

Pace of Change Too Slow to Keep Entrepreneurs in France - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/business/worldbusiness/11french.html?ex=1362888000&en=8b6215a301207e44&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

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musiciangames
I feel that Sarkozy has squibbed the reform process, and so France is going to
have to wait a long time for a rejuvenated economy. I posted about this here:
<http://reddit.com/info/6165b/comments/c02iflh>

One of Sarkozy's first acts was to make an impromptu decision to subsidise
fishermen because the cost of fuel had gone up. He gave them the full amount
they asked for, when the fishermen themselves said afterwards that it had been
an ambit claim. His private life has now detracted from his ability to wield
power; this in a country where voters traditionally don't care about a
politician's private life, as long as (s)he is reasonably discrete.

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jgrahamc
Great article. This is 100% how I feel about France and why I plan to leave
it.

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Electro
From what I've learnt of business in France, it appears to have a lot of anti-
competative laws built in. From talk between British Ex-Pats living out there,
it appears most see more benefit working outside the law than in it.

I talked to one guy who ended up going out to work on a guys Chateau to get it
out of a weird "uninhabitable" status that houses can get. Apparently the
owner started out getting legit french workers, except the plasterers doing
the walls suddenly refused to work because they needed some old wiring removed
and they're not allowed to do it. The guys said this happened so often he
fired them all, came back to the UK and found a bunch of contractors, paid
them to drive down and then when they'd finished a months work he paid them
back in the UK to avoid money trouble crossing the border.

A guy we met out there works as a handyman, apparently the only one in the
area because you have to pay multiple taxes or something stupid to do more
than one area of work. So he's "based" in the UK and every six months he goes
out to see his kids and travels back to his house in the south of France, "on
business". The insane thing about it is that it's perfectly legal in France
for the guy to spend 50 weeks there a year, and he doesn't even have to pay
the French taxes as he's working in a business loop hole.

Essentially he's working under the contract worker laws, that a Brit can work
in France as a reporter or specialist or whatever and not pay taxes as he's
working for a British company. The thing is, he's the only person employed in
his company and he requires himself to work in France. It's just ludicrous.
With the EU how it is, the French builders could just start a business in the
UK and do the exact same thing and make more money because UK taxes are lower.

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jgrahamc
Lots of people 'route around' the French legal system (especially concerning
tax and social charges) because it's onerous. This is a classic example of
what happens when you introduce a really complex burdening system... people
figure out now to ignore it.

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kingkongrevenge
> one of 12 seats in the French Senate reserved for representatives of French
> expatriate voters

We need this in the US. There are hundreds of thousands of essentially
disenfranchised American expats. Congress does not address the special
concerns of expats. We should create one or two congressional districts called
"overseas" and expats should have the option to register there in exchange for
giving up mainland voter registration.

