages and the younger workers have to pick up the bill
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Norway28637 Posts
On April 17 2018 02:23 Velr wrote:
Yeah, just no. Thats this leftist brainfart that isn't based on anything in reality. People going in pension often leave real holes in their companies, its also not like we have not enough jobs.
Depends on the job. As a teacher, I'm looking forward to / hoping I get to work until I'm at least 70, and I'm expecting to work 40-50 hour weeks. The warehouse job I used to have? Automation is gonna eliminate half those jobs the next decade - and the only reason why they still have as many people working there as they do now, is that people are super inefficient. There are going to be a bunch of jobs related to taking care of the elderly, but I don't think everybody is fit for that.
I'm not actually saying that everybody should retire when they're 50. But if you're a 53 years old physical worker and your job is eliminated from automation, I don't want to force you into some retraining program either. I mostly just think that future increases in efficiency should result in less time spent working, not increased productivity overall.
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On April 15 2018 03:59 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2018 20:02 warding wrote:
That's spot on. António Costa is both an extremely lucky man and a very savvy politician. After Durão Barroso and Guterres, it's not difficult to see him taking a high-profile role in an international institution next.
I was super pissed when he maneuvered in 2015 to form an agreement with the extreme left loons after he finished 2nd in the election. What happened after that was genius: he basically kept the course that the previous center-right government had taken, reaping the benefits of the economic expansion while continuing to cut down the deficit (AKA AUSTERITY). The right is happy with public policy and the center-left is happy because it's in power and they somehow think 'austerity is over'.
Now the extreme left are pissed because António Costa isn't bringing down the labor reforms imposed by the troika, nor is he raising the minimum wage and increasing public sector salaries willy nilly. The truth is he doesn't really need them anymore, it's kind of likely he'll win the next election easily, grabbing the center and taking advantage of the currently uninspiring center-right leaders. Hell, I might even vote for him and I've never voted for non-center right parties. To what extent is demography the real spectre behind European austerity policies?
Austerity as we have globally discussed it in the previous 7-8 years was a response to a recession - everyone at the time was looking at short time-frames - the troika programs were 3 years. When you're talking about demographics you're thinking about timeframes of 20-30 years - in every study I've seen they use 2050 as a key reference. Politicians and central bankers are usually in their 50-70s and have mandates of 4-8 years - I don't think demographic shifts are at the top of their priorities. Demographic shifts aren't going to swing economic realities within these timespans. Demographics should already be factored in when you're taking into account stuff like potential output - which is what you compare current GDP to gauge how deep of a recession you're in or how hot the economy currently is.
Is Europe screwed because it's population will decline and become older? Maybe, but maybe in two or three decades human labor will become irrelevant. I'd be disappointed if by 2050 robots are not capable of creating our food, our homes, our transportation, our entertainment and our orgasms.
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Norway28637 Posts
On April 17 2018 02:31 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2018 02:10 Liquid`Drone wrote:
automation. there's no point in working as long hours as we have in the past, or for as long as we have in the past (choose one of those) when there is less meaningful work to be done. That working hours in the west are about the same as they were 100 years ago is a tragedy, imo.
That's definitely not true, we've cut working hours immenselyAlso automation hasn't delivered productivity increases to the point where we can just cut work down that heavily, in fact productivity growth has slowed down over the last fifteen years. The situation with the rail workers is that they have a really strong lobby that gives older, unionised workers unsustainable advantages and the younger workers have to pick up the bill
In Norway, a working day was legally defined as 8 hours in 1919. That's still the case. I concede that my statement rings untrue for the western world at large and 100 years, though.
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I would guess that in 1919 the typical person worked virtually every day of the year.
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On April 17 2018 02:34 warding wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2018 03:59 IgnE wrote:On April 13 2018 20:02 warding wrote:
That's spot on. António Costa is both an extremely lucky man and a very savvy politician. After Durão Barroso and Guterres, it's not difficult to see him taking a high-profile role in an international institution next.
I was super pissed when he maneuvered in 2015 to form an agreement with the extreme left loons after he finished 2nd in the election. What happened after that was genius: he basically kept the course that the previous center-right government had taken, reaping the benefits of the economic expansion while continuing to cut down the deficit (AKA AUSTERITY). The right is happy with public policy and the center-left is happy because it's in power and they somehow think 'austerity is over'.
Now the extreme left are pissed because António Costa isn't bringing down the labor reforms imposed by the troika, nor is he raising the minimum wage and increasing public sector salaries willy nilly. The truth is he doesn't really need them anymore, it's kind of likely he'll win the next election easily, grabbing the center and taking advantage of the currently uninspiring center-right leaders. Hell, I might even vote for him and I've never voted for non-center right parties. To what extent is demography the real spectre behind European austerity policies? Austerity as we have globally discussed it in the previous 7-8 years was a response to a recession - everyone at the time was looking at short time-frames - the troika programs were 3 years. When you're talking about demographics you're thinking about timeframes of 20-30 years - in every study I've seen they use 2050 as a key reference. Politicians and central bankers are usually in their 50-70s and have mandates of 4-8 years - I don't think demographic shifts are at the top of their priorities. Demographic shifts aren't going to swing economic realities within these timespans. Demographics should already be factored in when you're taking into account stuff like potential output - which is what you compare current GDP to gauge how deep of a recession you're in or how hot the economy currently is. Is Europe screwed because it's population will decline and become older? Maybe, but maybe in two or three decades human labor will become irrelevant. I'd be disappointed if by 2050 robots are not capable of creating our food, our homes, our transportation, our entertainment and our orgasms.
so how long is the avg mortgage term in europe? if you are thinking about repayment terms on loans to countries or businesses or individuals what time frames are we talking about?
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On April 15 2018 04:04 Nyxisto wrote:
It seems fairly reductionistic to reduce austerity to demographics, but even if you did the logic is basically the wrong way around. Very old societies should, if that were the only motivator, be extremely spending happy because old people have little reason to save and invest, because they have less time getting something out of their investments, whereas investment and delaying consumption ought to pay off for young societies.
That's not really the reason for austerity anyway. Austerity is popular in Germany especially because we're an export driven, risk-averse country with an economy that exports globally instead of consuming on the domestic market. In this sense Germany is like any other country with, low-debt, low-consumption politics like Singapore or China. Has nothing to do with demographics. It's also no big deal in terms of growth. Because we're not especially reliant on domestic consumption growth, having an aging population isn't really a problem.
Actually being export driven has a lot of things to do with demographics. The current account deficit (or surplus) is the amount of savings in a country - investment.
The balance of payments of a country is always 0. Due to the way accounting works the value of what you give to the world will always be the same as what you receive. The balance of payments has 2 sides: the current account and the capital account. The current account captures the flows of goods and services and the capital account the flow of capital. So if a country (like the US) has a deficit on the current account of 50 billion It'll have a surplus of 50 billion on the capital account.
savings - investment = export - import. So a nation that saves a lot (China, Japan and Germany) will export these savings to other ccountries while a nation that invests more (US) imports those excess savings. A nation can both be competitive but have a current account deficit (US) or uncompetitive and a small deficit or even surplus (Greece).
So where do demographics come into this? Pretty simple. Like you mentioned pensioners run down their savings to consume. But before they actually retire they have to build up their pensions. A large part of the current account surplus from Germany at the moment is actually old people saving for their pensions. When they retire the surplus will shrink (although probably not disappear).
The balance of payments is one of the most principles in economics (just look at the mess Trump is making). The propensity to save (and austerity) seems to me to be much more cultural (don't spend more than you earn) than having to do with exports. I'd argue at the export surplus is actually rather a consequence of austerity than the other way around. When a country decreases its deficit it's actually investing less, spending more and thus creating a larger account surplus.
On April 15 2018 07:29 IgnE wrote:
The question is, why are even the most left leftists in Europe (i.e. Syriza et al.) ultimately succumbing to the "hard realities" of German-led economic policy? Why are so-called "moderate" left reforms deemed unworkable even by the leftists themselves?
Because the solutions they propose don't fix any of the underlying issues or make them even worse. For example: they want to keep the retirement age the same (or even reduce it) while this is the only way to keep the working age population even when our population is getting older and sometimes shrinking. Their only solid point is that there is a lack of public investment but when it comes down to it they want to increase taxes (or raise the deficit) to finance an expansion of the welfare state. This doesn't solve the issue for the same reason you mentioned about pensioners: It doesn't increase investment and doesn't increase the tax base. Hard left economics is dead in the water because it offers us nothing to solve our problems.
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I'm aware of the accounting identity around savings and investment, I just think the demographics question is overplayed (the median age in China is lower than in the US after all). The more important factor is rather the degree of corporatism in the society. Countries like the US who are import reliant and run deficits have no culture of controlling consumption or wages. Try to slap a 20% VAT on the United States and double the gasoline prices while unions and the government suppress wages to maintain employment (frequently happens in Germany or Scandinavia) and you'll have the people rioting in the streets.
Capitalism in countries like China or even Germany is much more managed, a heavy industrial policy in countries like the US or the UK would be hard to even implement politically.
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Wow, who could have guessed. Predictably, the macronist gamble to "do its homework" (= austerity + bulldozing workers' rights) in order to "restore France's credibility" (lol) and push Germany to agree with a eurozone reform will fail:
+ Show Spoiler +
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was expected, Merkel is way too much of a Eurosceptic
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It's her job, she's the chancellor of Germany, not of the EU or the Eurozone. It's the better way for Germany for the moment and she is far from alone with that mindset.
Having Macron in power in France in some weird way is worse than having a conservative. He is doing everything a conservative would be doing plus he is making it so that the conservatives are the "alternative" to his reign, without making anything work that a conservative wouldn't be doing.
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On April 19 2018 02:58 Big J wrote:
Having Macron in power in France in some weird way is worse than having a conservative. He is doing everything a conservative would be doing plus he is making it so that the conservatives are the "alternative" to his reign, without making anything work that a conservative wouldn't be doing.
Macron is becoming the mainstream right, and is increasingly seen as such, so conservatives won't be the alternative (at least not automatically). The FI is considered the first opponent in polls since Macron was elected:
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/FQI5FH5.jpg) The question is: "Which political formation best embodies opposition?" FI = left PS = "social-democrats" LR = conservatives FN = far-right
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I mean that is nice and a good response to what I said, yet I do not believe that this will reflect in an election. A party like the FI will naturally be seen as more of an opposition than a conservative party, whose image is usually built around being moderate (regardless of their actual politics, which rarely are centrist or moderate). In an election most people, unless seriously united in a cause, will vote for parties that are being presented to them as "not-an-extremist". Which the radical-left cannot fullfill, the whole claim of such a party is based on the assumption that there are serious problems within a societies ruleset that have to be fundamentally tackled and for which the ordinary regression approach of other parties is not enough.
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On April 19 2018 22:14 Big J wrote:
I mean that is nice and a good response to what I said, yet I do not believe that this will reflect in an election. A party like the FI will naturally be seen as more of an opposition than a conservative party, whose image is usually built around being moderate (regardless of their actual politics, which rarely are centrist or moderate). In an election most people, unless seriously united in a cause, will vote for parties that are being presented to them as "not-an-extremist".
In ordinary and calm times, yes. But France is past this stage and rather entered the season of storms. Besides, the results of the last presidential show that an increasing part of the people doesn't really have problems voting for non-mainstream parties. Le Pen is far-right and got 21%, Mélenchon was presented as "far-left" by half of the brainless journalists with no political culture and still scored almost 20%. Almost as much as the two candidates representing the "governmental" parties, Macron and Fillon, who got a total of 44%.
And yeah, radicality is a matter of point of view. As far as I'm concerned, Macron is radical in his authoritarian neoliberalism. But of course he will never be painted as such in the dominant medias whose columnists are in line with his vision of the world.
The "reasonable/moderate vs populist/extremist" storytelling will also not work if all of Macron's opposition is depicted as "extremist" or "populist". When the real right/fake left mainstream duopoly was still a thing, the "circle of reason" had his alternative ready; but now that Macron united that camp, the trick of calling everyone else "extremist" will be too obvious, since this is simply tantamount to demonizing anything which is not Macron. This is how many of his zombie supporters think and act (their non-thought process are really terrifying), and it can work for the intellectually conformist upper classes who think that they're cleverer and wiser than people with no or lower diplomes, but it's not enough to convince angry people. For instance Mélenchon + Le Pen got 60% of the expressed votes of the lower classes in the presidential, same for unemployed people; for better or worse, those people are way past moral lessons about "voting right" for the candidates depicted as "moderate" and "serious" by the dominant class and their spokespersons in mass medias.
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I just know that everytime i went to france for the last 20 years the smaller towns look worse and worse, the stuff is just falling apart more and more... An "old town" doesn't have to look like it got his last fresh paint right after ww2...
Aside from the very tourist foto motives and goverment districts (often the same place), these are squeeky clean. Its really staggering to me, you walk 200 metres away from the tourism centers and suddenly stuff looks like shit.
I really love to visit France but it seems to just fall apart physically.
Btw: Didn't macron run on reforms? Why the outrage about doing some?
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On April 16 2018 20:56 TheDwf wrote:The situation in France, from a liberal point of view. Took the freedom to precise one thing in spoiler to correct an abusive statement. Show nested quote +La République en grève [ The Republic on Strike] Emmanuel Macron faces a wave of strikes and protests in FranceWill he stand up to the strikers, or let his reforms die?IN THE western city of Nantes, protesters burned an effigy of the president. On the university campus of Nanterre, riot police had to break up a sit-in. Across the country, railwaymen this week entered the third round of rolling strikes. As France approaches the 50th anniversary of the uprising of May 1968, it seems once again to be caught up in a wave of defiant rebellion. The French may have elected a young leader, Emmanuel Macron, who promised change. But nearly a year later it appears that they have already had enough. The sources of discontent are various. Railway workers, or cheminots, are on strike against a reorganisation of the SNCF, the national railway, which would put an end to jobs-for-life for new recruits. Air France pilots have grounded planes over a pay dispute. Retirees are unhappy because they face higher social charges on their pensions. Students are protesting against a new application process, which gives universities more say over the undergraduates they take (currently, they cannot select at entry on academic grounds). These conflicts are mostly unconnected. But the overall impression is one of chaos. Spring in France is protest season, and manifs (demos) sprout in the warmer weather like crocuses. It is a measure of how seriously he takes the revolt that Mr Macron, who thinks the French president should take a “Jupiterian” approach to power and remain above the daily grind, agreed unusually this week to two live televised interviews. One was for a lunchtime news programme, popular with provincial viewers and pensioners. Up to a point, Mr Macron is indeed facing the most demanding, and symbolic, test of his reformist resolve. The reorganisation of the SNCF is designed to prepare (though will not privatise) the railways for upcoming competition under previously approved European rules. The railwaymen, some of whom can still retire at the age of 50 + Show Spoiler [Precision] +Note from TheDwf: train drivers can theoretically retire at 52, and others railway workers at 57. But The Economist forgets to mention that they need to work 41 to 43 years to get their full pension, so unless you started driving trains at 10 you simply don't retire at 52. In practice rail way workers retire around the same age as the general population does. , know that such perks cannot last. Mr Macron was elected on a promise to unify the disparate rules governing French public pensions, and this reform lies ahead. Pensioners too knew that he would raise their contributions, to compensate for his decision to lower social charges on people in work. It is scarcely surprising that, as the reality of such changes sinks in, disgruntlement has spread. ![[image loading]](https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20180414_EUC246.png) The current conflict could yet harden, and drag on. Yet it would be a mistake to conclude that France is merely stuck on the same old track. Over the past 11 months, one of the most surprising features of the new government has been its ability to push through a raft of reforms with a minimum of fuss. Last September Mr Macron liberalised the labour market and simplified redundancy rules, without protracted protests. More recently his labour minister, Muriel Pénicaud, tore up a soft deal agreed between unions and bosses over reform of France’s inefficient publicly mandated training schemes and imposed her own more radical scheme, prompting little more than a whimper. The government has ended the wealth tax, and put a flat tax on financial income. Bruno Le Maire, the finance minister, now forecasts a government budget surplus by 2022, which would be the first for France since 1974. A broader set of policies has also slid through. Last summer parliamentary rules on employing relatives were tightened. Mr Macron now wants to shrink the number of deputies in the National Assembly from 577 to 404. An ambitious overhaul of the treasured school-leaving baccalauréat exam is under way, as are negotiations over phasing out jobs-for-life in the civil service. Class sizes were halved for five- to six-year-olds in tough schools in time for the start of the current academic year. “Macron has delivered far more than I expected,” says Jacques Delpla, an economist at the Toulouse School of Economics, who judges the SNCF restructuring the key to unlocking further reform. Mr Macron has been helped by a big parliamentary majority, and an opposition enfeebled by his new party’s rise. By laying out his plans during the campaign, and securing a mandate for them, the president has managed to tick off a fair number of items on his to-do list. His ministers have tried to marginalise hard-line unions. Mr Macron is also hoping to lean on public opinion, explaining, for instance, that his plans for pensions and training are not just about penny-pinching. If Mr Macron is nudging France in the right direction, why then is there so much discontent, on and off the street? From a high of 57% last June, his approval rating has dropped to just 40%. One answer is that he is touching vested interests. Fully 63% of retirees, for instance, disapprove of his presidency, according to an Ifop poll. Another is that, in his quest to govern from on high, Mr Macron tends to come across as disdainful, and out of touch with ordinary folk. The French like the way he has improved their country’s image. As many as 66% think he defends the country well abroad. Yet only 34% of the French judge the former investment banker close to the everyday preoccupations of his fellow citizens. He has been tagged “the president of the rich”. All French leaders are haunted by the memory of 1968. Mr Macron, though, was born nearly a decade later, and seems to have less of a complex about it than most. Of all his reforms, the SNCF restructuring is not the most radical. But the cheminot remains a romantic figure, and high-speed railways are an emblem of French technological prowess. Public opinion could swing behind the strikes. The railways may not be Mr Macron’s defining reform. But his handling of the conflict could be the decisive moment of his presidency. SourceA day of national mobilization is scheduled in 3 days, the 19/04.
And now a left-wing point of view (also goes with the current discussion about what's "moderate" or not):
Don’t be fooled by Emmanuel Macron the ‘moderate’
The French president is hailed as a centrist saviour, a bulwark against extremes – even as he cuts taxes for the wealthy, attacks workers’ rights and demonises refugees
The world has gone mad, the fanatics of left and right are on the march, the voices of reason have been sidelined. This is the view of the self-styled “moderates” or “centrists” of the political world and the commentariat. There has been little reflection about how the broken economic model they defended unleashed so much anger and disillusionment.
Rather than debating ideas and policies, they longingly gaze after allegedly charismatic men who might act as saviours. David Miliband is the eternal prince over the water. But their international icon, France’s Emmanuel Macron, provides an instructive lesson in what “centrist” politics means in practice.
Macron is far more popular internationally than in France, where dissatisfaction with his presidency has surged to 58% less than a year after his election. Here is a man who owes his power to good luck rather than any vindication of his political philosophy. In the first round of the French presidential election, he scored less than a quarter of the vote, and not dramatically more than three other candidates including the far-right Marine Le Pen and radical left Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Macron’s thumping second-round victory was less an endorsement and more a rejection of fascism.
French scepticism towards Macron contrasts sharply with his own lack of self-doubt. He refused to be questioned by journalists because his “complex thought processes” were ill-suited for such a setting. His denunciations of his opponents would not be out of place on Donald Trump’s Twitter feed: they are “slackers” and “do-nothings”, while workers protesting over job losses should stop “wreaking havoc” and look for a job elsewhere. Macron is a pound-shop Margaret Thatcher, redistributing wealth to those with too much of it, while assaulting workers’ rights and France’s hard-won social model. His tax changes have gifted the hundred wealthiest households more than half a million euros a year: the top 1% captured 44% of his new tax breaks.
For the less affluent, it’s a different story. This former investment banker has slashed housing benefit, and hiked taxes on pensioners – in a country where the average monthly pension is just €1,300 (£1,100). His policies have shifted the workplace balance of power from workers to bosses. French students are staging occupations and protests against more selective entry requirements for universities, derided as an attack on free universal education and France’s social model.
Another pillar of his agenda is privatisation, including of France’s airports and part of the national energy utility. His confrontation with rail workers is seen as an attempt to lay the foundations for a catastrophic British-style privatisation of the railway industry. EU-mandated deregulation will mean foreign companies can soon compete with the state rail company SNCF, and Macron is transforming it from a state enterprise into a limited company; exactly what happened with the formerly state-owned France Télécom.
So-called centrists are supposed to be socially liberal. Macron exposes this pernicious myth for what it is. A man who courted left-leaning voters by promising a humane policy towards migrants and refugees now has them firmly in his sights. The number of days a person without papers can be imprisoned in a detention centre is to be doubled; the consideration time period for asylum has been halved, meaning fewer refugees will be accepted. Charities warn that refugees fleeing war will be deported. Macron’s interior minister, Gérard Collomb, claims that communities are “breaking up because they are overwhelmed by the inflow of asylum seekers”. No wonder the far-right Front National has described his policies as a “political victory”.
Macron offers no future for France, let alone any other western society. There is hope, however. For years after François Hollande betrayed his 2012 election pledge to break with austerity, the French left was in the doldrums. Polls showed that the far right was strongest among the disillusioned, insecure younger generation. The rise of radical left politician Mélenchon changed that: he won nearly a fifth of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, partly by prising some of the disaffected from the jaws of the far right.
Macron is presented as an oasis of moderation, a bulwark against the extremes. But there is nothing moderate about slashing taxes on the wealthy, attacking workers’ rights or demonising refugees. He represents a doubling down on an economic model that bred mass insecurity and proved an essential ingredient in the revival of French fascism.
It is the same across the west. An unjust economic model long defended by parties of the centre right and centre left – one that brought an economic crash that led to austerity and attacks on living standards – is squarely responsible for the polarisation of politics. If the left fails to provide an inspiring, coherent alternative, it will be the radical right that will triumph.
Source
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On April 20 2018 00:54 Velr wrote:
I just know that everytime i went to france for the last 20 years the smaller towns look worse and worse, the stuff is just falling apart more and more... An "old town" doesn't have to look like it got his last fresh paint right after ww2...
Aside from the very tourist foto motives and goverment districts (often the same place), these are squeeky clean. Its really staggering to me, you walk 200 metres away from the tourism centers and suddenly stuff looks like shit.
I really love to visit France but it seems to just fall apart physically.
Btw: Didn't macron run on reforms? Why the outrage about doing some?
Because unlike in Switzerland, where you have an actually decent level of democracy, in the rest of the world including France you vote for a Führer/Führerparty/Führercoalition that just happens to be the least negative choice for most (and that is an exaggeration already, depending on the voting system and the choices allowed by the political system "most" may mean a 20-25% minority like in the USA). That Führer/Führerparty/Führercoalition can then do as they want for multiple years, as there are basically no democratic controls that would force an actual representation between elections.
Demanding demcratic obedience is an extremely authoritarian stance in most countries. Many people might be for "reforms", but there is a vast spectrum of choices to be made and if you give all power to the Führer, then it will not be a representative reform, regardless how many people voted for him first. (or in other words: why market choices are better than democratic authoritarianism - assuming you don't use a feudalist-conservatively distributed weight system with no dependence on personal achievments whatsoever, that gives 2nd generation inbred rich kids money to influence a liberal economy. Like a Donald Trump or other idiots that shouldn't have millions or billions to compete on markets and ruin liberalism for everyone)
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The easy and lazy answer would be that Switzerland is greatly decentralised and France is greatly centralised. As can be imagined decentralised systems would be better at making sure that general infrastructure is well maintained. The question is though, what is being comparing exactly, and compared to what? Several towns in UK, especially in the former industrial areas look like they are from the Victorian era, because they are. But if the railway bridges still can carry a heavy volume of goods and passengers, and the old warehouses and factories can be repurposed, no matter how old fashioned they look on the outside is that a problem?
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On April 20 2018 00:54 Velr wrote:
Btw: Didn't macron run on reforms? Why the outrage about doing some?
1. Macron hid how hardcore he would be.
2. He and Fillon were the only ones who ran an openly euroliberal program, and they got 44% (less than 50%, so). Macron was elected thanks to the far-right troll in the second round, but in practice his grand orientations about economic liberalism and UE are minority.
Basically he was elected a bit by accident (first four candidates got 24-21-20-20), with a fragile legitimacy and no real permission from the French people to fully convert our social model to a neoliberal one. He abuses his mandate when pretending that people mostly validated his whole program.
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By the way, can someone from Italy (or capable to speak Italian) sum up the public/party reactions to the Austrian government's law draft, that would have granted German- and Ladin- speaking people from Italy Austrian consulate protection?
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EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Da4-AhmW0AAwfn7.jpg)
