France’s Message for Capitalism Is Quite Simple: Adapt or Die
France is sounding an alarm for the world’s advanced economies: capitalism is tearing them apart.
President Emmanuel Macron and his Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire are using France’s presidency of the Group of Seven to argue that the system fuels inequality, destroys the planet and is ineffective at delivering goals in the public interest. The country has already experienced some of the fallout firsthand in the Yellow Vest movement that erupted late last year.
Bruno Le Maire on March 13.
Photographer: Thomas Samson/AFP via Getty Images
They’re pushing a reinvention that includes minimum global taxes and higher levies on tech giants like Amazon and Facebook. There are echoes of that in the self-proclaimed democratic socialists in the U.S. and firebrand Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who last week said “capitalism is irredeemable.”
“If we don’t invent a new capitalism, absurd economic solutions will win over and sweep us straight into recession ,’’ Le Maire said in an interview late last month.