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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Being unable to have a decent living space and being unable to start a family are not specific French problems, but they are quite prevalent in France.
It's pretty bad that it's becoming the new normality for a lot of people. And I think a lot of people will have to continue lowering their expectations until they get close to mere subsistence + a few trendy gadgets to keep them busy.
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.
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.
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.
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
* 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.
I liked living in Germany, they have a good work ethics, I really like their service at the bar/restaurant, they come back from the office sooner than the French (I think we have a cultural problem with that), and they know how to have fun, chilling with a beer in the sun, enjoying riversides, simple joys.
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.
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.
The cycle in Scandinavia seems to have played out rather differently. The social-democrats (at the time considerably more socialist than they are today) were mostly elected in the 1930s and '40s, when the countries were extremely unequal, with a lot of poor farmers and factory workers and a small aristocratic class. They implemented a sort of welfare-state capitalism, and the countries prospered after WW2, during a period of almost unbroken left-wing rule.
Only after the countries became prosperous, now there has been a political turn moderately to the right and towards some expansion of free-market policies and privatization (Denmark's particular version is called "flexicurity").
> Only after the countries became prosperous, now there has been a political turn moderately to the right
As far as I can tell, the Nordic countries had started to stagnate economically, with a lot of young people emigrating for better opportunities, hence people wanting to change things.
No. It's just what the civilised West (namely, Europe) calls "welfare state".
And it's very successful, when it's not fucked up by right wing politicians.
"Socialism" was what the old Eastern European countries had.
>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
Nope. The cycle is:
rich country with strong middle class --> social left politicians get less popular/elected neoliberals and right-wingers come --> poor country/fucked up middle class --> social left politicians are elected again.
The same way Reagan and Thatcher fucked up the American/UK economy and middle class, and the same way the economy did better under Clinton that under the republicans.
It's sad to see people clinging to misconceptions when you can check your facts in a minute. Thatcher destroyed Britain's economy? Are you serious?
The successful welfare state you are talking about is already considered a failed model, because of the numerous people taking advantage of the system. I am quite sure you don't live in Europe...
>It's sad to see people clinging to misconceptions when you can check your facts in a minute. Thatcher destroyed Britain's economy? Are you serious?
Deadly serious:
"""Looking only at the core measure of economic performance – GDP growth – Thatcher's performance was slightly better than that of her predecessor, James Callaghan, but slightly worse than under Tony Blair, with average growth over her tenure standing at around 2.3% a year.
(...)
Perhaps the best look at what Thatcherism meant for British families comes from a series of measures calculated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which calculated household incomes after tax (and any income from benefits), and put them into monetary amounts relative to 2010-11 prices, stripping out the effects of inflation. These figures show families got richer. The median household – the household right in the middle, where half are richer, half are poorer – earned the equivalent of £270.74 a week in 1979. By 1990, this had increased by 26% to £341.58. But, as you would expect, these gains were nowhere near evenly distributed, and the poorest got the least. A family in the bottom 10% had a weekly income of £151.58 as Thatcher came into power. Eleven years later as she left Downing Street, the family had just £158.57 – a mere 4.6% more. The richest families – the top 10% – did far better, with their incomes increasing from the equivalent of £472.98 in 1979 to £694.83 in 1990.
(...)
Still, the poverty figures don't look good: the number of children in poverty almost doubled under Thatcher, from 1.7 million in 1979 to 3.3 million in 1990. Pensioner poverty in the same period increased too, from 3.1 million to 4.1 million. Those numbers rise still further if housing costs are factored in.
(...)
By the World Bank's measures, industry (including manufacturing) fell from contributing 40% of the UK's GDP in 1979 to just 34% in 1990 – and has since fallen more dramatically still to just under 22%. The consequences of deindustrialisation hit huge swaths of the UK, particularly Wales and northern England, hard. Unemployment soared from 5.3% in 1979 – a level high enough for the Conservatives' "Labour isn't Working" poster to go down in the annals of great election adverts – to peak at 11.9% in 1984. In 1990, the year of Thatcher's departure, it stood slightly higher than when her era began, at 6.9%."""
>The successful welfare state you are talking about is already considered a failed model, because of the numerous people taking advantage of the system. I am quite sure you don't live in Europe...
I very much live in Europe. And it's only considered a "failed model" by neo-liberals and private interests that want to demolish it. The people are very much for it.
In fact, the countries in Europe that are the most successful financially and socially, from Germany to the Skandinavian countries, are the ones with the best welfare states.
Huh? Could you give an example of a country in which communism was established without a violent mass uprising? Here in Western Europe, we have had a few rather stable decades of people voting right and left as they please. Are you aware that there is a world of difference between Socialism and Communism?
Most European countries have a free market economy with some sort of social safety net (that's the socialism right there). Communism has a planned economy, something which is unheard of in Europe at the moment (with the possible exception of Belarus). Also, some countries with strong social safety nets are doing rather well at keeping unemployment at bay. Think of the famous German Kurzarbeitergeld, where the state replaces a part of the pay of workers that work less due to temporary economic circumstances, thus avoiding layoffs.
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.
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!
> And no, people are not going to innovate anything if they are getting taken care of.
HN is full of people who are effectively taken care of yet innovate. For example, many people here have great jobs that provide all they need, yet they are busily spending evenings and weekends working on their own innovate projects.
There are others here who have made enough on start ups to cash out, and never have to work again--and they are busy making new companies.
Very few people innovate because they need to have their material needs taken care of.
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%)
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.