Even people who hate soccer (especially people who hate soccer) may want to consider how the beautiful game has become a battleground political clash over France's financial future. Because as TIME's Michael Schuman demonstrates in his excellent story titled "Marx's Revenge: How Class Struggle Is Shaping the World," surging class conflict is increasingly shaping political priorities across the world — and now even staging an unusual pitch invasion in French football. On April 2, France's leftist government issued a denial that the country's soccer elite will be protected from Socialist President François Hollande's decision to hit the country's top salaries with a 75% income tax. The previous day, the head of the French Football Federation, Noël Le Graet, played an unintentional April Fools' gag by telling the daily Le Parisien he'd gotten government assurances that France soccer stars and their clubs would be spared from a revamped 75% income tax scheme Hollande revealed March 28. Unlike the initial proposal applicable to people earning over of $1.28 million annually, Hollande's new plan will leave large companies paying those salaries on the hook for the 75% tax. (MORE: France's 75% Income Tax on the Rich Overturned as Unconstitutional) Yet on Monday, Le Graet claimed that pro soccer clubs — which he defined as medium-sized businesses despite their employment of sweaty multimillionaires — would be exempt from the measure. Clearly not amused, the government promptly disabused Le Graet and the public of that idea. As a result, team owners, pundits and fans alike are asking whether those new costs — coming atop heavy taxes all French businesses and employees already pay — won't further handicap the nation's notoriously modest pro clubs struggling to compete with their financially flush English, Spanish and Italian rivals. (The one exception at the moment in France is table-topping Paris St.-Germain, which is bankrolled by investors from Qatar.) As a lifelong soccer fan and weekend player himself, Hollande had been expected by some observers — Le Graet first among them — to provide French football an umbrella from his(http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=world.time.com&blog=19871253&post=79240&subd=timeglobalspin&ref=&feed=1)
Via: TIME GlobalSpin