The Great National Debate

French president Emmanuel Macron's response to the Yellow Vest protests roiling France is something dubbed the "Great National Debate." Adam Nossiter addressed it earlier this week in "Macron Hopes Talk Will Calm France, but an Air of Menace Prevails."

Tuesday Macron appeared before hundreds of mayors in the city of Grand Bourgtheroulde in Normandy. The mayors were there to convey the grievances of regular citizens. But, as Nossiter explains, fear and loathing shrouded the event. Grand Bourgtheroulde was a city on lock-down:

Even Mr. Macron’s rare public appearance — they have been deemed too risky since the beginning of the Yellow Vest movement — was made under virtual siege.

The police blockaded the village where he was to speak, Grand Bourgtheroulde, banning most traffic, preventing Yellow Vests from reaching it, and screening those leaving the highway and entering the village.

It was rural France, but tear gas, a regular feature of the protest movement, was deployed to push back some who managed to get through. Wagonloads of police officers were stationed in the woods surrounding the village.

Mr. Macron, tagged as “President of the Rich” by the angry Yellow Vests, was taking no chances. The current situation, he told the mayors, “presents our country with a lot of challenges.” That was something of an understatement.

Still, the French media noted, the president had spoken the words “Yellow Vest” in public for the first time — two months after the movement began — an omission seen as a sign of his often-noted remoteness.

This morning Naked Capitalism re-posts a piece, "France’s Great Debate," by Peter Collier. Collier summarizes the Yellow Vest protests:

The first Saturday protest in November mobilised 287,000. Most had never protested before. There have been eight Saturday protests. Over 5,000 were taken into custody and a thousand held in prison. Emmanuel Macron reacted by first, apologising, then freezing tax increases and bank charges while raising the minimum wage. Amazingly the Gilets-Jaunes won more concessions from the government than any trade-union or opposition party for decades. Paradoxically the more concessions Macron made the more the movement became radical. The moderate middle-class, unsettled by the level of violence, now stayed away on Saturdays. (For this alone it may be argued that Macron had played it this way.)

Collier notes that the question of raising taxes on the super-rich is banned from the debate. Macrons prefers questions about tax cuts. Nossiter concludes his article:

Mr. Macron set out what he regards as the central questions on the minds of the French — questions that are suggested by hundreds of so-called “Grievance books,” a term that goes back to the beginnings of the French Revolution.

The books have now set out in mayors’ offices across the country for the citizens to fill in. Tax cuts are clearly the popular priority.

“How can we make our fiscal system more just and more efficient?” Mr. Macron asked in his letter. “What taxes should we cut?”

But he warned the French, underlining a paradox that many have found at the heart of the Yellow Vest movement: “We cannot, in any event, pursue tax cuts without cutting the overall level of public spending.”

He continued, taking a risk in the live-wire French context, “Should we cut some public services which are out of date or too expensive in relation to their usefulness?”

This, of course, is all that fills what's left of the mind of the zombie. Wars rage perpetually overseas. Government exists only to cut taxes and social services.

But this world view no longer beguiles the masses, the proof of which is found in the barricades around Grand Bourgtheroulde. There is even some evidence that this world view is being abandoned by segments of the ruling class.

Yesterday there was a frontpager by Karen Weise, "Microsoft Pledges $500 Million for Affordable Housing in Seattle Area," which contained this bombshell:

“Of course, we have lots of software engineers, but the reality is that a lot of people work for Microsoft. Cafeteria workers, shuttle drivers,” Mr. Nadella [Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella] said this week at a meeting with editors at the company’s headquarters. “It is a supply problem, a market failure.”

But, wait. Markets can't fail. Markets are wholly rational; better yet, divine. What's Nadella problem? Is he some sort of Putinbot, trying to divide the country?