6 ms·

Hang on, hang on, let me shed a tear while I contemplate the fact that EVERY French citizen without a job gets a monthly pay check. It may be subsistence livin

Hang on, hang on, let me shed a tear while I contemplate the fact that EVERY French citizen without a job gets a monthly pay check. It may be subsistence living, but unlike the States where unemployment means credit debt and eventual homelessness, it's living nonetheless, and the state foots the bill, incredible social safety net. As an expat living part of the year in France it's always shocked me how unemployed seasonal workers get up to 80% of their salary for the 8 months of the year they don't work. Where I'm living (SW France), kids will work the summer season in a restaurant or similar, then come autumn, hey, time to go surfing in Indonesia, "pay" checks mailed to the bank. Needless to say, the French live pretty well working or not.

aeden 13y ago
Unfortunately this may not be sustainable in the long run unless more people create new businesses in France, and starting a business here seems daunting due to the expense for the social and welfare system. The more I learn about the welfare system in France though the more I believe that building a profitable business here is possible, but it takes an understanding on how to work within the system. The problem is that there will continue to be cheaper options by setting up shop outside of France and that will continue to be an attractive option to low-margin businesses.
theorique 13y ago
unemployed seasonal workers get up to 80% of their salary for the 8 months of the year they don't work. My goodness, who pays for this?
- PanickedOmlette 13y ago
  Taxpayers. And that, people, is socialism. That's the cycle ---> rich country with strong middle class --> right-wing politicians get less and less popular/elected --> socialists/communists come --> poor country --> right-wing politicians are elected again
  - philipp-de 13y ago
    In Germany,where i live, you get: * 2/3 of your last wage for 1 year on unemployment, free health care * After that expires you get your rent paid, free health care , and 400 euro per month for other expenses - indefinitely On top of that everyone also gets free additional care when they are old / nursing home. Also everyone gets a minimum pension once they reach 67 years of age. Germany has the lowest youth unemployment in europe. it has one of the lowest overall unemployment rates in europe. it is one of the few countries that still had growth in the years past / is not deeply in recession. Yeah, those are the perils of "socialism".
    - theorique 13y ago
      How do I convert to German? :)
    - PanickedOmlette 13y ago
      Germany is doing well, because of : 1. Germans working hard 2. Qualified immigrants from Eastern European countries(and other parts of the world as well). Their labour is cheaper, which in turn is like adrenalin to the economy. I'll let you figure out why.
      - coldtea 13y ago
        1) That's actually factually wrong (check EU work statistics) and a little racist -- adopting the stereotype of Germans as working robots. Here's a pointer: "According to a new research on working hours in countries of the European Union, Greeks work 42.2 hours per week. more than all other Europeans. The research was conducted by the National Statistical Service of Britain for the period April-June 2011. German people work 35.6 hours per week, French 38 hours, the British 36.3 hours, while the Irish only 35 hours. In addition, according to the same research, full-time workers in Greece and Austria are working more hours (43.7) than workers elsewhere in the EU" (from the Guardian). 2) Nope, they mostly got/get lots of unqualified immigrants. Not to mention that the integration of Eastern Germany post 1989 had an enormous cost that nearly toppled Germany's economy.
    - 13y ago
- seszett 13y ago
  Nobody - I'm not sure where he took that from, seasonal workers get an unemployment indemnity proportional to the amount of time they worked during the year, so in this example, they worked 4 months out of 12, so their indemnity would be about 50% of 33% of their salary. 16.5% really isn't a lot.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- rbehrends 13y ago
  It doesn't quite work that way. First of all, in order to collect unemployment benefits in France, you must be actively looking for work. If you are being offered a job and don't take it, your benefits will be cut. Second, you generally don't get 80% of your previous income. You get one of the following: 57.4% of your previous salary. 40.4% of your previous salary + 11.57 Euro per day, to a maximum of 75% of your previous salary, and no less than 28.21 Euro per day. If you get 75% of your previous salary, then only because your income was pretty low to begin with. (And I'm pretty sure there are more inaccuracies; the GP looks like it's been taken from some tabloid.) As to who pays for it: The majority of social expenditures are actually for pensions and health. In 2005, France spent about 7.5% of its total social expenditures on unemployment [1] -- and the unemployment rate wasn't much lower back then -- as opposed to 37.4% on pensions and 29.8% on health (I note that France has one of the more efficient healthcare systems in the world, and a rather good one, too). What a lot of people both in the US and the EU don't understand is that dealing with unemployment in a reasonable way is not actually all that expensive. Full benefits are generally only being paid for a short time, long-term benefits (subsistence level or slightly above) are not very expensive, and the structural costs of not doing it (such as increased crime rates) are probably more expensive in the long run. [1] http://imgur.com/42DLRK4 http://imgur.com/42DLRK4
joonix 13y ago
Well that's obviously not sustainable and part of the reason they can't get full time jobs in the first place.
- zanny 13y ago
  If you have tremendous productivity in a small portion of your society, it is absolutely sustainable to subsidize the rest of the population on monthly checks. If someone is making 10,000% profit (and completely automated production drives costs to just upfront purchase and maintenance) that profit can provide for millions without them having to work. I think it is a cultural scar that everyone is expected to spend 1/3 their week laboring for someone else (most of the time). If that labor doesn't produce real value (and a lot of the US jobs market is artificial middle men rendered obsolete by pervasive instantaneous international communication of information) you are just wasting peoples time having them drain their energy and time in a fruitless job, where they might (you never know) take their free time and initiative spent on petty labor and produce miraculous things like new inventions or art or community service.
  - PanickedOmlette 13y ago
    No, it's not. There is no tremendously productive part of society that generates 10,000% profit. There is a shrinking middle class paying welfare. And no, people are not going to innovate anything if they are getting taken care of. Entrepreneurship thrives in unregulated environment, which France is obviously not. I mean...you can't even work legally more than 35 hours there, good God!
    - zanny 13y ago
      Here is some math: first, the graph of business profits as a fracition of gdp is at an all time high :http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/4fe2807feab8eaca7f00000c/corporate-profits-as-percent-of-gdp.png http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/4fe2807feab8eaca7f0... Profits are only generated in two situations: one, overregulated or rigged markets where competition can't drive prices down, or two, due to market demands that have not yet done long run corrections to push labor into certain high-demand industries. The problem here is that there is no high-demand industry in need of labor. What is happening is, for the most part, the first (overregulation creating false markets) and if we are going to have that, you need to correct for the siphoning of money into the tiny class of business elites holding ownership of dividend shares in businesses with these margins. Your two options are to deregulate a large portion of the economy, or tax the rich and give it to the poor. The former would be nice, but I can't imagine socialist-heavy France taking that approach. The problem is I think it might be too late for the former in the first place - the productivity siphon has been in effect for decades due to international manipulation of national law to favor big business that has concentrated wealth and resources too heavily, so even if you deregulated many industries the investment capital in competing with entrenched players in markets, even those with artificially inflated prices just isn't there. When you concentrate money that much, the few with the means have no reason to part with it and drive new innovation outside of the safe law-created false markets they can throw money in and expect money out (the most extreme example is to be a bank getting free money out of the US fed at 0%)
louischatriot 13y ago
Huh, that's simply not true. On unemplyment, you get 57% of your salary for as long as you've worked with a maximum of 2 years. You have to be actively looking for a job, including monthly meetings with the administration and the more you wait, the lower the bar becomes for the job they will force you to take. This system is far from perfect, and this country is definitely not the best place to create a company. But let's not spread crazy rumors like this.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- nraynaud 13y ago
  I think he's referring to seasonal contracts, and I think they have a different system.
- virtualwhys 13y ago
  May have changed, the max percentage, and the rules might be getting more strict, but in the surf region of France, you might say it's a sport working around the system. When I ask people who have lost their jobs working for Billabong, RipCurl, etc., well, what are you going to do, will you be OK? Nobody is worried in that case as it's 2 years sans travail if you're so inclined. The system will have to change, but I doubt there will be a radical shift as the French are the striking kings -- no people resist (and succeed in so doing) change like the French; they take to the streets en masse forcing policy makers to relent. In the States we're met with water cannons.
muyuu 13y ago
I guess it depends on what you're used to, but if you are a highly qualified young employee your life is pretty miserable. You make marginally more after tax and expenses (from living in the cities where qualified jobs are) over the unemployed/fraudsters living in the countryside. And you are overworked and overstressed. For these people the best alternative is just leaving. Which paints a gloomy picture for France's future, as newer generations are brain-drained. Subsisting is not a particularly desirable situation, and it's not sustainable when more people start jumping on the benefit bandwagon. Eventually the credit money from the ECB will run out and then you have an explosive situation in your hands.
- nraynaud 13y ago
  I've never paid more than 12% taxes and I've always lived alone in 50-70 sq.m. apartments (actually I tend to take big stuff because I can, but when it's time to clean I hate it) . I used to eat 5 days a week at the restaurant (but I don't think it's good for my health). And I lived in Montbéliard, Besançon, and Montpellier. I think as a French software engineer I did not have bad material living conditions. And I'm far from skilled. I hired people with good salaries in Montpellier too. But there is one important thing: I move around the country when work calls for it. I don't defend my castle.
  - johnchristopher 13y ago
    Are you married with children ? If you aren't: would you move too if you had wife and children ?
    - nraynaud 13y ago
      Is being maried and having kids a specific French problem? I don't and that's part of the trick, you can't blame the country or whatever when you consciously took decisions that might hinder your bottom line. And being maried with kids is very uncommon for a young talented developer in this country, we get married and have kids later in life than in the US. That's the post i was answering to. For famillies there are other stuff to funel state money to their pockets.
nraynaud 13y ago
I'm French and I don't. I've been without a job for 8 months, and I don't feel like seeking one, so I didn't go to Kafka's administration to be treated like shit in exchange for money. I might go there if I feel like looking for a job again. But it's true that there is a general feeling that there is something more than money to strive for in this country. That maybe this time in the sun with a beer at a terrasse where you are not raising kids or making money is not a complete improductive ritual to be eliminated, but maybe it's part of what makes a free human, time to think, relax, and exchange ideas.
- virtualwhys 13y ago
  That is spot on, work is not the meaning of life for the French. While for others, being without work is a life without meaning. I can't say I encounter many unemployed people in France that could in any way be called depressed.
  - nraynaud 13y ago
    I think I am, but it's a different story, and when I work it doesn't really help my case.

aeden 13y ago

Unfortunately this may not be sustainable in the long run unless more people create new businesses in France, and starting a business here seems daunting due to the expense for the social and welfare system. The more I learn about the welfare system in France though the more I believe that building a profitable business here is possible, but it takes an understanding on how to work within the system. The problem is that there will continue to be cheaper options by setting up shop outside of France and that will continue to be an attractive option to low-margin businesses.

theorique 13y ago

unemployed seasonal workers get up to 80% of their salary for the 8 months of the year they don't work. My goodness, who pays for this?

PanickedOmlette 13y ago
Taxpayers. And that, people, is socialism. That's the cycle ---> rich country with strong middle class --> right-wing politicians get less and less popular/elected --> socialists/communists come --> poor country --> right-wing politicians are elected again
- philipp-de 13y ago
  In Germany,where i live, you get: * 2/3 of your last wage for 1 year on unemployment, free health care * After that expires you get your rent paid, free health care , and 400 euro per month for other expenses - indefinitely On top of that everyone also gets free additional care when they are old / nursing home. Also everyone gets a minimum pension once they reach 67 years of age. Germany has the lowest youth unemployment in europe. it has one of the lowest overall unemployment rates in europe. it is one of the few countries that still had growth in the years past / is not deeply in recession. Yeah, those are the perils of "socialism".
  - theorique 13y ago
    How do I convert to German? :)
  - PanickedOmlette 13y ago
    Germany is doing well, because of : 1. Germans working hard 2. Qualified immigrants from Eastern European countries(and other parts of the world as well). Their labour is cheaper, which in turn is like adrenalin to the economy. I'll let you figure out why.
    - coldtea 13y ago
      1) That's actually factually wrong (check EU work statistics) and a little racist -- adopting the stereotype of Germans as working robots. Here's a pointer: "According to a new research on working hours in countries of the European Union, Greeks work 42.2 hours per week. more than all other Europeans. The research was conducted by the National Statistical Service of Britain for the period April-June 2011. German people work 35.6 hours per week, French 38 hours, the British 36.3 hours, while the Irish only 35 hours. In addition, according to the same research, full-time workers in Greece and Austria are working more hours (43.7) than workers elsewhere in the EU" (from the Guardian). 2) Nope, they mostly got/get lots of unqualified immigrants. Not to mention that the integration of Eastern Germany post 1989 had an enormous cost that nearly toppled Germany's economy.
  - 13y ago
seszett 13y ago
Nobody - I'm not sure where he took that from, seasonal workers get an unemployment indemnity proportional to the amount of time they worked during the year, so in this example, they worked 4 months out of 12, so their indemnity would be about 50% of 33% of their salary. 16.5% really isn't a lot.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rbehrends 13y ago
It doesn't quite work that way. First of all, in order to collect unemployment benefits in France, you must be actively looking for work. If you are being offered a job and don't take it, your benefits will be cut. Second, you generally don't get 80% of your previous income. You get one of the following: 57.4% of your previous salary. 40.4% of your previous salary + 11.57 Euro per day, to a maximum of 75% of your previous salary, and no less than 28.21 Euro per day. If you get 75% of your previous salary, then only because your income was pretty low to begin with. (And I'm pretty sure there are more inaccuracies; the GP looks like it's been taken from some tabloid.) As to who pays for it: The majority of social expenditures are actually for pensions and health. In 2005, France spent about 7.5% of its total social expenditures on unemployment [1] -- and the unemployment rate wasn't much lower back then -- as opposed to 37.4% on pensions and 29.8% on health (I note that France has one of the more efficient healthcare systems in the world, and a rather good one, too). What a lot of people both in the US and the EU don't understand is that dealing with unemployment in a reasonable way is not actually all that expensive. Full benefits are generally only being paid for a short time, long-term benefits (subsistence level or slightly above) are not very expensive, and the structural costs of not doing it (such as increased crime rates) are probably more expensive in the long run. [1] http://imgur.com/42DLRK4 http://imgur.com/42DLRK4

joonix 13y ago

Well that's obviously not sustainable and part of the reason they can't get full time jobs in the first place.

zanny 13y ago
If you have tremendous productivity in a small portion of your society, it is absolutely sustainable to subsidize the rest of the population on monthly checks. If someone is making 10,000% profit (and completely automated production drives costs to just upfront purchase and maintenance) that profit can provide for millions without them having to work. I think it is a cultural scar that everyone is expected to spend 1/3 their week laboring for someone else (most of the time). If that labor doesn't produce real value (and a lot of the US jobs market is artificial middle men rendered obsolete by pervasive instantaneous international communication of information) you are just wasting peoples time having them drain their energy and time in a fruitless job, where they might (you never know) take their free time and initiative spent on petty labor and produce miraculous things like new inventions or art or community service.
- PanickedOmlette 13y ago
  No, it's not. There is no tremendously productive part of society that generates 10,000% profit. There is a shrinking middle class paying welfare. And no, people are not going to innovate anything if they are getting taken care of. Entrepreneurship thrives in unregulated environment, which France is obviously not. I mean...you can't even work legally more than 35 hours there, good God!
  - zanny 13y ago
    Here is some math: first, the graph of business profits as a fracition of gdp is at an all time high :http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/4fe2807feab8eaca7f00000c/corporate-profits-as-percent-of-gdp.png http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/4fe2807feab8eaca7f0... Profits are only generated in two situations: one, overregulated or rigged markets where competition can't drive prices down, or two, due to market demands that have not yet done long run corrections to push labor into certain high-demand industries. The problem here is that there is no high-demand industry in need of labor. What is happening is, for the most part, the first (overregulation creating false markets) and if we are going to have that, you need to correct for the siphoning of money into the tiny class of business elites holding ownership of dividend shares in businesses with these margins. Your two options are to deregulate a large portion of the economy, or tax the rich and give it to the poor. The former would be nice, but I can't imagine socialist-heavy France taking that approach. The problem is I think it might be too late for the former in the first place - the productivity siphon has been in effect for decades due to international manipulation of national law to favor big business that has concentrated wealth and resources too heavily, so even if you deregulated many industries the investment capital in competing with entrenched players in markets, even those with artificially inflated prices just isn't there. When you concentrate money that much, the few with the means have no reason to part with it and drive new innovation outside of the safe law-created false markets they can throw money in and expect money out (the most extreme example is to be a bank getting free money out of the US fed at 0%)

louischatriot 13y ago

Huh, that's simply not true. On unemplyment, you get 57% of your salary for as long as you've worked with a maximum of 2 years. You have to be actively looking for a job, including monthly meetings with the administration and the more you wait, the lower the bar becomes for the job they will force you to take. This system is far from perfect, and this country is definitely not the best place to create a company. But let's not spread crazy rumors like this.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
nraynaud 13y ago
I think he's referring to seasonal contracts, and I think they have a different system.
virtualwhys 13y ago
May have changed, the max percentage, and the rules might be getting more strict, but in the surf region of France, you might say it's a sport working around the system. When I ask people who have lost their jobs working for Billabong, RipCurl, etc., well, what are you going to do, will you be OK? Nobody is worried in that case as it's 2 years sans travail if you're so inclined. The system will have to change, but I doubt there will be a radical shift as the French are the striking kings -- no people resist (and succeed in so doing) change like the French; they take to the streets en masse forcing policy makers to relent. In the States we're met with water cannons.

muyuu 13y ago

I guess it depends on what you're used to, but if you are a highly qualified young employee your life is pretty miserable. You make marginally more after tax and expenses (from living in the cities where qualified jobs are) over the unemployed/fraudsters living in the countryside. And you are overworked and overstressed. For these people the best alternative is just leaving. Which paints a gloomy picture for France's future, as newer generations are brain-drained. Subsisting is not a particularly desirable situation, and it's not sustainable when more people start jumping on the benefit bandwagon. Eventually the credit money from the ECB will run out and then you have an explosive situation in your hands.

nraynaud 13y ago
I've never paid more than 12% taxes and I've always lived alone in 50-70 sq.m. apartments (actually I tend to take big stuff because I can, but when it's time to clean I hate it) . I used to eat 5 days a week at the restaurant (but I don't think it's good for my health). And I lived in Montbéliard, Besançon, and Montpellier. I think as a French software engineer I did not have bad material living conditions. And I'm far from skilled. I hired people with good salaries in Montpellier too. But there is one important thing: I move around the country when work calls for it. I don't defend my castle.
- johnchristopher 13y ago
  Are you married with children ? If you aren't: would you move too if you had wife and children ?
  - nraynaud 13y ago
    Is being maried and having kids a specific French problem? I don't and that's part of the trick, you can't blame the country or whatever when you consciously took decisions that might hinder your bottom line. And being maried with kids is very uncommon for a young talented developer in this country, we get married and have kids later in life than in the US. That's the post i was answering to. For famillies there are other stuff to funel state money to their pockets.

nraynaud 13y ago

I'm French and I don't. I've been without a job for 8 months, and I don't feel like seeking one, so I didn't go to Kafka's administration to be treated like shit in exchange for money. I might go there if I feel like looking for a job again. But it's true that there is a general feeling that there is something more than money to strive for in this country. That maybe this time in the sun with a beer at a terrasse where you are not raising kids or making money is not a complete improductive ritual to be eliminated, but maybe it's part of what makes a free human, time to think, relax, and exchange ideas.

virtualwhys 13y ago
That is spot on, work is not the meaning of life for the French. While for others, being without work is a life without meaning. I can't say I encounter many unemployed people in France that could in any way be called depressed.
- nraynaud 13y ago
  I think I am, but it's a different story, and when I work it doesn't really help my case.