Macron is hell-bent on dismantling public service

This is a complete myth: France public spending has never been this high (yes, even adjusted for inflation). France has never had so many public employees. France’s health care spending has grown (fast) every year. Taxes have not significantly been dropped either.

Macron’s government has also passed many left-oriented bills: 1 € meals for poor student, free contraceptive and morning after pills, culture check for youth, increased paternity leave, alleviating the SNCF debt, coverage of listening and dental prosthesis, subsidies for increasing housing insulation or repairing clothes, higher taxation on polluting cars, the shutdown of the airport project in Nantes, surrogate mothers, etc. You are telling me none of this could be worked on further with the left?

People voting for the retirement age to be 60 will never agree with people saying it should be 70.

For one nobody is saying it should be 70, for two the 60 year age is being quietly dropped by the left. Everyone knows we ain’t going back to the 1981 age, given the demography.

But the centre and left can recognize there’s an obvious demographic and financial issue. And surely can find a compromise where people with long career and hard labor retire early, and those with office jobs and long studies can probably retire a bit later. In other countries like Germany, alliances ranging from far left to centre right can work on compromises and agree on a single program. It’s perfectly doable to find middle ground.

but you fail to realize how this confirms how bigoted

I think you fail to realize that in 1982, perspectives on LGBT issues were FAR FAR different than they are today. Huguette Bello, a communist which was proposed as a prime minister by the left, refused to support gay marriage, and that was in 2013 not 1982. But she is not a bigot and Barnier is?

Not much no. The far right strategy for the past few years has been to be quiet and appear moderate and dignified, so as to shed their image of fascist extremists. (and yes, that seems to work)

Any compromise with Macron is unfortunately impossible. There is no way a single measure of the NFP would have gotten adopted if they had bent the knee

Of course there are. There’s plenty of ideological overlap on public services, LGBT rights, the environment.

And, sure, the far right should never be an ally, but if the idiots are going to follow you, why tell them to fuck off?

Because when the situation was reversed and the far right voted along with Macron’s party, the left cried about a supposed “alliance with the fascists”.

voted against the decriminalization of homosexuality

This is outright misinformation. He voted against lowering the age of consent for gay sex with minors from 18 to 15 yo. And that was more than 40 years ago too. Homosexuality is legal in France since basically the French revolution back in the 18th century.

You’re so full of shit it’s not even funny.

Says the guy broadcasting fake news.

And, sure, the far right should never be an ally, but if the idiots are going to follow you, why tell them to fuck off?

In a time when avoiding a far right government should be his first concern, I strangely mostly read about him shooting against the left

That’s because the left has also been shooting mostly against his government as well, while ignoring the far right.

Macron can’t run for another term so he doesn’t really care about his future electoral chances.

26,000 people in Paris. That’s basically nothing, the NFP militants came out but there’s no popular support for the protest beyond that.

For the left to call itself “the winner” was a mistake: not only do they control 1/3 of the parlement only, but by refusing all compromise and branding Macron’s party “the enemy” they were guaranteed to never be able to gather more support for their bills. It’s so bad that they were seriously discussing passing some bill on pension reform with the help of the far right.

Except the US tax rate is much lower. Paying the sky high French taxes while getting zero in public services in return (unlike actual French tax residents) is basically robbery.

Also just because the US does it means it’s good.

The problem is the “left government” has adopted the most radical component’s entire program (except on nuclear energy and some foreign topics).

If a different minister passes the same “we will tax all french abroad and raises marginal tax to 90%” law, doesn’t really changes anything to the bottom line.

Sure but if you don’t have a majority and need to ally with someone else you have to water down your plans, there’s no other way around it. Neither sides want to partner, but the center is probably more comfortable having no real government and keeping the status quo for the next two years than the left is.

The left didn’t increase its score from past election (about 25-30% of votes). The difference is they went united.

But technically the far right got the most votes and only cross party agreements with the centre and right avoided a far right dominated parliament.

The left also doesn’t want to work with his party. Both Mélenchon and Castes have made it clear it would be their program and only their program and that they would not ally with the presidential party which they blame for everything wrong.

She actively plotted and traveled to get revenge and clearly didn’t act in self defense. While it’s easy to be sympathetic to her story, her guilt seems difficult to deny.

The issue with housing is that the supply is limited. If you increase demand and not supply you just increase prices. Giving buyers $25k extra to spend means every home owner is now gonna jack up their selling price by $25k. This is, in the end, a subsidy for existing home-owners. Who already are doing pretty well, thank you very much.

Denying the existence of supply and demand always lead to policy failure. The way to address housing cost is to lower the cost of housing, not make housing more expensive by helping people outbid each others.

Tips should definitely be taxed. Otherwise you’ll end up with businesses shifting entire income of their staff to tipping which IMHO is horrible (on top of depriving the government of income)

This actually makes houses more expensive, because now buyers have more money to outbid each other.

They aren’t really, they are just upgrading it to a full set top box and rebranding it.

Nah they are “illegal migrants”. There are places you can go and some you can’t and that applies to everyone. There’s a wide gap between “compassion” and “free for all anything goes”.

“We are gonna make mankind happy even if we have to exterminate half of it!”

And also send to the gulag all those who oppose their inept program. You can make anything look nice if you omit all the negative stuff.

Intel has also made a similar blunder by trying GPUs and abandoning them (they got there early with the i740, then Larrabee). Saving a few dollars by gutting emerging products line has cost them billions