[Time] Paris Police Clash With Demonstrators Protesting Rising Fuel Taxes

I'm for quelling mobs who destroy private property with extreme prejudice; these Frenchies voted for this socialist clown, they deserve the policies they get; it's not like Iran where they have no say.

Macron should not give in to a mob, creates all the wrong incentives.

 

The one sure thing about Malthusians, ever since the original: their predictions are always wrong.

 

I don't know about Malthusians as population growth isn't accelerating anymore, but food production is at risk with climate change: https://www.ci.uchicago.edu/blog/do...threatens-fishing-and-farming-coastal-nations

 

When I was in France for business back in 2009, the first time I saw a gas station it kind of shocked me. The price was 1.63 which at first glance seemed really cheap. Then when I realized that is per liter and not per gallon and started doing the math I was shocked again. 3.78(liters per gallon) X 1.63 = 6.16. Then when you factor in the currency conversion at the time it over $7 US dollars per gallon.

I can see why they would be pissed off about anything that increase fuel prices. Heck most everyone already drives vehicles the size of postage stamps there. With fuel prices as high as they are there, I seriously doubt people are out joy riding. These fuel taxes will do very little to help climate change and will basically just be a money grab for the government.

 

I have a house guest right now from France. She's lamenting she isn't in France right now so she can go out and protest. In her view -- which isn't really different than what we're seeing in American press -- the gas tax is not the real point, but just the catalyst. The complaint is the heavy tax burden in general which she believes has gotten much worse under Macron. She voted for Macron to avoid Le Pen, but wants to be rid of him. If your wondering where she fits, she's from a provincial small town, but now lives and works in Paris. She laments the rioting. She says these breakers always come out when there's a protest, but it really muddies the waters for the people in the provinces who protest peacefully or sympathize.

Over 70% of France's electric generation volume is from nuclear.

In my view, we have a bad and worsening situation with wealth disparity in the US and the developed world (I understand the developing world isn't do great on this score either) where the benefits of capitalism, globalism and especially automation are going disproportionately to the already wealthy. And the animus from these other issues-of-the-day, including immigration and refugees as well as climate change and decarbonization, really stem from wealth disparity. As a civilization, we are so fantastically efficient and productive. We produce wealth at a rate that could not be imagined a century ago. But we have hundreds of millions of people who'll see a penny on the dollar from it and they're getting distress costs from the burdens of international cooperation to solve global problems. The burdens should be spread broadly. But, the resources needed to shoulder those burdens have not been spread broadly. As it relates to France's gas tax, the tax is a good idea but it should be complemented with a wealth distribution schema that makes supporting it easy.

They get better gas mileage. A better metric for comparing the cost between countries would be dollars per mile (or euros per kilometer).

 

A Parisian celebration of globalism and their brilliant globalist EU leaders.

How is it that anyone here does not want us to follow in their footsteps?

 

It's almost as if environmentalism is a convenient pretense for wealth redistribution!

 

Macron will now pretend to talk to supposed protest leaders and will find a way to make them look intolerable. Extra points if he can frame the protesters as ethnonationalists.

 

Why would that be a better comparison?

 

I think you have this figured out!!!

 

The pollution just goes to other countries like India and China. Carbon tax is a lie. So is the fact that this is all about fuel taxes.

 

That's what you said earlier. But wealth "redistribution" is a bullshit concept. There is only a distribution of wealth. Redistribution implies there is some objective or natural or morally correct distribution with which you're interfering. But how we divide the pie just a construct. Some constructs work better than others to achieve our more ultimate purposes, whatever they may be. And while I do think there are moral imperatives in how you build the construct, maintaining the status quo is not one of them imo.

Because ultimately what you are buying is transport from point A to point B. Government requirements for high fuel efficiency mitigates some of the harm of the high fuel prices. Having to buy 10% less gas is functionally equivalent to having retail prices 10% lower for the consumer's wallet.

 

Because due to their awful regressive taxes, only the rich can afford to own and operate anything other than the absolute most fuel efficient vehicles as it stands. Also, by 2021 all passenger cars in the EU have to get at least 57.4 MPG and "light commercial vehicles" would have to get right at 37 MPG which further restricts the pool of cars you can choose from. I'm sure they make exceptions to this, but I don't know enough about it or care enough to sort them all out.

Again though, even with those exceptions, only the rich can afford to do what they want while the poor have far less freedom of choice....robbing freedom of choice from the poor of course being the goal behind the policies to begin with.

 

Oh that is easy to fix, just take the money from the rich and redistribute it to everyone else.

Just make everyone poor so the freedom of choice can be robbed from everyone.

 

Food production has been on a near continuous growth trend for decades.

http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QI/visualize

Cereal crops production remains at very high levels, even if 2018 might not break last years records:



http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/csdb/en/

Which the Macron Government wants to get down to 50%, though that's probably an improvement from the previous Hollande goals.

 

Way to not give in to violence, Macron.

This guy criticized the US for pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord yet he cannot implement a single carbon tax on his country without a half-century’s worst rioting.

Bravo France, you truly are French.

 

the baguette sword

 

Another vacation destination you'll have to strike off of your civilized nation list, unfortunately. But I think Macron did the right thing. It'll be a temporary suspension and they'll bring it back. But obviously, there is more that needs to be done to get public buy-in on pursuing these policy goals on abating climate change. Either more education on the need for it, and/or other policy changes to make the sacrifice more palatable by easing burdens elsewhere.

He said he wouldn't give in to violence, so it probably does send the wrong signal. I think there is more to it than that. The protests were also strong in the provinces but without the violence that we saw in Paris. If it was only Parisian rioters he had to worry about, I don't think he'd have backed off.

 

Right, just like increasing oil production means we'll never have to worry about oil disappearing, right? Alaska has us covered!

These increasing figures are purely short term and have resulted in mass deforestation + destruction of ecosystems, all of which contribute to the increase in natural disasters that wipe out areas producing food. The industrial model also damages the soil and prevents crop rotation, meaning you will have totally unhealthy nutrient depleted food leading to more healthcare issues for Americans and the rest of the world who follow. You also increase the likelihood of calamitous yields, a small sample of which you see in the decrease for the 18/19 yields. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, excuse the pun

It's not just Africa and Asia, look to the many pig farms on the East Coast affected by flooding.

https://reliefweb.int/report/world/fao-el-ni-o-2018-19

The raw numbers tell of a lie sold by those only interested in profit, not the well being of humanity.