{"id":41274,"date":"2018-12-05T06:28:39","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T11:28:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=41274"},"modified":"2018-12-05T06:28:39","modified_gmt":"2018-12-05T11:28:39","slug":"the-real-significance-of-the-french-tax-revolt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=41274","title":{"rendered":"The Real Significance of the French Tax Revolt"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Real Significance of the French Tax Revolt<\/a><\/h3>\n

The gilets\u00a0jaunes (Yellow Jacket) anti-tax riots in France escalated over the past weekend, again citing the impact of higher taxes on fossil fuels \u2013and high levels of taxation in general \u2013 on everyday life. French citizens, already subject to the highest taxes in the OECD, are being crushed by both new and systematically increasing taxes, and have taken to the streets by the hundreds of thousands in a \u201ccitizen\u2019s revolution<\/a>\u201d. Recommendations to declare a state of emergency have for the time being been tabled<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With no sense of irony<\/a> whatsoever, in a press conference on Saturday French President Emmanuel Macron stated: \u201cI will never accept violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet violence<\/a> is the core component of his chosen vocation as a statesman.<\/p>\n

Taxation poses as an equitable transaction \u2013 goods and services provided by a government in return for a fee (more galling and Orwellian, a \u201ccontribution\u201d) from the taxpayer \u2013 but the nature of the interaction is obvious to all but the indifferent or determinedly thoughtless. It is not voluntary and does not follow from reason; neither will even the most indefatigable defenders of state appropriation, given the choice (and confidentiality), miss an opportunity to skirt the taxman and retain<\/a> their property.<\/p>\n

The force of violent compulsion is the quintessence of taxation and tax policy, thinly ensconced behind a thin veil of platitudes regarding social goods and general welfare. In Paris, an oft-repeated phrase among the protesters is that they\u2019re \u201cfed up.\u201d Ambulance drivers have joined the protests<\/a>, as have both teachers and students in at least 100 schools across France.<\/p>\n

Levying taxes on individuals to combat climate change \u2013 or for the accomplishment of any social betterment project \u2013 is unfailingly undertaken in the name of the sanctity of life.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Real Significance of the French Tax Revolt The gilets\u00a0jaunes (Yellow Jacket) anti-tax riots in France escalated over the past weekend, again citing the impact of higher taxes on fossil fuels \u2013and high levels of taxation in general \u2013 on everyday life. French citizens, already subject to the highest taxes in the OECD, are being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[23346,23347,15342,333,379,2164,23345,657,15251,783,23287],"class_list":["post-41274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-aier","tag-american-institute-for-economic-research","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-france","tag-government","tag-oecd","tag-peter-c-earle","tag-protests","tag-tax-revolt","tag-taxes","tag-yellow-vest-protests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41275,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41274\/revisions\/41275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}