It’s no secret that France is further to the left
than the United States. But listening to some of the
rhetoric from the French presidential election can
underscore how vast the gulf really is. Here are
five things that it’s hard to imagine a major-party
American candidate saying:
He’d never make it in U.S.
politics. (Michel Spingler - Associated Press) 1)
Unadulterated bashing of the financial industry.
Here was Francois Hollande,
the Socialist presidential front-runner in France,
back in January: “Let me tell you who my rival is.
It does not bear a name or have a face, it’s the
finance industry. In the past twenty years, the
financial industry has taken control of our
societies, of our lives and threatens our states.”
In London the following month, this was Hollande’s way of
dialing back his speech in a talk with investors: “I
am not dangerous… [still], there must be regulation
everywhere.”
And Jean Luc Melenchon, a one-time Trotskyist who
was running to Hollande’s left, didn’t even make
that minor concession. “I’m dangerous!,” he proudly told the
Guardian. “Dangerous for financial interests, and
dangerous for the oligarchy in France and Europe.”
Compare this to the uproar in the United States
over Barack Obama’s much milder statement to “60
Minutes” in 2009: “I did not run for office to be
helping out a bunch of, you know, fat-cat bankers on
Wall Street.” As Alec McGillis has reported, plenty of
hedge-fund backers turned on Obama over that
comment, and the White House has been doing damage
control for years.
2) Very high taxes on the wealthy.
Hollande has proposed subjecting all income above
$1.34 million to a 75 percent tax. Melenchon, for
his part, had been demanding a 100 percent tax on
any income over $500,000 per year. That meant
incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy could stake out
ground as the tax conservative in the race: Having
already enacted a comparatively meager 4 percent
surcharge on high incomes, he was content to propose
a value-added tax and an “exit tax” on French
citizens who moved abroad. Melanchon, for his part,
wasn’t so worried about rich
French people fleeing the country: “If they do, no
problem. Bye bye.”
Here in the United States, meanwhile, there's a
fierce debate over whether the top rate should stay
at 35 percent or rise to 39.6 percent.
3) Competition over who can pass stricter
financial regulation. Sarkozy set the
standard for France’s approach to bank regulation by passing a 0.1 percent tax
on all financial transactions within the country.
(His efforts to push this tax around the world has
been opposed by, among others, the Obama
administration.) Hollande, meanwhile, wants to go even further,
separating retail and investment banking, banning
“toxic” financial products, and preventing French
banks from operating in tax havens.
4) Policies to limit CEO pay.
Hollande wants to limit the pay of CEOs at
state-owned companies to 20 times the lowest worker
wage. That’s no small thing: Even after decades of
privatization, state-owned company holdings still
account for about 5 percent of GDP
in France, a category that includes railway
operators, various airports, and the nuclear-power
industry. (Melanchon, by the way, wants to try to
reverse this privatization trend and nationalize
France’s biggest energy companies.)
5) Even the far right is against free
enterprise. Marine Le Pen, the candidate
of the far-right National Front who got 20 percent
of the vote on Sunday, largely appealed to voters by
stirring up fears of foreigners taking French jobs,
terrorism and euro-bashing. But even Le Pen had run
against big business and the financial industry: “We
have blown apart the monopoly of the two parties of
banking, finance and multinationals,” she proudly
declared after her unexpectedly strong performance
on Sunday. Here in the United States, Mario Loyola
of the National Review was depressed by Le Pen’s
“protectionist” stance.
