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Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

nytimes.com

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Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#111

Post by chillidoor »

Rjevski wrote: post #48
chillidoor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how big the contractor market is in France. I mean, contractors are easy to hire and fire so it could be a good compromise (at least in the short term).

Being a sole trader is a pain in France, and the taxes are outright robbery. The taxman feels like "hold on, this guy is actually making money... let me add a few zeros to his taxes to make sure he goes down!".

Here in the UK STs get hit with the higher tax brackets simply because they are not treated as a separate company, so all money earned is income. It's stupid to do things as a ST, unless you only take cash as then it's easier to lie about your income. Is that similar to how it is in France?

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#112

Post by gaius »

lurena wrote: post #78

I'll go ahead and be 'that guy' and say it: I don't want my country to become a startup nation. I don't want management methods and labor laws to be reformed, or modernized, or to mimic those in the US. I don't want corporation-friendly tax rates to be enacted. I don't want regulations to be lifted. There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of A…

move fast and break thing

Especially now we are seeing what that really means: fake blood labs and the brakes on cars disabled. Do we want a world where nothing can be trusted because it was all just a fantasy to defraud gullible investors to start with? I think most people don’t want that.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#113

Post by qw »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #81
jbronn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abuse of the workforce didn't start in 1940 and end in 1979. Some labor innovations you may enjoy: - Weekends (40 hour week) - Minimum wage - No child labor - Workers compensation - Not being massacred by your employer¹ Don't be so glib about the necessity of unions -- the Fair Labor Standards Act was written with blood. ¹ See, e.g. , the Ludlow Massacre, the Thibodaux Massacre, Battle of Blair Mountain.

Unions are not necessary at all in any country that has decent and enforced labor laws. In developed economies they only serve as a levelling mechanism, which also make it impossible to fire anybody. The only people they serve are unproductive and incompetent employees.

The corporations also organize themselves to influence politicians. Big companies even have their own lobbyists.

In addition you get all the "retirement" packages where former politicians are hired by the companies they were supposed to regulate.

Why shouldn't the employees have the same right?

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#114

Post by alkonaut »

zenovision wrote: post #17

I doubt that France will be able to do this - they have many disadvantages comparing to USA: - high taxes - a lot of buerocracy - language burden to attract high qualified foreign employees - lower salaries - fragmented political system in the EU - much lower population in France comparing to USA and if you want to cover the entire EU, you have to support many different languages, currencies, etc...

High taxes is both a blessing and a curse. Depending on what the taxes are spent on, they can really help. For example good safety nets for unemployment means you can risk failing your startup without being broke. Second, free higher education means the chance that the right entrepreneur gets the right education is higher.

> fragmented political system in the EU

To be honest it feels about as fragmented as US state law is.

> language burden to attract high qualified foreign employees

Language burden is very much still an issue for France. It's getting better but english is still not fluent even with younger people. I'm unsure if I could move there to work and never even worry about not speaking a word of the local language (like you can if you move to e.g. Amsterdam or Stockholm). I'm guessing english works OK for small Paris startup now, but moving to work with a larger company would probably require French?

Edit:

Also do remember that the US isn't really a startup heaven: the US hasn't got THAT many startups per capita. Just a lot of people and few per capita. One should probably be careful in assuming that the environment for startups in the US is the one to aim for.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#115

Post by jackvalentine »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #107
forapurpose wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unions are not necessary at all in any country that has decent and enforced labor laws. I suppose no political organizations are necessary in places where there are decent and enforced laws, not even political parties, but that's not how humans work. Decent laws aren't the result of generosity from those in power - decent labor law isn't a result of corporate altruism - but of political struggles between different…

This comment sounds a lot like hyperbole to me. People have a seat at the table, that’s how democracy works. People also have an incredible amount of entitlements and protection in the labor market. The labor laws in the west are generally quite good, most of the reasonable criticism you could direct at them comes down to enforcement. If you have a problem with them, then participate in your democracy. In economies w…

> In economies where minimum entitlements are sufficient to protect workers from exploitation, unions serve no useful purpose at all

They serve the purpose of making sure workers get their legal entitlements.

For example, Unions right in Australia are tackling the problem of underpayment of legally mandated wages “wage theft” and have succeeded in getting a state government to adopt as policy the treatment of deliberate underpayment as a criminal matter with criminal penalties.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#116

Post by Legogris »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #11

Hiring and firing people in France is particularly hard. Most companies do not scale beyond 10 employees as after this threshold the regulatory burden increases dramatically. Taxes on small to medium businesses are downright confiscatory. Most French people still see business owners as exploiters of their workers.

I don't see how firing being harder is an issue. In France it's standard with the first several months being a probationary period where you can let the person go on the day, and only after that does it transform into a CDI. This period can be extended once.

You can't really blame legislation for needing more than 6-8 months to realize that an employee is not a good fit.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#117

Post by adventured »

lurena wrote: post #78

I'll go ahead and be 'that guy' and say it: I don't want my country to become a startup nation. I don't want management methods and labor laws to be reformed, or modernized, or to mimic those in the US. I don't want corporation-friendly tax rates to be enacted. I don't want regulations to be lifted. There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of A…

> There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of Americans who live in the most abject poverty seen in the developed world.)

Your claim about American poverty is beligerently false. The US poverty rate is below both the French [1] and Canadian [2] poverty rates. It's also below the rates of poverty in Spain and Italy.

France also has a higher rate of homelessness than the US. There are 550,000 homeless in the US, that's a rate of 1.7 per 1,000. France has 140,000 homeless persons, a rate of 2 per 1,000. The French homelessness problem has been increasing dramatically (a 1/2 increase since 2001), while the US rate of homelessness has been persistently declining for decades.

The French poverty rate is ~14%.[1] The US rate in 2016 was 12.7%, and will probably hit near or below 12% in 2018 at the rate it has been falling [3].

The rate of US poverty has seen a large improvement over the last 30 or so years (as one example, childhood poverty has been nearly cut in half since the early 1970s). It routinely goes unheralded, however government / welfare programs targeted at reducing poverty have been tremendously successful.

[1] https://www.thelocal.fr/20160907/over-14-percent-of-the-fren...

[2] https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/census-children-make-up-one-qu...

[3] https://www.npr.org/2017/09/12/550492811/u-s-census-bureau-r...

[3a] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2017/demo/p60-25...

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#118

Post by jackvalentine »

ekianjo wrote: post #95
jbronn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abuse of the workforce didn't start in 1940 and end in 1979. Some labor innovations you may enjoy: - Weekends (40 hour week) - Minimum wage - No child labor - Workers compensation - Not being massacred by your employer¹ Don't be so glib about the necessity of unions -- the Fair Labor Standards Act was written with blood. ¹ See, e.g. , the Ludlow Massacre, the Thibodaux Massacre, Battle of Blair Mountain.

There is poor evidence to support your points. And what about Switzerland that has very low union membership, have pretty much 40 hours weeks, no child labor, and the highest compensation across Europe despite having no minimum wage? It does not add up if we follow your narrative.

It would be interesting to explore. How did Sweden come to a 40 hour week via parallel means?

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#119

Post by briandear »

lurena wrote: post #78

I'll go ahead and be 'that guy' and say it: I don't want my country to become a startup nation. I don't want management methods and labor laws to be reformed, or modernized, or to mimic those in the US. I don't want corporation-friendly tax rates to be enacted. I don't want regulations to be lifted. There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of A…

And this attitude is precisely why I just moved from France to Silicon Valley. I want to be around people interested in creating the future rather than recycling the past.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#120

Post by AmericanChopper »

qw wrote: post #113
AmericanChopper wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are not necessary at all in any country that has decent and enforced labor laws. In developed economies they only serve as a levelling mechanism, which also make it impossible to fire anybody. The only people they serve are unproductive and incompetent employees.

The corporations also organize themselves to influence politicians. Big companies even have their own lobbyists. In addition you get all the "retirement" packages where former politicians are hired by the companies they were supposed to regulate. Why shouldn't the employees have the same right?

It sounds like you’re comparing cartels to unions in respect to corruption and inefficiency. Well, I certainly agree with you there. Both are a threat to an efficient free market.
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