{"text":[[{"start":6.48,"text":"It’s easy to mock the French. I’ve done it myself. Most of them expect the state to fund their 25-year retirements and everything else. Then, when the budget deficit hits 5.8 per cent of GDP, and the government looks for cuts, people here go on strike, complaining that the developed world’s biggest-spending state is “néolibéral”. Opposition parties refuse any compromise with Emmanuel Macron, the so-called “president of the rich”."}],[{"start":38.11,"text":"But I’ve come to feel that French anger is partly justified. France today is an underfunded social democracy crossed with an oligarchy. More than any other western European country, it’s dominated by powerful billionaires paying relatively low taxes. Most voters agree that France should cut its deficit. The argument is about who should pay. The majority says: the super-rich first."}],[{"start":64.6,"text":"Oligarchs are people who possess both wealth and power, and use one to acquire the other. They have grown abundant in France this century, thanks largely to the rise of French luxury companies. The EU’s seven most valuable companies include LVMH (run by France’s richest man, Bernard Arnault), Hermès and L’Oréal. LVMH now exports more than all of French agriculture."}],[{"start":91.53,"text":"The biggest beneficiaries are France’s 500 richest families. Between 1996 and 2024, their wealth ballooned from 6 per cent of French GDP to 42 per cent, writes economist Gabriel Zucman in his forthcoming book, whose title translates as “The Billionaires Don’t Pay Tax on Revenues and We’re Going to Put a Stop to That”. France now leads the EU in numbers of billionaires, according to the EU Tax Observatory, with 147. The majority aren’t meritocrats: 60 of the country’s 100 richest families are heirs, reports the Fondation Jean-Jaurès think-tank."}],[{"start":136.88,"text":"Oligarchs tend to keep their wealth in holding companies. Because corporate tax (cut by Macron) is lower than income tax, they pay an effective tax rate of just 25 per cent, about half that of the average French person, calculates Zucman. He proposes a wealth tax of 2 per cent on the 1,800 people worth over €100mn In a poll by Ifop, 86 per cent favoured “la taxe Zucman”."}],[{"start":165.22,"text":"Arnault doesn’t. To him, the plan is “a clearly stated desire to destroy the French economy”. Macron sides with the oligarch. France’s deficit is the logical outcome of Macronism: a massive state combined with tax cuts for rich people. The president bows to oligarchs. Men like Arnault, Martin Bouygues and the far-right-supporting Vincent Bolloré own much of French media, and have a fast track to every president. Jacques Chirac lived out his days in a Parisian mansion owned by the mogul François Pinault. The night Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president in 2007, he celebrated with his billionaire chums at Fouquet’s restaurant on the Champs-Élysées."}],[{"start":213.81,"text":"Macron regularly meets oligarchs. When they feel like it, they contribute to his projects. The bulk of donations to restore Notre-Dame after its fire came from Arnault, Pinault and the Bettencourt family, heirs to the L’Oréal fortune. LVMH was “premium partner” of the Paris Olympics."}],[{"start":233.25,"text":"You see the oligarchs’ imprint all over Paris. The Fondation Cartier, which unveils its new premises opposite the Louvre on October 25, joins the Fondation LVMH and Pinault’s Bourse in the city’s growing cluster of billionaire art museums. Around the corner from my office in the historically lower-middle-class 11th arrondissement, a dilapidated building is being renovated into an Hermès store. Paris itself is becoming a luxury city, its apartments increasingly bought up by French high earners and foreigners, while in certain neighbourhoods about 10 per cent of residents are aristocrats. It’s as if 1789 never happened."}],[{"start":274.68,"text":"This annoys many French people. France isn’t the US, where the rich are admired. And plutocratisation is especially irksome at a time when, following Macron’s cuts to benefits, about one in six French people live in poverty — the most since records began in 1996. Close to my office, a coffee shop serving €6 “matcha tonics” sits opposite a food bank."}],[{"start":300.52,"text":"France’s middle classes are struggling too: rates of home ownership have stagnated at 57 per cent of the population for 20 years, reports the Fondation Jaurès. There’s a widespread desire for a 1789 — without the guillotines. Zucman says his wealth tax could raise €20bn a year. Even if that’s over-optimistic, any French government will need to ask billionaires to pay more. If they won’t sacrifice for the deficit, why should anyone else?"}],[{"start":333.15,"text":"This article has been amended since first publication to remove an erroneous reference to the valuation of Dior"}],[{"start":348.97999999999996,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1761022496_5108.mp3"}