A six-month freeze on pensions to save 4 billion euros; a hike in electricity taxes for 3 billion; cuts to local communities’ budgets worth 5 billion; a reduction in the amount of money reimbursed for medical consults to save 1.5 billion; cuts to daily subsistence allowances; 4,000 teaching positions cut... the government is waging war against what is most vital for us.
Millions of workers, retirees and youth don’t even have 1,000 euros a month to live on. They’ve already given up on eating properly. They are barely heating their homes. They are postponing visits to the doctor, eye specialist, and dentist. And we're expected to accept that it will get even worse?
Prime Minister Barnier and his government are saying there’s a "budget crisis". But for the working class, there’s a budget crisis every month! The laboring classes are paying dearly with inflation. Oftentimes, factory workers’ and employees’ wages aren’t enough to fill the grocery cart and pay all the bills, along with constantly increasing insurance premiums and health plans.
All of us are paying for the so-called pension deficit by being forced to work an extra two years. All of us are confronted with underfunded hospitals and schools, overcrowded nursing homes, daycare centers and public transportation. All of these cutbacks must stop.
And the government better not come talking about "sharing the burden"! The planned tax on the ultra-rich is expected to bring in 2 billion euros. But last year, France’s 40 wealthiest companies paid out 70 billion euros in dividends. While money is always lacking to pay for pensions, hospital staff and teachers, there is never any shortage for dynasties of shareholders, who are nothing but parasites.
The capitalist system works like a giant vacuum, sucking up the wealth produced by workers. It's not designed to make their work pay, but to make money flow to money and to ensure that capital always generates more capital.
On top of making money through exploitation, capitalists also suck up public money. And that explains why the deficit is so high. The state didn’t go into debt to help out employees, retirees or the unemployed, but to give handouts to the bourgeoisie and capitalist corporations.
So as to improve the “country’s attractiveness”, according to Macron, the government did away with the wealth tax. It also reduced taxes on capital and corporate profits. So in the end, a baker ends up with a higher tax rate than a multimillionaire shareholder!
And as if that weren't enough, the state—just like the regional, county and local governments run by politicians of all stripes—keeps showering huge corporations with subsidies supposedly to help them invest or decarbonize...
"To support jobs in the French maritime sector," the government, for example, changed the way taxes on shipowners are calculated. Within two years, the state lost nearly 10 billion euros in revenue to the almost exclusive benefit of a single company, CMA CGM, which controls three-quarters of French maritime trade.
So, 10 billion euros gone in order to benefit a big capitalist company which made a profit of 23.4 billion euros in 2023 and to enrich a billionaire, Rodolphe Saadé, whose personal fortune amounts to 32 billion. He is now known for having bought the newspaper La Provence and the TV channel BFM. And this is just one example among many.
Sanofi, which was showered with public money through research tax credits, is now laying off its researchers and has even sold off the fabrication of paracetamol in a lucrative financial deal.
Public coffers are being emptied to fill those of multinationals and the big bourgeoisie. In fact, they are directly related. This debt is not ours to pay. It’s the big bourgeoisie’s debt, so the capitalists should be the ones to pay back every last cent. By simply putting an end to the handouts given to capitalists, using the 1,200 billion euros in profit accumulated by the 500 wealthiest families and seizing a good portion of the 180 billion euros in profit from France’s top 40 companies, there would be more than enough money.
This is the program we must oppose to Barnier and his government and to all the politicians who claim to be opposed to the government but in fact support it, starting with Le Pen.
Making the big bourgeoisie pay would be the first measure for public benefit. But expropriating them and stripping them of their power to cause harm remains the only way to end such an unjust, unequal, and barbaric society.
Nathalie Arthaud