4 ms·

> you'll pay him 70k€ and he'll get 35k€ That's true (although it's a pretty junior salary). However, thanks to the stuff funded by the €35k he didn't receive

by fab13n 13y ago

> you'll pay him 70k€ and he'll get 35k€ That's true (although it's a pretty junior salary). However, thanks to the stuff funded by the €35k he didn't receive directly: * he has no student loan; * his kids' school is free or very cheap; * he has top-level health insurance, and he knows there's a 0% chance he'll ever lose it; he hasn't got a clue what "preexisting condition" might even mean; * he lives in a place safe enough that there's no sense in paying to live in a gated community; he probably doesn't know what a "gated community" is actually; * he's got decent unemployment insurance (even if his qualifications are his best employment insurance, it still allows him to get bank loans more easily); * his retirement is funded; * his wife will be able to take years off to raise his babies under financially interesting conditions (legally he can, too, but culturally he usually won't want to). * he gets massive tax breaks if he employs a nanny, a maid, etc. So all-in-all, I'm not sure you're better off with $100K in the US than with €35K in France.

punee 13y ago
Well, isn't that the whole point? You're not sure because you _can't_ be sure. Because there's no competitive offer to help price discovery.
- fab13n 13y ago
  > isn't that the whole point? It isn't. The grand-parent post implied that paying €2 for every euro in the employee's pocket what a terrible disadvantage for French companies. My point was to show that, all things considered, it was not a huge disadvantage, and that it might even not have been a disadvantage at all, if we knew how to communicate about it. May I add that employees are, on average, more risk-averse than entrepreneurs. So the lower-risk, lower-reward compromise enforced by France will be more seductive to many of them than the quasi-libertarian approach adopted in the USA.
stfp 13y ago
+1000 this. Having lived in both countries, I now think that the core model in France (like in most european countries) is basically good and needs adjustment at the margin to allow / stimulate risk-taking and entrepreneurship. The US model on the other hand has a few good side effects, but is so meaninglessly violent, stupid and wasteful that even then more is destroyed than is created.
ekianjo 13y ago
Hey, but what is you get is not apples to apples. > his kids' school is free or very cheap; You don't really care when you are single and don't have kids. And usually people get married relatively late nowadays, especially the ones with higher education. And primary school does not cost that much anyway, it's more when it comes to secondary, junior high that it starts getting costly. So, MEH. > * he has top-level health insurance, and he knows there's a 0% chance he'll ever lose it; he hasn't got a clue what "preexisting condition" might even mean; Top Level insurance ! That's what french people say without stepping out of their country. There are numerous countries where you get private insurance AND better service than in France. Top-Level insurance in france gets you in a free public hospital where you may very well catch infections that will end up killing you. There's like hundred of thousands people per year in France dying of infections they contracted in top level hospitals. So please put in pinch of salt in your statement. > * he lives in a place safe enough that there's no sense in paying to live in a gated community Oh my GOD. France is nowhere near safe as so many other countries around it. You must live in Neuilly or something, but I tell you, when you live in suburbs you are nowhere near safe for you and your possessions. > * he's got decent unemployment insurance Based on growing country's public debt, so I'd say it's not really sustainable in the long term, but hey, Keynesians say it's OK never to repay the debt, so I must be wrong. > * his retirement is funded; Funded by debt. French govenrment borrows billions of euros every month on the private markets to keep functioning and paying for such benefits. And actually, it's not funded, because you are currently paying for the current retirees, not for your own retirement. If the demography should fail and the government go bankrupt, your retirement money is up in the air. So, I'd say your vision of things is incredibly biased, and I'm not sure how much experience you have abroad. I've live in 4 different countries outside of France and I've nowhere felt that France had such a better system than all the others. And most french people who left the country actually never come back.
- trekky1700 13y ago
  It's unusual that I stick up for the bloody French, but as far as the health insurance goes with "infection statistics" there are about 4,000 preventable deaths in France due to nosocomial infections in "public hospitals", compared to nearly 100,000 in the United States private system. France's infection rates are pretty in line with the rest of the world's developed countries.
antimagic 13y ago
Let me give you an example of why this is a weak argument, and bear in mind that I say this as someone that has lived and worked in France for the last ten years. I'm going on 40. I'm not married, and I won't be having kids. From your list of benefits: * although I also didn't have a student loan, it wasn't thanks to French taxes. * I don't / won't have kids so their subsidised schooling does nothing for me individually * health insurance. I'm still young enough that I don't have any major health problems, although of course, insurance is also protecting me from accidents and what not, so I am getting some benefit from this. Concretely though, I haven't as yet got much more than a few courses of antibiotics paid by the government in 10 years. * safe enough? Pretty much the only reason you don't have gated communities in France is because all of the places that rich people live in have been there for hundreds of years. If they could figure out a way of doing it, the 16th arrondisment of Paris would totally gate itself off. * unemployment - yeah, I'll give you this one. I'm almost tempted to try and get myself fired, just so that I can spend three years funded by the taxpayer to start my own business. (not really, but that idea certainly removes any fear I have of getting fired). * retirement - no reasonable person believes that people of my age or younger will get much of a retirement pension. If you're not taking steps to guarantee your own retirement at this point, your going to get a bad surprise at the end of your career. * I'm not having kids, so parental leave gets me nothing * massive tax breaks for nannies etc? well, in the sense that you can more or less claim their salary off your salary for tax purposes, I suppose that's true, provided you're actually making enough money to be able to take someone on in the first place (I personally have a housecleaner, but my flat is so small that she only works for 3 hours a week - at her hourly rate, that works out to a tax saving for me of around 1000E a year. Not exactly massive). As always with government subsidies, they are just not as flexible as giving people the money and letting them decide for themselves how they are going to spend it. My salary is suppressed to pay for a whole lot of benefits that I personally will never see. There is a case to be made to limiting government subsidies to oly those activities that the government can do cheaper than anyone else (maintaining roads, fire department, police department). So why am I still in France if the deal is so raw? Well, personal reasons, and I'm also enough of a lefty that I do see value in providing good education, public transport and health services to everybody, so I don't resent those taxes. But I'm willing to bet that a lot of people would decide otherwise if they had the choice.
nemothekid 13y ago
Do Europeans actually believe that the only safe households in the US are behind gated communities?
- gawa 13y ago
  Not for the whole country. Most of europeans never heard of "gated communities". However they may get from the news (from the google bus and stars/hollywood stories for example) that the inequality gap between rich and poor is quickly widening in some regions of California. Hence those who heard of gated communities may believe they are frequent in this particular state at least.
- TheCoelacanth 13y ago
  To some extent, they would be justified in believing that. The US has a homicide rate more than three times as high as France, and France actually has a fairly high rate of violent crime compared to most of Europe. There are only a small number of localities in the US that would qualify as safe by European standards.

by fab13n 13y ago

punee 13y ago

Well, isn't that the whole point? You're not sure because you _can't_ be sure. Because there's no competitive offer to help price discovery.

fab13n 13y ago
> isn't that the whole point? It isn't. The grand-parent post implied that paying €2 for every euro in the employee's pocket what a terrible disadvantage for French companies. My point was to show that, all things considered, it was not a huge disadvantage, and that it might even not have been a disadvantage at all, if we knew how to communicate about it. May I add that employees are, on average, more risk-averse than entrepreneurs. So the lower-risk, lower-reward compromise enforced by France will be more seductive to many of them than the quasi-libertarian approach adopted in the USA.

stfp 13y ago

+1000 this. Having lived in both countries, I now think that the core model in France (like in most european countries) is basically good and needs adjustment at the margin to allow / stimulate risk-taking and entrepreneurship. The US model on the other hand has a few good side effects, but is so meaninglessly violent, stupid and wasteful that even then more is destroyed than is created.

ekianjo 13y ago

Hey, but what is you get is not apples to apples. > his kids' school is free or very cheap; You don't really care when you are single and don't have kids. And usually people get married relatively late nowadays, especially the ones with higher education. And primary school does not cost that much anyway, it's more when it comes to secondary, junior high that it starts getting costly. So, MEH. > * he has top-level health insurance, and he knows there's a 0% chance he'll ever lose it; he hasn't got a clue what "preexisting condition" might even mean; Top Level insurance ! That's what french people say without stepping out of their country. There are numerous countries where you get private insurance AND better service than in France. Top-Level insurance in france gets you in a free public hospital where you may very well catch infections that will end up killing you. There's like hundred of thousands people per year in France dying of infections they contracted in top level hospitals. So please put in pinch of salt in your statement. > * he lives in a place safe enough that there's no sense in paying to live in a gated community Oh my GOD. France is nowhere near safe as so many other countries around it. You must live in Neuilly or something, but I tell you, when you live in suburbs you are nowhere near safe for you and your possessions. > * he's got decent unemployment insurance Based on growing country's public debt, so I'd say it's not really sustainable in the long term, but hey, Keynesians say it's OK never to repay the debt, so I must be wrong. > * his retirement is funded; Funded by debt. French govenrment borrows billions of euros every month on the private markets to keep functioning and paying for such benefits. And actually, it's not funded, because you are currently paying for the current retirees, not for your own retirement. If the demography should fail and the government go bankrupt, your retirement money is up in the air. So, I'd say your vision of things is incredibly biased, and I'm not sure how much experience you have abroad. I've live in 4 different countries outside of France and I've nowhere felt that France had such a better system than all the others. And most french people who left the country actually never come back.

trekky1700 13y ago
It's unusual that I stick up for the bloody French, but as far as the health insurance goes with "infection statistics" there are about 4,000 preventable deaths in France due to nosocomial infections in "public hospitals", compared to nearly 100,000 in the United States private system. France's infection rates are pretty in line with the rest of the world's developed countries.

antimagic 13y ago

Let me give you an example of why this is a weak argument, and bear in mind that I say this as someone that has lived and worked in France for the last ten years. I'm going on 40. I'm not married, and I won't be having kids. From your list of benefits: * although I also didn't have a student loan, it wasn't thanks to French taxes. * I don't / won't have kids so their subsidised schooling does nothing for me individually * health insurance. I'm still young enough that I don't have any major health problems, although of course, insurance is also protecting me from accidents and what not, so I am getting some benefit from this. Concretely though, I haven't as yet got much more than a few courses of antibiotics paid by the government in 10 years. * safe enough? Pretty much the only reason you don't have gated communities in France is because all of the places that rich people live in have been there for hundreds of years. If they could figure out a way of doing it, the 16th arrondisment of Paris would totally gate itself off. * unemployment - yeah, I'll give you this one. I'm almost tempted to try and get myself fired, just so that I can spend three years funded by the taxpayer to start my own business. (not really, but that idea certainly removes any fear I have of getting fired). * retirement - no reasonable person believes that people of my age or younger will get much of a retirement pension. If you're not taking steps to guarantee your own retirement at this point, your going to get a bad surprise at the end of your career. * I'm not having kids, so parental leave gets me nothing * massive tax breaks for nannies etc? well, in the sense that you can more or less claim their salary off your salary for tax purposes, I suppose that's true, provided you're actually making enough money to be able to take someone on in the first place (I personally have a housecleaner, but my flat is so small that she only works for 3 hours a week - at her hourly rate, that works out to a tax saving for me of around 1000E a year. Not exactly massive). As always with government subsidies, they are just not as flexible as giving people the money and letting them decide for themselves how they are going to spend it. My salary is suppressed to pay for a whole lot of benefits that I personally will never see. There is a case to be made to limiting government subsidies to oly those activities that the government can do cheaper than anyone else (maintaining roads, fire department, police department). So why am I still in France if the deal is so raw? Well, personal reasons, and I'm also enough of a lefty that I do see value in providing good education, public transport and health services to everybody, so I don't resent those taxes. But I'm willing to bet that a lot of people would decide otherwise if they had the choice.

nemothekid 13y ago

Do Europeans actually believe that the only safe households in the US are behind gated communities?

gawa 13y ago
Not for the whole country. Most of europeans never heard of "gated communities". However they may get from the news (from the google bus and stars/hollywood stories for example) that the inequality gap between rich and poor is quickly widening in some regions of California. Hence those who heard of gated communities may believe they are frequent in this particular state at least.
TheCoelacanth 13y ago
To some extent, they would be justified in believing that. The US has a homicide rate more than three times as high as France, and France actually has a fairly high rate of violent crime compared to most of Europe. There are only a small number of localities in the US that would qualify as safe by European standards.