7 ms·

Alice, 29 years old, magistrate, 3,400 euros per month: "I'll never be able to buy an apartment in Paris even though I'm among the best-paid people in France"

Alice, 29 years old, magistrate, 3,400 euros per month: "I'll never be able to buy an apartment in Paris even though I'm among the best-paid people in France" (https://www.lemonde.fr/campus/article/2025/07/28/alice-29-ans-magistrate-3-400-euros-par-mois-je-ne-pourrai-jamais-acheter-un-appart-a-paris-alors-que-je-suis-parmi-les-gens-les-mieux-payes-en-france_6624770_4401467.html https://www.lemonde.fr/campus/article/2025/07/28/alice-29-an...) They aren't whining. They have it objectively and measurably worse than previous generations, by a huge margin.

CalRobert 1y ago
That ~€41k is "among the best paid people in France" is a stunning illustration of just how incredibly low pay in Europe is. Of course, even increasing salaries ten-fold wouldn't help if they don't actually build enough homes.
- jansan 1y ago
  There is something off with that number. I am not from France (but from a neighboring country), but with 3.400 euros per month you are not among the best paid people in France.
  - psini 1y ago
    [dead]
  - Al-Khwarizmi 1y ago
    I suppose she's talking about net salary. Here is a histogram for France: https://fr.statista.com/infographie/25111/distribution-des-salaires-mensuels-nets-en-equivalent-temps-plein-en-france/#:~:text=On%20constate%20qu'environ%209,et%202%20000%20€%20nets. https://fr.statista.com/infographie/25111/distribution-des-s... According to that, she's definitely in the top 20%. Of course "among the best paid people" is ambiguous depending on how much "top" you consider, but I think being in the top 20% it makes sense to say that. PS: and I suppose (although it's hard to find data) that if we look at people in her age bracket, she will be in a higher percentile.
  - ErneX 1y ago
    Those 3400 net monthly are likely around 60K annually gross.
  - Juliate 1y ago
    Not the best paid, but unless you want to live within Paris, it becomes a confortable revenue. In France, you are considered rich when your net revenue is twice the median. That is to say, if you get more than ~4000 € of _net_ monthly salary (around 61k gross/year), you are rich. This was very easy to reach in the IT industry, especially in the Paris area, after 15 years at most. The 1% richest (based on salary) start from 7500 € net/month (115k gross/year).
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  €41k is around average for France. Median is €23k. Median for tech is around €45k. Of course some people earn a lot more. She certainly isn't "among the best paid people." But there's no huge corporate health insurance tax, and she won't be spending as much on commuting.
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    > But there's no huge corporate health insurance tax, and she won't be spending as much on commuting. ... and on housing. Even Europe's most nuts markets aka London, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg and Freakfurt don't come anywhere close to the situation in the US.
    - 9rx 1y ago
      What's the situation in the US? You're obviously not talking about direct cost, Mean house price: London: $753,793 USD USA: $369,147 USD Average rent per month: London: $2,992 USD USA: $1,699 USD Or being cramped into small spaces, Average home size: London: 705 sq ft. USA: 1,800 sq ft. Or homelessness, Estimated homeless population (% of total population): London: 2% USA: 0.2% Perhaps you are referring to comments on HN? Annoying comments about housing posted on Hacker News: London: Not seen USA: Way too many
      - andsoitis 1y ago
        I think they meant comparable (i.e. desirable, world-class) cities in the US. You want to compare London to cities like Los Angeles, New York, etc.
        9rx 1y ago
        That wouldn't be a US situation, then, only a New York, or Los Angeles, or wherever situation. But it clearly says it is a US situation.
- like_any_other 1y ago
  > they don't actually build enough homes. France hasn't had above-replacement fertility since 1980 [1], so it seems strange their housing supply would be stressed. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033137/fertility-rate-france-1800-2020/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033137/fertility-rate-f...
  - vladvasiliu 1y ago
    Sure, but there are different things that tend to drive up demand, such as immigration and an increase in lifespan (or whatever happened that made the population increase despite below-replacement fertility [0]), fewer people living together, and people using homes as an investment/store of value without actually living there. Although for the specific case of Paris proper (not the whole region), population has actually decreased in recent years. But there also seem to be fewer people per dwelling. See [1] for some interesting graphs. Unfortunately it's French, but Google Translate should do a good enough job. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/459939/population-france/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/459939/population-france... [1] https://www.paris.fr/pages/le-boom-des-logements-vacants-accroit-la-baisse-de-la-population-a-paris-29748 https://www.paris.fr/pages/le-boom-des-logements-vacants-acc...
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    The problem is rural flight, across the Western societies. Rural areas have a lot of empty housing, urban areas have a severe shortage that sends purchase and rental prices through the roof. Defenders of urbanism and dense settlements in general love to point out that it is more efficient to serve urban populations with infrastructure, which is true, but completely neglecting the fact that it creates an insane wealth disparity in these urban areas (aka, those who have housing and those who have not), a corresponding death of rental markets (old people can't move out to smaller dwellings because an apartment half the size costs thrice the money or more, and young people with families can't afford sizing up either), and a massive financial pressure on local governments to build out all the infrastructure that dense settlement needs.
    - tpm 1y ago
- piva00 1y ago
  Wait until you hear how much people in less developed countries are paid. The outlier in the world is the USA (and perhaps Switzerland), and even in the USA if you account for cost of living it's a minority of professions that are "well paid".
  - CalRobert 1y ago
    Right, but Europe’s been making a lot of noise around digital sovereignty, etc. Lately and it’s hard to see how that gets better while the wage to COL ratio stays so bad.
    - piva00 1y ago
      I don't understand the relationship between those, the wage to COL is not "so bad" comparatively to the majority of the rest of the world, it's a rich continent, and Western Europe is by any metric one of the richest places in the world while Eastern/Southern Europe is comparatively rich if you measure against most other countries outside of Europe, Oceania, and North America. You are again comparing it against the USA, the very outlier, and in specific places of the whole country even, of course then everything else will be "so bad" except for very few places on the whole Earth...
pif 1y ago
Ehm... which previous generation was born and bred in such a rich world? And who's going to inherit the wealth previous generations have created?
- imtringued 1y ago
  Old people in their 50s who no longer need to get bailed out by an inheritance from their parents, but they will get it anyway, making the (at that time) young generation after them eagerly waiting for their demise, until they come to the same sad realization that someone will be waiting for theirs.
  - andsoitis 1y ago
    It would be telling to compare how people in their 50s spent their income when they were in their twenties compared to 20 year olds today.
    - potato3732842 1y ago
      They partied way harder and generally got "seriously focused" on careers much later if stats are any indication. If you go even further back to the boomers it's a laughable comparison. But none of those prior generations ate avocado toast because they hadn't yet mastered transporting avocados long distances while maintaining ripeness if that's what you're asking.
- msgodel 1y ago
  We're buried in luxury and have no necessities. You're literally doing the "let them eat cake" thing the boomers have been doing for decades. If you keep doing this you will spend your old age in the streets scorned by the younger generations you've thumbed your nose at. You'll probably have a very nice smartphone though and we'll tell you "why are you complaining? you have such nice luxuries, you should be grateful to us you at least have that."

CalRobert 1y ago

That ~€41k is "among the best paid people in France" is a stunning illustration of just how incredibly low pay in Europe is. Of course, even increasing salaries ten-fold wouldn't help if they don't actually build enough homes.

jansan 1y ago
There is something off with that number. I am not from France (but from a neighboring country), but with 3.400 euros per month you are not among the best paid people in France.
- psini 1y ago
  [dead]
- Al-Khwarizmi 1y ago
  I suppose she's talking about net salary. Here is a histogram for France: https://fr.statista.com/infographie/25111/distribution-des-salaires-mensuels-nets-en-equivalent-temps-plein-en-france/#:~:text=On%20constate%20qu'environ%209,et%202%20000%20€%20nets. https://fr.statista.com/infographie/25111/distribution-des-s... According to that, she's definitely in the top 20%. Of course "among the best paid people" is ambiguous depending on how much "top" you consider, but I think being in the top 20% it makes sense to say that. PS: and I suppose (although it's hard to find data) that if we look at people in her age bracket, she will be in a higher percentile.
- ErneX 1y ago
  Those 3400 net monthly are likely around 60K annually gross.
- Juliate 1y ago
  Not the best paid, but unless you want to live within Paris, it becomes a confortable revenue. In France, you are considered rich when your net revenue is twice the median. That is to say, if you get more than ~4000 € of _net_ monthly salary (around 61k gross/year), you are rich. This was very easy to reach in the IT industry, especially in the Paris area, after 15 years at most. The 1% richest (based on salary) start from 7500 € net/month (115k gross/year).
TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
€41k is around average for France. Median is €23k. Median for tech is around €45k. Of course some people earn a lot more. She certainly isn't "among the best paid people." But there's no huge corporate health insurance tax, and she won't be spending as much on commuting.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > But there's no huge corporate health insurance tax, and she won't be spending as much on commuting. ... and on housing. Even Europe's most nuts markets aka London, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg and Freakfurt don't come anywhere close to the situation in the US.
  - 9rx 1y ago
    What's the situation in the US? You're obviously not talking about direct cost, Mean house price: London: $753,793 USD USA: $369,147 USD Average rent per month: London: $2,992 USD USA: $1,699 USD Or being cramped into small spaces, Average home size: London: 705 sq ft. USA: 1,800 sq ft. Or homelessness, Estimated homeless population (% of total population): London: 2% USA: 0.2% Perhaps you are referring to comments on HN? Annoying comments about housing posted on Hacker News: London: Not seen USA: Way too many
    - andsoitis 1y ago
      I think they meant comparable (i.e. desirable, world-class) cities in the US. You want to compare London to cities like Los Angeles, New York, etc.
      - 9rx 1y ago
        That wouldn't be a US situation, then, only a New York, or Los Angeles, or wherever situation. But it clearly says it is a US situation.
like_any_other 1y ago
> they don't actually build enough homes. France hasn't had above-replacement fertility since 1980 [1], so it seems strange their housing supply would be stressed. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033137/fertility-rate-france-1800-2020/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033137/fertility-rate-f...
- vladvasiliu 1y ago
  Sure, but there are different things that tend to drive up demand, such as immigration and an increase in lifespan (or whatever happened that made the population increase despite below-replacement fertility [0]), fewer people living together, and people using homes as an investment/store of value without actually living there. Although for the specific case of Paris proper (not the whole region), population has actually decreased in recent years. But there also seem to be fewer people per dwelling. See [1] for some interesting graphs. Unfortunately it's French, but Google Translate should do a good enough job. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/459939/population-france/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/459939/population-france... [1] https://www.paris.fr/pages/le-boom-des-logements-vacants-accroit-la-baisse-de-la-population-a-paris-29748 https://www.paris.fr/pages/le-boom-des-logements-vacants-acc...
- mschuster91 1y ago
  The problem is rural flight, across the Western societies. Rural areas have a lot of empty housing, urban areas have a severe shortage that sends purchase and rental prices through the roof. Defenders of urbanism and dense settlements in general love to point out that it is more efficient to serve urban populations with infrastructure, which is true, but completely neglecting the fact that it creates an insane wealth disparity in these urban areas (aka, those who have housing and those who have not), a corresponding death of rental markets (old people can't move out to smaller dwellings because an apartment half the size costs thrice the money or more, and young people with families can't afford sizing up either), and a massive financial pressure on local governments to build out all the infrastructure that dense settlement needs.
  - tpm 1y ago
piva00 1y ago
Wait until you hear how much people in less developed countries are paid. The outlier in the world is the USA (and perhaps Switzerland), and even in the USA if you account for cost of living it's a minority of professions that are "well paid".
- CalRobert 1y ago
  Right, but Europe’s been making a lot of noise around digital sovereignty, etc. Lately and it’s hard to see how that gets better while the wage to COL ratio stays so bad.
  - piva00 1y ago
    I don't understand the relationship between those, the wage to COL is not "so bad" comparatively to the majority of the rest of the world, it's a rich continent, and Western Europe is by any metric one of the richest places in the world while Eastern/Southern Europe is comparatively rich if you measure against most other countries outside of Europe, Oceania, and North America. You are again comparing it against the USA, the very outlier, and in specific places of the whole country even, of course then everything else will be "so bad" except for very few places on the whole Earth...

pif 1y ago

Ehm... which previous generation was born and bred in such a rich world? And who's going to inherit the wealth previous generations have created?

imtringued 1y ago
Old people in their 50s who no longer need to get bailed out by an inheritance from their parents, but they will get it anyway, making the (at that time) young generation after them eagerly waiting for their demise, until they come to the same sad realization that someone will be waiting for theirs.
- andsoitis 1y ago
  It would be telling to compare how people in their 50s spent their income when they were in their twenties compared to 20 year olds today.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    They partied way harder and generally got "seriously focused" on careers much later if stats are any indication. If you go even further back to the boomers it's a laughable comparison. But none of those prior generations ate avocado toast because they hadn't yet mastered transporting avocados long distances while maintaining ripeness if that's what you're asking.
msgodel 1y ago
We're buried in luxury and have no necessities. You're literally doing the "let them eat cake" thing the boomers have been doing for decades. If you keep doing this you will spend your old age in the streets scorned by the younger generations you've thumbed your nose at. You'll probably have a very nice smartphone though and we'll tell you "why are you complaining? you have such nice luxuries, you should be grateful to us you at least have that."