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On February 23 2023 14:13 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2023 07:08 GreenHorizons wrote:
Do you all think European social democracies generally (folks can answer for just their own if they wish) are getting more or less "social" compared to 5,10, 20, 40 years ago? It seems to me that Switzerland is holding better than most, which I'd attribute to the different democratic system. But I agree with Simberto for Europe in general. There isn't really a whole lot holding liberals back.
I find this comment so strange - to me Switzerland is like the poster child for how great things can be if you play the neoliberal race to the bottom and actually win.
I moved to Switzerland from the US 2 years ago, an acquaintance of mine I made here has 5 part time jobs. Each day she goes to the office of a different conglomerate with an office in Zug. This kind of 'tax management' is obviously a net bad for workers and societies internationally, but its amazing for Switzerland. It's a small country so a small amount of money flowing into the country in absolute terms is still a lot per person.
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Zurich15325 Posts
On February 27 2023 20:32 KlaCkoN wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2023 14:13 Nebuchad wrote:On February 23 2023 07:08 GreenHorizons wrote:
Do you all think European social democracies generally (folks can answer for just their own if they wish) are getting more or less "social" compared to 5,10, 20, 40 years ago? It seems to me that Switzerland is holding better than most, which I'd attribute to the different democratic system. But I agree with Simberto for Europe in general. There isn't really a whole lot holding liberals back. I find this comment so strange - to me Switzerland is like the poster child for how great things can be if you play the neoliberal race to the bottom and actually win. I moved to Switzerland from the US 2 years ago, an acquaintance of mine I made here has 5 part time jobs. Each day she goes to the office of a different conglomerate with an office in Zug. This kind of 'tax management' is obviously a net bad for workers and societies internationally, but its amazing for Switzerland. It's a small country so a small amount of money flowing into the country in absolute terms is still a lot per person.
This kind of job hopping is extremely uncommon in Switzerland though. And even Zug is a special case within Switzerland and not representative of the country. Also I am unsure what you mean by "playing the neoliberal race to the bottom"? Outside of extreme cases like the one you described Switzerland is a great country for workers. It's no accident that people from all over Europe and the world come to work in Switzerland.
That said Switzerland is probably the most classically liberal society in Europe, and yes, is extremely successful with it.
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On February 27 2023 21:18 zatic wrote:Show nested quote +On February 27 2023 20:32 KlaCkoN wrote:On February 23 2023 14:13 Nebuchad wrote:On February 23 2023 07:08 GreenHorizons wrote:
Do you all think European social democracies generally (folks can answer for just their own if they wish) are getting more or less "social" compared to 5,10, 20, 40 years ago? It seems to me that Switzerland is holding better than most, which I'd attribute to the different democratic system. But I agree with Simberto for Europe in general. There isn't really a whole lot holding liberals back. I find this comment so strange - to me Switzerland is like the poster child for how great things can be if you play the neoliberal race to the bottom and actually win. I moved to Switzerland from the US 2 years ago, an acquaintance of mine I made here has 5 part time jobs. Each day she goes to the office of a different conglomerate with an office in Zug. This kind of 'tax management' is obviously a net bad for workers and societies internationally, but its amazing for Switzerland. It's a small country so a small amount of money flowing into the country in absolute terms is still a lot per person. This kind of job hopping is extremely uncommon in Switzerland though. And even Zug is a special case within Switzerland and not representative of the country. Also I am unsure what you mean by "playing the neoliberal race to the bottom"? Outside of extreme cases like the one you described Switzerland is a great country for workers. It's no accident that people from all over Europe and the world come to work in Switzerland. That said Switzerland is probably the most classically liberal society in Europe, and yes, is extremely successful with it.
Sorry I might have expressed myself unclearly - I didnt mean that my friend was being exploited. Her job is extremely chill and very well paid, she is doing great. The 'exploited' people, if we should call it that, would be the inhabitants of other jurisdictions where said conglomerates are active who gets to to deal with worse schools/infrastructure/etc because of the money flowing to Zug, Switzerland via such setups.
That's what I meant with winning the 'neoliberal race to the bottom'.The trope liberal argument in favour of relaxing regulation, taxes, and restrictions on capital is that it will increase overall economic activity, thus making more money available for society as a whole "a rising tide lifts all the boats". Socialist-minded people then counter this by saying that attracting investment simply by relaxing regulation/taxes etc will lead to a 'race to the bottom' as other jurisdictions try to do the same thing. The ensuing bidding war maximizes profits for the owning class and leaves very little left for the rest of society. However, my point is that the bidding war is rational - because if you DO win, if you indeed do manage to be a more attractive place for international capital than anywhere else, the resulting tide will indeed lift all (your) boats.
So yes, Switzerland is great (and rich). But I'm arguing that it's rich because of liberal policy choices, not socialist ones.
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On February 27 2023 20:32 KlaCkoN wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2023 14:13 Nebuchad wrote:On February 23 2023 07:08 GreenHorizons wrote:
Do you all think European social democracies generally (folks can answer for just their own if they wish) are getting more or less "social" compared to 5,10, 20, 40 years ago? It seems to me that Switzerland is holding better than most, which I'd attribute to the different democratic system. But I agree with Simberto for Europe in general. There isn't really a whole lot holding liberals back. I find this comment so strange - to me Switzerland is like the poster child for how great things can be if you play the neoliberal race to the bottom and actually win. I moved to Switzerland from the US 2 years ago, an acquaintance of mine I made here has 5 part time jobs. Each day she goes to the office of a different conglomerate with an office in Zug. This kind of 'tax management' is obviously a net bad for workers and societies internationally, but its amazing for Switzerland. It's a small country so a small amount of money flowing into the country in absolute terms is still a lot per person.
Honestly you know more about Zug than me I can't comment on that; it is a special place in Switzerland. I can explain my comment if you want. When I think of a country shifting to the right, I don't particularly look at the people governing it, I look at the center of its politics. For example Macron in France isn't an extremely rightwing president, I'm sure Sarkozy was worse than him on many aspects. But Sarkozy was fighting a socialist for his election, so the center was somewhere in between that socialist and Sarkozy; kind of like where Macron is. Now Macron is attempting to create a situation where a far right person is his opponent, and if he succeeds the center will be somewhere in between them, pretty much where Sarkozy was. That's a shift to the right.
The way electoral politics work, it's extremely difficult for an ideology to consistently hold power. You will end up disappointing some people, and your opponent will be a favourite to win the next election, at some point. Social democracies don't exist because social democrats are in power all the time, social democracies exist because sometimes a liberal wins and they bring you to the right, sometimes a socialist wins and they bring you to the left, and what's at the center between those two is social democracy.
So when I think of the poster child for neoliberalism, I don't think of any of the old social democratic systems, even when they had a liberal president. I think of systems where the leftwing choice is a vapid centrist who will say some of the right things but do as little as possible, and the rightwing choice is some absolute ghoul that is more or less entirely objectionable to people with common decency. In this system the center is neoliberalism, and it's no surprise in my opinion that in the countries where liberals are given free reign over politics this is the system that develops.
In Switzerland this can't really happen, because we don't elect people directly, we vote for policies. People can't really macron it up and present themselves as the leftist choice vs the rightwing, the fight is always on material topics. Which doesn't mean that we can't lose, of course; but I have no doubt that it helped us maintain our system much better than the UK or France can. Simply because it dilutes, to some extent, the amount of power that the elite has.
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On February 28 2023 03:59 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 27 2023 20:32 KlaCkoN wrote:On February 23 2023 14:13 Nebuchad wrote:On February 23 2023 07:08 GreenHorizons wrote:
Do you all think European social democracies generally (folks can answer for just their own if they wish) are getting more or less "social" compared to 5,10, 20, 40 years ago? It seems to me that Switzerland is holding better than most, which I'd attribute to the different democratic system. But I agree with Simberto for Europe in general. There isn't really a whole lot holding liberals back. I find this comment so strange - to me Switzerland is like the poster child for how great things can be if you play the neoliberal race to the bottom and actually win. I moved to Switzerland from the US 2 years ago, an acquaintance of mine I made here has 5 part time jobs. Each day she goes to the office of a different conglomerate with an office in Zug. This kind of 'tax management' is obviously a net bad for workers and societies internationally, but its amazing for Switzerland. It's a small country so a small amount of money flowing into the country in absolute terms is still a lot per person. Honestly you know more about Zug than me I can't comment on that; it is a special place in Switzerland. I can explain my comment if you want. When I think of a country shifting to the right, I don't particularly look at the people governing it, I look at the center of its politics. For example Macron in France isn't an extremely rightwing president, I'm sure Sarkozy was worse than him on many aspects. But Sarkozy was fighting a socialist for his election, so the center was somewhere in between that socialist and Sarkozy; kind of like where Macron is. Now Macron is attempting to create a situation where a far right person is his opponent, and if he succeeds the center will be somewhere in between them, pretty much where Sarkozy was. That's a shift to the right. The way electoral politics work, it's extremely difficult for an ideology to consistently hold power. You will end up disappointing some people, and your opponent will be a favourite to win the next election, at some point. Social democracies don't exist because social democrats are in power all the time, social democracies exist because sometimes a liberal wins and they bring you to the right, sometimes a socialist wins and they bring you to the left, and what's at the center between those two is social democracy. So when I think of the poster child for neoliberalism, I don't think of any of the old social democratic systems, even when they had a liberal president. I think of systems where the leftwing choice is a vapid centrist who will say some of the right things but do as little as possible, and the rightwing choice is some absolute ghoul that is more or less entirely objectionable to people with common decency. In this system the center is neoliberalism, and it's no surprise in my opinion that in the countries where liberals are given free reign over politics this is the system that develops. In Switzerland this can't really happen, because we don't elect people directly, we vote for policies. People can't really macron it up and present themselves as the leftist choice vs the rightwing, the fight is always on material topics. Which doesn't mean that we can't lose, of course; but I have no doubt that it helped us maintain our system much better than the UK or France can. Simply because it dilutes, to some extent, the amount of power that the elite has.
Thank you for the elaboration, that makes sense. I agree with your description of the mechanism by which the overton window in most of Europe has shifted to the right. Though funnily enough in the US it has shifted leftward, the previous president attempting a violent fascist coup notwithstanding. (As a funny sidenote I will also comment that Sweden stands as counter example to your hypothesis that social democracy is just the time average of socialism and liberalism - from WW2 until the 90s the social democrats in Sweden were hegemonic, facing no meaningful opposition to either the left or the right. The last 30 years have seen a slow and painful reconfiguration of the political spectrum along US-lite style axes however) )
I understand now what you mean with Switzerland mostly staying stable, but I am not sure it is possible to attribute the absence of such a shift in Switzerland to the particularities of her political system. I think that the stability of a political system should be judged by how it performs under strain, not when things are going well. Singapore is a semi-authoritarian country very very far from Swiss ideals of citizen participation but it is also rich and stable and the inhabitants are happy and content. But I dont think the reason Singapore is stable and the citizens are happy with the direction of the country, while France seems like it is about to tear itself apart is because semi-authoritarianism is better than party politics and electoral democracy, I think the root cause is because Singapore is richer than France for entirely different reasons. Or Saudi Arabia for a (much) more extreme example. In fact the single exception I can think of to the rule of 'really rich -> mostly stable and happy politics' is the United States.
Finally, I think it is fair to say that Switzerland being rich has allowed her citizens to avoid making difficult choices, thus taking a lot of tension out of the political system. (no need to pay to educate the number of doctors you need if the German and Italian tax payers will do it for you for example).
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On February 28 2023 06:18 KlaCkoN wrote:Show nested quote +On February 28 2023 03:59 Nebuchad wrote:On February 27 2023 20:32 KlaCkoN wrote:On February 23 2023 14:13 Nebuchad wrote:On February 23 2023 07:08 GreenHorizons wrote:
Do you all think European social democracies generally (folks can answer for just their own if they wish) are getting more or less "social" compared to 5,10, 20, 40 years ago? It seems to me that Switzerland is holding better than most, which I'd attribute to the different democratic system. But I agree with Simberto for Europe in general. There isn't really a whole lot holding liberals back. I find this comment so strange - to me Switzerland is like the poster child for how great things can be if you play the neoliberal race to the bottom and actually win. I moved to Switzerland from the US 2 years ago, an acquaintance of mine I made here has 5 part time jobs. Each day she goes to the office of a different conglomerate with an office in Zug. This kind of 'tax management' is obviously a net bad for workers and societies internationally, but its amazing for Switzerland. It's a small country so a small amount of money flowing into the country in absolute terms is still a lot per person. Honestly you know more about Zug than me I can't comment on that; it is a special place in Switzerland. I can explain my comment if you want. When I think of a country shifting to the right, I don't particularly look at the people governing it, I look at the center of its politics. For example Macron in France isn't an extremely rightwing president, I'm sure Sarkozy was worse than him on many aspects. But Sarkozy was fighting a socialist for his election, so the center was somewhere in between that socialist and Sarkozy; kind of like where Macron is. Now Macron is attempting to create a situation where a far right person is his opponent, and if he succeeds the center will be somewhere in between them, pretty much where Sarkozy was. That's a shift to the right. The way electoral politics work, it's extremely difficult for an ideology to consistently hold power. You will end up disappointing some people, and your opponent will be a favourite to win the next election, at some point. Social democracies don't exist because social democrats are in power all the time, social democracies exist because sometimes a liberal wins and they bring you to the right, sometimes a socialist wins and they bring you to the left, and what's at the center between those two is social democracy. So when I think of the poster child for neoliberalism, I don't think of any of the old social democratic systems, even when they had a liberal president. I think of systems where the leftwing choice is a vapid centrist who will say some of the right things but do as little as possible, and the rightwing choice is some absolute ghoul that is more or less entirely objectionable to people with common decency. In this system the center is neoliberalism, and it's no surprise in my opinion that in the countries where liberals are given free reign over politics this is the system that develops. In Switzerland this can't really happen, because we don't elect people directly, we vote for policies. People can't really macron it up and present themselves as the leftist choice vs the rightwing, the fight is always on material topics. Which doesn't mean that we can't lose, of course; but I have no doubt that it helped us maintain our system much better than the UK or France can. Simply because it dilutes, to some extent, the amount of power that the elite has. Thank you for the elaboration, that makes sense. I agree with your description of the mechanism by which the overton window in most of Europe has shifted to the right. Though funnily enough in the US it has shifted leftward, the previous president attempting a violent fascist coup notwithstanding. (As a funny sidenote I will also comment that Sweden stands as counter example to your hypothesis that social democracy is just the time average of socialism and liberalism - from WW2 until the 90s the social democrats in Sweden were hegemonic, facing no meaningful opposition to either the left or the right. The last 30 years have seen a slow and painful reconfiguration of the political spectrum along US-lite style axes however) ) I understand now what you mean with Switzerland mostly staying stable, but I am not sure it is possible to attribute the absence of such a shift in Switzerland to the particularities of her political system. I think that the stability of a political system should be judged by how it performs under strain, not when things are going well. Singapore is a semi-authoritarian country very very far from Swiss ideals of citizen participation but it is also rich and stable and the inhabitants are happy and content. But I dont think the reason Singapore is stable and the citizens are happy with the direction of the country, while France seems like it is about to tear itself apart is because semi-authoritarianism is better than party politics and electoral democracy, I think the root cause is because Singapore is richer than France for entirely different reasons. Or Saudi Arabia for a (much) more extreme example. In fact the single exception I can think of to the rule of 'really rich -> mostly stable and happy politics' is the United States. Finally, I think it is fair to say that Switzerland being rich has allowed her citizens to avoid making difficult choices, thus taking a lot of tension out of the political system. (no need to pay to educate the number of doctors you need if the German and Italian tax payers will do it for you for example).
It is definitely helpful to be wealthy. This is something that you can also see on an individual level; if your immediate needs are met, that's an element of daily life that you no longer have to think about and stress over, and so you can focus on other things.
With that said, I don't think this tracks very well as an explanation for the stability of social democracies. You mentioned that Singapore is richer than France, I don't exactly know which metric you used but I assume it's an economic one that is based on a country vs country comparison; I see however that the average French person is richer than the average Singaporean, by quite a margin (median wealth of 140k vs median wealth of 93k). Oppositely, Finland scores surprisingly (for me at least) low in that list, and appears to have one of the more robust social democracies in Europe. Maybe median wealth is not the data I should be looking at for this conversation, I wouldn't know; it seems intuitive to me when searching whether wealth and stability is a significant cause for revolt in a population, as the population is impacted by their own income much more than the economical performance of their country.
I think you can make a decent case for my explanation just on a mechanical level. The more concentrated the power is, the easier it is to do systemic change if the people with power have in mind that they want to do that. It's not the only factor clearly as there are other social democracies who resist without it. But even in our stability, it's also not like we're never being tested with these kinds of propositions in Switzerland as well. The proposition is made, then we vote, and if we vote no Ueli Maurer malds for a little while (well he's gone now but whatever :D) and then the bill just doesn't get passed. It's a much harder sell than just declaring that the thing is going to happen, and then possibly having to walk it back if enough people march in the streets, which often doesn't happen (and even when it does the protest might not be sufficient)...
It's also worth keeping in mind that in places where the social hierarchies are very strong, it's difficult to hear from the people who would have complaints. I don't know that the migrant workers from China in Singapore experience a lot of the stability that Singapore provides. They also don't have a voice, or ways to organize and make demands, and might come from conditions even worse than this that make them view their exploitation in Singapore in a different light. Probably not who you're going to hear from in the happiness rankings of Singapore anyway.
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Shocked we haven't seen any post's from our euro folks about the uprest in Frace as stereotypical as it may be.
+ Show Spoiler +https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230323-french-unions-dig-in-after-defiant-macron-defends-pension-overhaul
+ Show Spoiler +https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/17/europe/france-pension-reform-intl/index.html
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On March 23 2023 19:17 Taelshin wrote:Shocked we haven't seen any post's from our euro folks about the uprest in Frace as stereotypical as it may be. + Show Spoiler +https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230323-french-unions-dig-in-after-defiant-macron-defends-pension-overhaul news link. + Show Spoiler +https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/17/europe/france-pension-reform-intl/index.html CNN link. its the French, what is there to talk about. They are always protesting.
And the notion that they are angry about the retirement age going up when they are among the lowest in Europe means no one feels sorry for them.
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@Gorsameth Ya for sure those people refusing a later retirement age, what monster's. It beggars belief.
its the French, what is there to talk about. They are always protesting.
Ya, that'll age well, Very Progressive and enlightened stance. Well said.
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I mean there really are only two choices:
Either up the retirement age or cut the pension money by quite a lot. Demographic change is nothing that can be stopped by protesting
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On March 23 2023 19:28 Taelshin wrote:@Gorsameth Ya for sure those people refusing a later retirement age, what monster's. It beggars belief. Ya, that'll age well, Very Progressive and enlightened stance. Well said. You asked why no one was talking about it. I answered.
Not my problem you don't like it.
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On March 23 2023 21:12 Harris1st wrote:
I mean there really are only two choices:
Either up the retirement age or cut the pension money by quite a lot. Demographic change is nothing that can be stopped by protesting
What makes those the only choices? you could also tax more, and inside that there is also a lot of choice of who / what to tax more.
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On March 23 2023 21:42 Evotroid wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2023 21:12 Harris1st wrote:
I mean there really are only two choices:
Either up the retirement age or cut the pension money by quite a lot. Demographic change is nothing that can be stopped by protesting What makes those the only choices? you could also tax more, and inside that there is also a lot of choice of who / what to tax more.
Obviously you are right, you can always tax more.
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On March 23 2023 21:27 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2023 19:28 Taelshin wrote:@Gorsameth Ya for sure those people refusing a later retirement age, what monster's. It beggars belief. its the French, what is there to talk about. They are always protesting. Ya, that'll age well, Very Progressive and enlightened stance. Well said. You asked why no one was talking about it. I answered. Not my problem you don't like it.
Spot on.
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On March 23 2023 19:21 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2023 19:17 Taelshin wrote:Shocked we haven't seen any post's from our euro folks about the uprest in Frace as stereotypical as it may be. + Show Spoiler +https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230323-french-unions-dig-in-after-defiant-macron-defends-pension-overhaul news link. + Show Spoiler +https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/17/europe/france-pension-reform-intl/index.html CNN link. its the French, what is there to talk about. They are always protesting. And the notion that they are angry about the retirement age going up when they are among the lowest in Europe means no one feels sorry for them.
If the rest of us protested a little more maybe our retirement ages wouldn't be as high ^^'
I appreciate that they don't just let Macron fuck them over at least. There's a beauty in that.
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On March 24 2023 23:35 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2023 19:21 Gorsameth wrote:On March 23 2023 19:17 Taelshin wrote:Shocked we haven't seen any post's from our euro folks about the uprest in Frace as stereotypical as it may be. + Show Spoiler +https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230323-french-unions-dig-in-after-defiant-macron-defends-pension-overhaul news link. + Show Spoiler +https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/17/europe/france-pension-reform-intl/index.html CNN link. its the French, what is there to talk about. They are always protesting. And the notion that they are angry about the retirement age going up when they are among the lowest in Europe means no one feels sorry for them. If the rest of us protested a little more maybe our retirement ages wouldn't be as high ^^' I appreciate that they don't just let Macron fuck them over at least. There's a beauty in that.
There is protest and then there is riot. Blazing fires and 123 wounded police officers got nothing to do with the former IMO
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On March 24 2023 23:35 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2023 19:21 Gorsameth wrote:On March 23 2023 19:17 Taelshin wrote:Shocked we haven't seen any post's from our euro folks about the uprest in Frace as stereotypical as it may be. + Show Spoiler +https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230323-french-unions-dig-in-after-defiant-macron-defends-pension-overhaul news link. + Show Spoiler +https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/17/europe/france-pension-reform-intl/index.html CNN link. its the French, what is there to talk about. They are always protesting. And the notion that they are angry about the retirement age going up when they are among the lowest in Europe means no one feels sorry for them. If the rest of us protested a little more maybe our retirement ages wouldn't be as high ^^' I appreciate that they don't just let Macron fuck them over at least. There's a beauty in that. The problem is pensions are essentially a ponzi scheme. While you are working your not paying for your future retirement, your paying for the people currently retired. And since there are more and more retirees and less and less new workers (due to smaller modern families) the entire system is simply not sustainable.
You could propose just fucking over all the old people and shredding their pension, but old people actually vote so gl with that.
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I got sympathy for the unwillingness to accept higher and higher retirement ages and so on.
But the french allready have like the lowest working hours and earliest retirement age in Europe (and with that probably the world). Reforms are plain necessary at this point and every goverment has tried to do some in one form or antoher since ~20 years, just for mass protests ensuing and no chance of doing anythng about it.
And it's not like they vote in far left people that would look like "traitors" when trying this, with Macron and Sarcozy they had bog standard neoliberals and such measures are totally expected.
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EPT
