Welcome friends!
Have you been following the news at all about those protests in France relating to some previously scheduled albeit apparently now abandoned plans to increase taxes on fuel? Quite a commotion. Apparently a few people even died from the odd accidents and mishaps that can attend such chaotic goings on. Of course, if you live here in the USA you’re probably thinking what the heck do I care? Who knows what the French people or their government get up to? What’s it got to do with the all-important moi? I care as much about popular unrest in France as I do about all the political chaos surrounding Brexit in the UK. Well, yes, there is always that perspective. Other people. I’m telling you. What can you do? However, I couldn’t help but notice certain parallels between the current political situations in France and the USA. I wonder if, like Brexit in the UK, the news out of France may be the sort of thing a few more people here in the USA might want to think about for a few moments. Let me explain.
It seems many French voters fell and fell hard for President Emmanuel Macron in the last election. Why? No idea really, but perhaps it involved his promise to implement the usual “sweeping economic reforms” center right politicians routinely tout to improve a nation’s economic well-being likely involving tax cuts, reduced regulations, and just in general promotion of market solutions. Pretty standard stuff. As residents of the USA understand very well this sort of thing generally turns out to be great news for the well-to-do who don’t really need or want anything anyway and are more than happy to have government sit around and do a whole lot of nothing beyond enforcing their own property rights (let’s not go crazy in the minimizing government department; there must be limits!), but it usually represents a bit of a mixed bag for everyone else. Typically what happens is some national level economic metrics might rise a bit in the short run if you’re lucky, maybe GNP goes up a notch and unemployment falls a notch, but most of the longer term economic gains go where anyone who understands real economics and how real markets work would expect them to go: the already very rich or in the case of the USA the already very, very rich. Precious little of any gains from these sorts of policies tends to trickle down to the little people, by which I mean people like you and me and even more financially unfortunate cogs in the great machine of modern post-industrial life. In a few years the little people generally end up back where they were but relatively poorer and a little more desperate. Whenever one sees a faux populist politician rallying the people for sweeping economic reforms of the center-right variety one should prepare to deal with some rather cranky people sooner or later. We have a roughly similar dynamic going on here in the USA where a certain portion of the vast multitude of economically struggling people in this most wealthy of nations voted for corrupt conservative fat cat and old time faux populist politician par excellence Donald Trump presumably at least in part in response to his call for sweeping economic reforms designed to “make America great again.” Well, I suppose in Mr. Trump’s case it wasn’t all about a pretend interest in shifting some money toward economic struggling people in certain regions such as the Midwest and South and certain industries such as fossil fuels and manufacturing; he also had some racist, nativist, and religious claptrap in there as well to accommodate a range of right wing opinions on what made America great in the past in their eyes, but anyway I think a good deal of his campaign blather involved the usual sweeping economic reforms. As one might expect America post-election is basically the same as before albeit a bit more polluted, a bit less functional, a bit angrier, and with some very, very rich people who are even more satisfied with themselves and some struggling people who are apparently happy enough at the moment but likely soon to see their quality of life decline yet again and probably rather precipitously this time I’m afraid given the number Mr. Trump and the Republicans have done on the national debt.
As conservative free market ideology contains a rather high percentage of what is known in the vernacular as bullshit they must of course find some rhetorical approach to deal with the curious fact that even after sweeping economic reforms the government sector seems to have an awful lot of work to do in terms of fixing up market outcomes. They could of course always just tell the little people to go to hell as the powerful economic / political elites did in the pre-democratic good old days of traditional pre-modern conservatism, but I guess that’s typically not now considered “center right.” I think that’s now considered more “hard right.” Medieval king / rich guy worship revisited. Fascist self-styled ubermenschen. Pouting mafia dons with silk suits striking stirring poses. That sort of thing. If we’re talking about “center right” and we’re saddled with a still somewhat functional government sector trying no matter how half-heartedly to make life bearable for the little people we’re left with an intriguing question. Who’s paying for all that socialistic largesse? Funny you should ask. Well, in the case of President Trump and the conservative Republican Party here in the USA no one is paying for it. They’re running massive deficits and appear entirely content to leave a bloated national debt to young people to handle some old way some old time in the future presumably after our glorious orange leader has taken his final jet to that great gated community in the sky. (I meant the one with the Pearly Gates, not his palatial condo in Manhattan.) So that’s one way to do it. Apparently, his soul mate President Macron hit upon a different response to the old, old question of who’s paying the bill for improving market outcomes in this case not only in terms of expenditures but also in terms of reducing the consumption of fossil fuels: squeeze some cash out of that portion of the population the French conservative elite apparently consider least able to defend themselves in any meaningful way and who are anyway considered unimportant and disposable if not positively undesirable under global conservative economic ideology: the little people, the non-rich, the ninety-nine percenters. So, instead of leaving a big old mess on the carpet for future generations to clean up a la the American Republican Party he paired what one must suppose were the customary huge tax cuts for businesses, banks, CEOs, stock owners, themselves, and basically just rich people in general with an offsetting tax hike on the sort of things the little people have little choice but to consume such as fuel for example; one example of the sort of tax known in the trade as regressive, in this case a consumption tax that affects little people disproportionately because the item being taxed and the resulting tax itself represents a greater proportion of the available budget of the little people, as opposed to a progressive tax such as for example a graduated income tax or an inheritance tax, both understandably despised by one percenters and their conservative lackeys and cheerleaders.
On the one hand, I suppose one must respect Mr. Macron’s attempt at relative honesty and forthrightness on the issue of taxes. It’s almost as though he thinks center right political ideology and the flawed or really conventionally misinterpreted economic theory on which it is based are real and might actually work as advertised, as though he sincerely fails to understand one cannot really take up important economic matters of this sort without dealing in some way with the inevitable distributional issues economists and conservative pundits work so strenuously to sweep under the carpet. It’s all rather endearing in a naïve sort of way compared to the snarky, winking, self-serving “I know I’m lying and you know I’m lying and my followers know I’m lying but I have to say it anyway so let’s just get on with it” sort of thing we’ve been getting recently from conservatives here in the USA. Rather an odd reversal of the usual roles isn’t it? How unfortunate and embarrassing for Americans to be ahead of any European at all in the snarkiness rankings let alone the French. Ouch! But yes many conservatives here no longer even bother espousing the old “we’re being neutral on distributional issues” wink-wink nudge-nudge line of claptrap they learned from academic economists any longer. They just let it all hang out. The people who have economic power, the wealthy elite, the one percent, should have it because they’re very special people indeed. The poor on the other hand can do everyone a favor and drop dead the sooner the better. If we need to deal with some social issue like global warming or anything else really then obviously it should rightfully come on the backs of the disposable, worthless poor rather than the deserving, meritorious rich. Given the choice between the two I probably prefer the genteel albeit faux neutral approach to the aggressive, in your face, anti-social, Ayn Randian conservative approach so common today.
On the other hand, one struggles to understand how Mr. Macron and his center right buddies came to think of the little people of France as politically weak and defenseless chumps. Ask people anywhere in the world to name a country where average citizens are likely to stand up for themselves and take to the streets and barricades if necessary and one of the most common answers would probably be France. Honestly. The image of the busty lady and the little lad with a pistol charging down some cobblestoned street all hell breaking loose around them must surely pop into most people’s heads immediately. I guess with French conservatives not so much. In the case of President Macron I imagine a sharply dressed fellow relaxing on some ornate divan in a drawing room in the Elysee Palace, adjusting his cufflinks perhaps, sipping his roasted to hell and back coffee (just the way I like), then noticing all the mayhem on TV and proclaiming, “Wha…? Street protests? Here? In Paris?” I mean, it’s a funny sort of image. One wonders if he wouldn’t have been better advised to follow the lead of President Trump and just put off the inevitable day of reckoning as long as possible. Pass the buck as we say here in America. Pull a fast one. Slip one over on people. Grab as much cash as you can carry and hope enough water passes under the bridge before the bill arrives that the hapless little people will be unable to put two and two together and figure out why despite all their enthusiasm for coddling and advancing the interests of the poor billionaires of the nation their own quite often rather precarious economic situation continues to decline.
Brexit of course is a rather different beast based more on scapegoating than on instituting sweeping economic reforms per se, which ironically makes it rather similar to the other big project President Trump and the Republican Party have been pursuing here in the USA: demonizing foreign nations and their nefarious agents immigrants of both the legal and illegal variety. I suppose if you’ve already done your sweeping economic reforms, rich people are metaphorically swimming in money, the government is barely functioning, and the little people are still tanking, even the slowest witted village idiots may want to hear some bedtime story beyond the call for yet more sweeping economic reforms. They want a story explaining why despite what they’ve been told the market isn’t really doing all that much for them. It seems the story conservatives go to in this case is that market systems are fabulous, mystical works of Mother Nature that must not be tampered with for any reason (unlike, let’s say, the climate), and would of course quickly solve everyone’s economic issues were it not for devious scoundrels acting behind the scenes rigging the system and making it not work out right. Like who? Well, I guess the modern version of the story they tell in the UK these days is all about Europe and European immigrants. Actually I suppose here in the USA it’s also about Europe, but also Asia, and Africa, and other parts of the Americas and …. well, let’s just say the whole world. Honestly, how can one expect the market to work its magic when we have so many scoundrels interfering with it? President Trump recently fashioned himself “a tariff man” and has famously done as much as he can to whip up right-wing hysteria over the veritable army of desperate and impoverished immigrant children invading the country and so on. It’s like we got in a time machine and went back to 1920. Exactly how old is the man anyway? It’s all rather odd, but I guess to look at it from their perspective conservatives have to say something. They can’t just sit there like dummies with silly grins on their faces throwing diamonds in the air and laughing hysterically. (Yes, some dummies do that. Not all of them, but the fancy ones.) One supposes after the economic golden age Mr. Trump’s followers confidently predict will result from his trade wars and tariff schemes and tear gassing of immigrants fails to materialize on schedule we might just see a few street protests ourselves. Could happen in the UK as well once the Shangri-La of post-Brexit Britain turns out to be rather less impressive than anticipated. Well, no, not really. Cancel that. I suppose I have a little trouble imaging British people taking to the streets or manning a barricade for any reason except perhaps to throw bouquets of flowers to the Queen or Prince or what have you. I think they probably just keep a stiff upper lip, drink themselves into a stupor, put on a funny costume and serve tea to the lord of the olde manor, then knife their neighbor on the way home and steal his or her wallet to make ends meet. Actually, I guess I don’t really see many citizens of the USA doing much agitating either. Probably just take some sort of illicit drug then shoot their neighbor and steal his or her wallet to make ends meet. It’s one of the things I think many Americans and British people have in common: a complete and ingrained inability to directly confront self-serving elitist claptrap in any unified or politically significant way.
Thinking about the various ways the wealthy and politically powerful elites of the USA, the UK, and France attempt to play their respective populations just now has made me think how in olden days the rich folk of the world seemed rather better coordinated. I’m thinking of rich and powerful autocrats and their kin and hangers on strutting about fairy tale castles chopping peasants’ heads off and so on. That was pretty much all of Europe wasn’t it? Or really the entire world I suppose. In those days they really knew how to come together and royally screw the little people. Watching the different national tribes of rich folk trying to find creative ways to screw their respective populations these days is like watching some sort of cat parade. I suppose they’re trying to a certain degree. President Trump and the Republican Party are clearly doing the best they can to seek commonalities with the wealthy elite in at least some nations, such as Russia, going so far as to coordinate with them on propaganda techniques, fake news, alternative facts, and so on. And President Trump at least plays well with that Prince of Arabia who had his goons murder and dismember that journalist a while back. The man has also reported falling in love with the murderous dictator of North Korea. I suppose the conservative elite of the USA has even tried to make common cause to a certain extent with the Conservative Party of the UK in terms of excoriating immigrants and playing around with trade barriers and tariffs as weapons in what they apparently now perceive or wish to portray anyway as a zero-sum war between national economies. And in terms of political rhetoric relating more to domestic markets they agree in a broad way with their French counterparts as far as waxing eloquent on the beauty of the free market and the need for sweeping economic reforms. But then we get the funny just run up the deficit versus tax the hell out of the poor schmucks debacle. Don’t these people ever talk to one another? Get your act together folks! Or could it be coordinated in the sense of we’ll try this and you try that and we’ll compare notes later? Or are these sorts of policy inconsistencies part of their grand strategy to confuse the little people? You know, we French conservatives are nothing like our American cousins. We take our national debt very seriously and are very concerned about global warming. Also, we don’t eat so many cheeseburgers. If that’s what’s going on I’m afraid it’s not really working. Well, OK, maybe it’s working in general right now but it’s not working in at least one case. I’m a little guy, and I just can’t see that all that much difference between the two. And you know what? I think the fog may be starting to clear just a bit for others as well. One happy day the little people of all democratic nations will use their voting power to construct societies that work well for everyone and not just for those at the top. It could never be otherwise in the long run because the liberal ethos is eternal. The desire for a just, functional, and well-ordered society is an enduring element of human nature itself. The rich elite have long liked to fashion themselves akin to sharks and lions and hawks and other solitary predators but the human race is really more akin to the ant and the bee. Our power comes ultimately from communication, cooperation, taking what those in the past have given us and adding a little something of our own for the yet unborn. A human being living the life of a solitary and all devouring predator is a waste, a farce, a tragedy, an affront to nature. Love live the liberal ethos! Long live the human race!
Addendum
Recently President Macron has been in the news discussing how the concerns of the protestors are in many cases justified and floating the notion of raising the minimum wage, which should have his center right buddies all in a tizzy. American conservatives would rather throw themselves from the parapets of Trump Tower than address an issue like ethically unacceptable wages at the low end of a market determined pay scale. Seems Mr. Macron may not be as studiously dismissive of distributional concerns as one might have reasonably supposed. Nice recovery. Vive la France!
