Last September, French President Emmanuel Macron met an unassuming gardener on the grounds of the Élysée Palace. Introducing himself, the 25-year-old timidly explained that he was having trouble finding work. “I send résumés and cover letters… they don't lead to anything,” he told the president. Many people in France can relate: The country's unemployment rate hovers just below 9 percent, more than two points above the European Union average. The joblessness rate, meanwhile, is more than twice that for young people age 15 to 24.
Macron's reaction, however, was less than sympathetic—almost as if he were hearing this problem for the very first time and wasn't all that convinced of its seriousness. “If you're willing and motivated, in hotels, cafés, and restaurants, construction, there's not a single place I go where they don't say they're looking for people!” he exclaimed. Then he added, “If I crossed the street, I'd find you one.”
The exchange only added to Macron's long list of comically arrogant and out-of-touch utterances, both before and after he took office in May 2017. Along with his policies, which include tax cuts for the ultrarich, a decrease in low-income housing aid, and labor “reforms” that make it easier to lay off workers, these Macronisms have fueled the former investment banker's image as “president of the rich.” Among the growing list: In 2016, while still serving as minister of the economy under François Hollande, Macron informed a young demonstrator that he wasn't scared by his T-shirt and told him that he should get to work so he could “afford a suit”; in 2017, Macron described train stations as spaces filled with “people who succeed and people who are nothing”; and, later that same year, he dismissed tens of thousands of union-backed protesters as “lazy.”
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