Macron Has a Petite Millionaire Problem: French Students Are Starving

France’s infamous ambivalence toward money was thrown into sharp relief, literally, on a cold day in January 1793, when a guillotine blade dropped and chopped off the head of the well-meaning but hapless Louis XVI. The French king never really knew his way around a budget, but his spouse’s spending habits in particular stood the family royale in poor stead and blazed a path to its destruction. Next to that, President Macron has it pretty good — or does he? France is now officially a world leader in millionaires, but at the same time French students, crushed by soaring expenses, are going hungry. It may be time to man those sidewalk cafés and discuss.According to a new report from a Swiss investment bank, UBS, the number of millionaires worldwide decreased in 2022, but improbably enough jumped by 25,000 in France, to a new total of 2.8 million. That surpasses the number of millionaires in Britain. Only America, with 22.7 million millionaires, and Communist China, with 6.2 million, have more.The number of French millionaires could even — ooh la la — surpass the 4 million mark by 2027, the report suggests.Yet the ascendance of French millionaires was no cause for celebration for the chattering classes of the Left Bank. “Meanwhile, there are 300,000 homeless, 10 million poor people, and one French person out of two is forced to skip a meal” to make ends meet, a left-wing lawmaker, Thomas Porte, stated on social media. With zeal worthy of a diehard sans-culotte, Monsieur Porte posted a photo of a yacht and added, “The French people stick out their tongues while Macron stuffs his pals.” In 2017 Mr. Macron scrapped a longstanding tax on wealth, leading to one potshot after another from the left to the effect that he is a “president of the rich.” So no surprise that, in response to the UBS report, the head of the French parliament’s leftist coalition, Manon Aubry, stated that “French millionaires can thank Macron’s tax breaks! And too bad for the ten million poor people.”One Frenchman who is not baying for Mr. Macron’s head is Bernard Arnault, the LVMH luxury magnate whose portfolio, valued at an estimated $221 billion, makes him one of the richest men in the world.That led a member of the left-wing populist France Unbowed party, Alexis Corbière, to chirp to French radio, “The Arnault family received an extra 2.9 billion in dividends this year. There needs to be a better distribution of wealth, so that we can all live better.”This is where things could get tricky for Mr. Macron, who took some political heat last year over his ties to consulting firm McKinsey & Company and is still on his French taxpayer-funded vacation at the Fort de Brégançon, a heavily guarded castle island in the south of France where he has previously welcomed President Putin. The rising cost of living that has gripped much of Europe in the wake of inflationary pressures and the economic disruptions wrought by the Russian invasion of Ukraine has not spared France. This week the head of France’s largest college student union, UNEF, told a French radio station that 40 percent of French college students must now skip “at least” one meal a day in order to make ends meet. According to student unions’ data, student living costs for basics such as food, rent, and Internet are reaching year-on-year increases of more than 10 percent, raising the likelihood of students having to run up debt in order to meet expenses. Another student union reported that unmanageable costs are pushing more students into “forced employment” that puts them at greater risk of failing to earn their bachelor’s degrees. As in some other European countries, affordable student housing is a perennial problem. As part of his 2017 presidential campaign, Mr. Macron pledged to build 60,000 new student housing units by 2022. As of the summer of 2023, reportedly fewer than 40,000 units had been built or renovated. Youth anger in France has a way of starting as a slow trickle before turning into a deluge. In 2006, protests over a labor reform bill that would have made it easier for companies to fire employees under the age of 26 sparked weeks of sometimes violent protests and university occupations. President Chirac eventually backed down and the bill fell by the wayside.In May 1968 student occupation protests rooted in anti-capitalist sentiment ballooned into civil unrest across the country, leading President de Gaulle to secretly flee to West Germany while the streets of Paris and other French cities seethed.There is no indication that the growing disparity between France’s bumper crop of millionaires and legions of famished students will lead to another revolution. But a president like Mr. Macron, who fancies himself less heir to the legacy of le Général and more a self-styled Napoleon, might want to start taking some notes.

Macron Has a Petite Millionaire Problem: French Students Are Starving

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