The turmoil continues

Uh-oh. Another blog post about how the French are discontent with their government.

Of the many things Sarkozy announced on TV last week, one of the more interesting was his plan to eliminate income taxes for those in the poorest tax bracket. French people who earn between €5853 and €11,673 pay, on average, about €300-€350 in income tax per year. Sarkozy proposed that by eliminating that, he'd help the poorest French people gain more purchasing power.

The public reaction wasn't great. First, giving people just €350 extra per year isn't a huge sum. Moreover, nearly 50 percent of French people are too poor to pay any income tax at all (ie. they earn less than €5853 per year) and won't benefit from this plan. And new polls found that up to 61 percent of the French population have "opinions négatives" of Sarkozy. Now you see why the unions are proposing another national strike on March 19!

The university strikes are also still in full force. Today my professor said that instead of holding class, we'd go and listen to the assemblée générale and talk about why professors want to strike. The results of the assemblée were twofold: firstly, there will be a student demonstration in Aix tomorrow (in which I will not participate), and then another in Paris this Thursday. Secondly, the union is going to prolong the university strike until at least Thursday, possibly longer. My professor said he believes this will be a long, difficult, extended strike.

I do sympathize with the professors here and understand why they're striking, but it doesn't have the same effect for me. French students will be at La Fac for a few more years and have a vested interest in what happens. I'll be there until June and, without wishing to sound selfish, just want to take classes. The good news, however, is that I spoke to one of our program directors today about receiving transfer credits at Michigan. She said that, if the school strike is going to last too long, our exchange program will find tutors or graduate students to help teach us Americans so that we at least do some schoolwork here and can receive credits back home.

One final note before I go to bed. Tonight for dinner I had cake. Not gâteau, but cake: it's basically a loaf of bread, with things mixed inside. Tonight ours had tuna inside and it was delicious. Apparently, you can also put ham, cheese, olives, practically anything inside cake.

I was also told after my crêpes post that it was the Belgians, not the French, who invented steak frites. I haven't been able to verify it; the French and English Wikipedia pages on the subject are very brief and Google didn't find any evidence either way. Anyone know the answer?