No Austerity for French Government Bureaucrats

From today's Open Europe news summary:


Separately, French Prime Minister François Fillon yesterday announced an austerity package aimed at saving €1bn this year and €11bn in 2012. The measures include increases on some capital income taxes, the elimination of capital gains tax loopholes, increases in tobacco and alcohol taxes as well as an exceptional tax levy of 3% on the very rich. The plan also contains proposals aimed at harmonising the French tax system with that of Germany.



These tax increases are not "austerity" for the French government. The French government is NOT reducing spending. It is raising taxes to support and make permanent its current level of spending. The French people will suffer by having their after tax incomes reduced, to be sure, but there is no austerity at the government level. I doubt that one bureaucrat will lose his job, which cannot be said of the private French economy. France is becoming a divided nation--government employees and those who receive their political favors on one side and the rest of French society on the other. This cancer upon society of bloated governments is occurring everywhere.