TMR Is A French Futurist (And Everything's Going Black)

Janine di Giovanni has just written The Fall of France for Newsweek. She is currently living there. 

I am going to compare a few of her comments with those from TMR's five-year-old post, Just Face The Facts: Nobody In Their Right Mind Would Want To Live Like This (More On France):

Keep in mind - I knew all this for 5 years before I wrote my comments five years ago:

"Since the arrival of Socialist President François Hollande in 2012, income tax and social security contributions in France have skyrocketed. The top tax rate is 75 percent, and a great many pay in excess of 70 percent.

As a result, there has been a frantic bolt for the border by the very people who create economic growth – business leaders, innovators, creative thinkers, and top executives. They are all leaving France to develop their talents elsewhere." 

- Newsweek, January 3, 2014

"Socialism kills the initiative to do anything - especially work." 

- TMR, July 9, 2009

"It’s a tragedy for such a historically rich country. As they say, the problem with the French is they have no word for entrepreneur. Where is the Richard Branson of France? Where is the Bill Gates?" 

- Newsweek, January 3, 2014

"I've seen french men, crying, because they couldn't get a piece of the Dot-Com Boom; sobbing about Silicon Valley like it was fucking Kansas and they were Dorothy wanting to get home.

...Remember: In America, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are merely 'Bill' and 'Warren' or 'Bill Gates' and 'Warren Buffet'. If they were french, they'd be demanding you call them 'Mr.' so-and-so and acting like their shit don't stink." 

- TMR, July 9, 2009

"When I began to look around, I saw people taking wild advantage of the system. I had friends who belonged to trade unions, which allowed them to take entire summers off and collect 55 percent unemployment pay. From the time he was an able-bodied 30-year-old, a cameraman friend worked five months a year and spent the remaining seven months collecting state subsidies from the comfort of his house in the south of France.

Another banker friend spent her three-month paid maternity leave sailing around Guadeloupe – as it is part of France, she continued to receive all the benefits.

Yet another banker friend got fired, then took off nearly three years to find a new job, because the state was paying her so long as she had no job. “Why not? I deserve it,” she said when I questioned her. “I paid my benefits into the system.” Hers is an attitude widely shared.

When you retire, you are well cared for. There are 36 special retirement regimes – which means, for example, a female hospital worker or a train driver can retire earlier than those in the private sector because of their 'harsh working conditions,' even though they can never be fired" 

- Newsweek, January 3, 2014

"Between the long lunches and all the strikes, they're hardly getting anything done.

...I've seen school teachers with up to 10 assistants - what they refer to as "functionaires" - doing nothing but make-work, or drawing with crayons. How about 9 guys standing around a pothole, with two working and the other 7 smoking for 8 hours? And even the functionaires hate what it's doing to them:

Ask a functionaire what he does for a living and he hangs his head, mumbling in embarrassment." 

- TMR, July 9, 2009