Want To Take Over France? Now's The Chance!

Last I saw his approval rating was 18%.

Finally somebody who's beaten Obama is lowest approval ratings.

I'd place more value on Approval Ratings if I had any value for the collective hivemind of the public. I think in this case it's just serendipity that they align.

This was my confusion about this thread...FR, to my knowledge, has a Parliamentary legislative governing body. It really actually isn't anything radical or special in this regard--the term "government" and Parliament-appointed-leaders, in this case, are often used synonymously which I think is creating some confusion in this thread that there is some kind of second French Revolution afoot no?


Anyone can correct me, please, but to my knowledge the reformation of Parliamentary bodies (which are formed from agreements/deals made by majority-seat-holding party groups and quorums of representatives) simply coincides with arbitrary decisions to remake those same arrangements/appointments of staff members to various key positions in government. The FR constitution does not change, nor does necessarily its base economic model/currency/membership relations with other nations/etc. that would occur with some kind of revolution or forcible dissolution of government, only the general economic/political/policy direction as directed by the newly-appointed staff positions (or lack of change, if not enough positions change hands...)

For certain it's an inconvenience to many, as many day-to-day operations are suspended pending new governmental positions, but it does occur often in Parliamentary forms of government.

What is happening right now happened under every president that I can remember in this country (I haven't paid attention to what happened before Mitterrand's second election). In France, nobody gives a ***, really.

It doesn't change anything in the slightest. They take one incompetent guy and replace him with another, that's it. The ministers have very little impact individually nowadays, they're mere pawns, they're far from the ones we had during the previous generations (and the ones that came back became full retard, or else they are removed).

The problem is the president and the prime minister. For the president it's understandable if they don't remove him, but the removal of the prime minister can easily be done and is a necessity in this situation. He needs to go, he's 50% of the issue the country is facing right now. Valls is cancer, he's breached human rights and the country rights so many times in the past year alone, he shouldn't even be allowed to still be a politician. He's that bad.

The Dieudonné story was really disgusting, I wouldn't be surprised if Valls was sued/punished by justice for it as soon as he's out of his position. The guy cannot even hope to presenting himself to any future elections.

Lot of politicians in our country are incompetent and take individual choice for their professionnal carreers ... We need a constructive alternative but we are ready to radically change mentalities ? No, peoples are fixed in dead past.

France; Europe's new sick man

I'm going to throw my stick into this mess: I'm seeing a lot of knocking of France because of their "failed socialist system."

Did the U.S. suddenly fix all its problems? Capitalism isn't running a very good game at the moment from where the rest of the world is looking. France may be struggling economically, but who isn't? And the quality of life there is still a heck of a lot better than that in the U.S.

Not saying straight socialism works, nor am I saying straight capitalism works, but seriously. There's a lot of mud slinging here acting like your own sh*t doesn't stink.

America hasn't been close to capitalistic since Nixon axed the Bretton Woods system. Even that was a better version of capitalism than we have now. Fiat currency does not work.

Capitalism (or at least, our version of capitalism) has been working for almost 300 years. The problem is, people confuse cronyism with historic capitalism.

Socialism (as well as Communism) has been in process for at most a couple of decades, and it created nothing but pain and horror for their citizens.

Historic capitalism being?
Cronyism is one possible consequence of having a capitalistic system. So are monopolies/monopolistic behavior. And if by our, you mean US, you need to also look at 'working' when considering the impact on the populous (e.g. child labor, slavery, company towns/scrip, treatment of immigrant labor).

Uh, what? Nordic countries say hi. Your timescale is off by about an order of magnitude as well, depending on what you mean by "in process".


Most rational people recognize that you need a mixture of capitalism and socialism to have a reasonably active and humane society.

SocCapCommunism!

and this is why neocons fail at reality.

My proposed solutions

1.capped salaries/incomes - a system where the richest can't be more than 100 times wealthier than the poorest. Wealth Disparity is the true problem. Still have competition, but say goodbye to the Buffets, Gates and Slims of the world. You will still have people flaunting their wealth, they just won't be able to spend 2,000,000 a day for 86 years of their lives to hit zero (like bill gates can). Wanna get richer? Contribute towards the poorest getting richer and you can, but that ratio stays the same.


2.socialism in state social entities - Aim for national healthcare to equal less than 1% of GDP. This means people are healthier. The State should fund healthcare. Schools should be free. Teachers should be paid well. The Police and firefighters should be very well compensated as well. Raise the bar on recruiting cops; Minimum 3.5 Graduate degrees in a humanitarian or science major. Stop making the force a breeding ground for drop outs who couldn't cut it in the world.

3. Money out of Politics - stop campaign contributions. Use the internet for ***'s sake. Why hasn't politics caught up with technology yet? Put some kind of mechanism where campaigning can be centralized to a single site/medium and all candidates get equal time. Also, while on technology, why aren't there more referendums? with mobile penetration rates and IMEI phone chips, we don't need polls, we can referendum on every last subject and issue there is.. *** polls, vote.

4.Revers corporations' legal recognition as citizens - this is just HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE.

5.Increase taxes - yes! follow the scandanavian models when it comes to taxes. Sure you loose 60% of your income, but have you seen prisons in norway? its like a 5 star hotel in heaven. I wanna go to a norweigian prison when i retire.

6.Re-examine pharma patents - the companies need to profit, but should their profits stand in the way of curing aids and cancer? put humanity as a whole first. Some argue without those profits they can't afford the R&D to develop drugs. Easy solution, tax breaks, subsidize the pharm sector and

7. Eliminate Fast food or Tax the ***out of them - not all fast food, just the ones that have been proven to cause our health to go to ***.


8. Cap celeb pay - sports celebs included. I'm thinking of Justin Beiber.

Jet, this isn't a particularly helpful response.

You're completely right.

I have a friend who just always says "we need Marine to be elected, she'll make people rage, go up against the government, because there is no way the far right is elected without people revolting".

I think it's the only solution, as bad as it is. I don't see any other politician having an impact. Because even Marine who is literally the only person that isn't like the guys we've had, she's still from the right, money is still a big thing for her, so she'll still *** things up.

I don't know who I'll vote for but, I'll vote for whoever can break the mold, in a way or another.

Not a particularly workable solution in that context, simply due to the scale of the problem versus potential to change. This can be addressed by reducing scale (e.g. requiring companies above a certain Y number of employees to not exceed X times the median compensation). However, that may likely cause an unintended consequence of a drive to eliminate low-wage positions via the application of technology, or drastic increase in outsourcing/contracting/subcontracting (essentially driving management levels into different corporations). Which would be somewhat interesting to see what the end result would look like.
You may also get more profit-sharing solutions.
First, the last is an unfair characterization of police. Secondly, the simple concept of license to use force or control people is potentially a larger issue for who applies than education level.
Healthcare and education should be subsidized by the society, as everyone benefits from adequate coverage. But these things do cost money; and part of the issue is recognizing that the cost to everyone, individually, by NOT having these things is higher than the cost to have them.

Campaign amounts should be capped, provided by the public, and universal. I've never understood the concept of allowing unbalanced campaign funding. After all, the candidates are campaigning to enter a position with the same resources; shouldn't their ability to utilize the resources they have be one of the criteria for selecting them? Almost every problem is solvable given enough money to throw at it.
Well, not exactly. Giving them the same rights as people is HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE. But recognizing their existance as a standalone legal entity is important as well.
The reason that prisons in Norway are significantly nicer has very little to do with taxation, and more to do with culture. Prison is for reform, not for punishment (as it is in the US).
For Denmark, won't be taxed at 60% of your income unless you have a seriously large income. The upper tax bracket on the graded system starts at roughly 80kishUSD from what I recall; you would need to be significant multiples of that amount before you reach 60%. That's not including any similar deductions you can take for mortgage interest or pension contributions.
The lion's share of income tax goes to the local level government.
One thing the scandinavian countries have is a high state sales tax (25% here in DK).
This gets somewhat into a chicken and egg problem. Without the ability to profit, non-governmentally funded profit-driven organizations won't be involved. So if you want to fund it publicly, or have some pre-set way of valuing cures (e.g. bounty or known compensation schemes other than patents) then by all means. But changing the score after the game is won is not the proper way of doing it.
Fast food/junk food are similar to alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. You generally won't have any issues in moderation. However, moderation is something people seem to be generally bad at. There are things that should not be allowed as food additives, and there should be more stringent adherence to existing regulations regarding food. But generally, the same people who complain about big government and government regulation are the same ones screaming when there is an outbreak of salmonella or listeria.
Not sure why this would be treated any differently than any other job. The issue has more to do with what humans place value on than anything else.

On Point 1, I forgot to add - no outsourcing.
If its unavoidable, companies within a community should benefit the members of that community. Put an off-set scheme where 75% of profits cannot be spent outside the community. Spend how they will, just do it inside the community.

That is the ethical thing to do. Globalization is turning out to be the biggest con-job in history.

King I am shocked. You, of all people, should know better.

The form of capitalism we had in the colonial era was WAY different than the economic fascism we have today.

Ah... I think Deus Ex world seems like a perfect capitalism world. Companies stronger than government, everything involves private contractors from policing to securities.

The US had a glorious and golden age during the 1920s. Hope, dreams, aspirations and growth were their signature. Ever since, they are just limping along. They keep talking of equality but as a famous writer wrote "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"

Now the US is going back to the age-old method of 'money talks' like everyone else. The more money you have, the more 'equal' you are. Of course, you don't have absolute power but you're getting pretty close to invincible with it.

You can hire the best lawyers if you're getting sued or you're trying to destroy a hapless nobody. You can also get a PR team and professional spin doctors as well as a bunch of specialists and advisers. Sometimes, you can even pay off the whole thing and sweep them under a rug somewhere (like the investment banks). You might not be able to get away with everything but chances are you can get away with a lot of things.

On the other hand, if you're a poor sob getting sued then you're lucky if you can get an over-worked public lawyer. The guy would have 10s of cases and are more than willing to settle your case if he can avoid lengthily court battles. Of course, it's harder to get convicted on something you are not guilty of but you are having the whole deck stacked against you. You don't always lose but you are going to suffer.

Oh yeah, in case you're thinking Socialism is evil, Canada is actually pretty close to Socialism. I think we got branded as Socialists by the US. Public Healthcare, high income taxes and we also speak French. Our army doesn't fight much but keeps eating up money and the submerines seem to sink in water. Yet, the citizen aren't suffering in pain and horror...

The problem is fiat currency, not real money. Plain and simple. Give any government the power to control and regulate currency, and it's all downhill, as we are seeing.

All fiat currency goes to zero when the issuing government or central bank either loses the ability to or refuses to further guarantee its value. IE. It's all faith based.

Capitalism is based on the darwinist theory where the strong survives and the weak dies. If there's nothing to temper capitalism brutality the world will just go worse than it is right now. Plus, I know you like to highlight the pseudo-freedom that capitalism provides but guess what, it can only ends in oligarchy.
It has begin already just watch out your (ours) banksters and their lobbies. At this point, their decisions have more impact than any of our politics.
As for straight communism, straight capitalism is an utopy. We decided that capitalism could be a fair one for the time being.

It was a testament to being in agreement with your statement, but certain resident members of the site absolutely refuse any "mixture" even though they don't realize that we have a mix already.

tl;dr I agree with your original statement which I had quoted of there needing to be a mixture, 100%, wholly and entirely.