Macron comes off as a privileged president that has no clue about what his citizens are going through.
Things are going to escalate further if nothing changes.
Regarding the current movement which started with taxes on gas, the tax raise is insignificant vs. the actual oil price increase. Read this article (in French) for more information: https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2018/11/09/peti...
Also, the people who go into the protests to break cars and shops have nothing to do with the original movement. Some clearly came to loot shops (if you are anarchist, you want to burn luxury clothing items, not take them), some are anarchists who came to fight police forces, etc.
I like the European tradition, it gets their attention, and messing with people's bread and butter is a cause to rise up
To pretend that the increase in taxes is there to help pay for renewable energies is a joke.
It's not a secret that the government is broke and looking to raise money any way it can.
It's trying to pass this tax increase as something that needs to be done to save the planet.
But they dont tax the fuel for tankers or airplanes so where is the logic?
It's not the little guy with his diesel car that does most of the damage to the environment.
Can they ? The only thing that will happen is no plane or tanker will buy fuel in France if it is not a decision made on an international level, no ?
Macron is a neoliberal, it was obvious things were going to end badly. Yeah raise the gas tax, cut pensions and let the free market solve everything. Doesn't work with public policy.
It was depressing seeing Mélenchon come in third in 2017.
France has a huge debt. This guy's policy would worsen the situation very quickly.
France is the 2nd country in the world with the most public expenses after Finland (data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-spending.htm).
And Melenchon says that liberalism doesn't work, we should just follow the path of communist countries. But France never applied liberal policies and we have all seen the results of communist policies.
French wages are on average ~8x higher compared to the post 2000 join date EU countries, prices are same across EU.