
European entrepreneurs: Les misérables - keiferski
http://www.economist.com/node/21559618
======
_delirium
Isn't talking about "European" entrepreneurs a bit generalizing? There are
some similarities, but many more differences. The article itself even seems to
hint at it, but not note it explicitly: in a graph labeled "life sentences",
purporting to show how long it takes for "European" entrepreneurs to be free
of debt, the bar for Denmark is so small that you can barely see it. Maybe
they mean primarily French & German entrepreneurs?

As an American living in Denmark, I would personally prefer to bootstrap a
business here rather than in the U.S., though it does depend on what kind of
business. The main advantage to doing it here, imo, is that the healthcare
story is solved, though maybe that'll be better in the U.S. after PPACA comes
into effect in 2014. Another plus is better government support for small
businesses: grants are available, and you can get some cheap early part-time
employees by participating in subsidized internship programs intended to
"upskill" people on unemployment. The main downside is high wages (though that
matters less in tech, where wages are very high in the US, too), less access
to venture capital if you're going the non-bootstrapping route, and some
general problems from not being in the U.S. (less media visibility, problems
with payment gateways, etc.).

~~~
itmag
_As an American living in Denmark_

How did that happen?

Also, would love to meet up.

~~~
mixmax
same here. since I'm from Copenhagen.

May e-mail is in my profile in case you, or anyone else from the Copenhagen
area, wants to have coffee.

------
tluyben2
The Economist is overly gloomy about the EU I feel; every week you get pounded
by more and more 'this will end badly' stories about the EU.

That said, I do really feel the 'good enough' vibe here in the EU; most people
I talk to who have companies (just started or older) have the 'it's good
enough this way' attitude. 'We' generally don't want to be billionaires or
even have billion Euro companies. Once you are making insane profit margins
and have a fat company bank account, all employees are happy, growth is
stopped and the goal becomes to sustain that situation. I know great
entrepreneurs here who started out with crazy plans; once hitting that point
(and that can be any revenue mind you; for some companies it's E10
million/year, for others it's E100 million/year, but rarely more than that)
they find it good enough. I think a lot stems from that feeling of not
actually wanting to be 'the biggest', just wanting a stable, sustainable
company producing profit margins year after year to lick your fingers by.

Edit: read the comments; 500 biggest companies in the world, 132 US, 166 EU
and France has more than the UK. Didn't check those things, just copying here
for completeness.

~~~
octagonal
It always bothers me when I see listings where Eurozone countries are seen as
separate entities. We're not. Our economies and social structures are heavily
interdependent on each other and that's only ever going to increase. Regarding
Eurozone countries as completely separate states would be akin to thinking of
California as a different country.

~~~
pdelgallego
Unfortunately we are not quite there yet. If we were a more cohesive union,
there wouldn't be such a thing as a European debt crisis. We will have
Eurobonds, automatic states bailouts, a fiscal union, etc.

It might take another 50 years, but we, eventually, will become a single
union. This are interesting times

~~~
tluyben2
Don't forget the languages; these are a far bigger barrier than everyone seems
to think. Most countries now have mandatory English in schools, but taught by
teachers from the country itself. When the average Spanish young person with
years of English in school starts speaking to me in English it takes several
minutes before I actually recognize it is English. Let alone understand what
he/she is on about. I found the same in France. If English is taught by people
who cannot possibly pronounce it themselves and when movies are still dubbed
(recently it was again decided that movies in Spain will remain dubbed for
instance), it will not 'come together'.

Now I don't want to say we all have to speak English, but it's, economically,
the logical language to go for
(<http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm>) and entire EU
youth are watching US movies + US tv shows and thus US culture 24/7. I hear
Spanish kids making translated jokes (from dubbing) from American shows.
Economy wise it would make sense to just make the union speak something which
can be used in international business. And then of course the things you speak
off as well to make it 1 union.

~~~
tobias3
Well it seems to be the logical choice, but the UK is currently backing out of
the EU, so we would not have any native speakers. And while some countries
(spain probably included) are reasonable blasé about adopting other languages,
forget about the french doing that.

Well... not enough labour mobility without a common language and without
labour mobility no optimal currency area. Somebody should really have thought
this through...

~~~
skrebbel
There's no need for anybody speaking English natively. Even without, English
is the natural common language of the EU. A nice example is Pan-European
university student networks such as IAESTE, AEGEE and BEST. English is _the_
common language inside these organisations. The members do not even think
twice about it. This is the case despite the fact that AEGEE is a French
acronym and BEST has no member universities in English speaking countries.

Similarly, virtually any company in Europe that has more than one accepted
work floor language, has $NATIONAL_LANGUAGE and English. And any company where
the work floor language is _not_ the national language, it's English.

Really, this battle has long ago been won. Only some archaic government
institutions like the EU itself pretend that languages other than English
still make a chance at becoming the lingua franca of Europe. Whether or not
the UK currently is in a Euro-mood does not influence this at all.

Oh, and you forgot about Ireland.

------
raverbashing
Well, it's _a lot_ of factors (I am currently in an European country, YMMV
between them)

\- Lack of "drive". Young people mostly want to find a nice job and that's it.
In my perception this is less in France, where people may want to "kick ass"
more (historical pride maybe) and maybe in the UK or Germany

\- People are 'naive', and by that I mean the sentiment "this is the way it
is, don't bother changing". Since everything pretty much works, it's difficult
to see faults (or maybe faults enough to motivate a change)

\- People in Europe need more hand-holding. They are usually more theoretical
as well instead of "go there and do it", something is much stronger in the
American continent (which goes from Canada all the way to
Uruguai/Argentina/Chile in the south)

\- Labor laws, difficulty in getting talent outside of the EU (depends on the
country really - still, usually easier than getting an H1B)

Also, every country has its quirks: French cannot speak english to save their
lives (usually)

In the end, Europe has a lot of opportunities, they have only to think outside
of the box. But don't be so quick to count them out, they have literally
thousands of years of experience.

~~~
bergie
_Lack of "drive". Young people mostly want to find a nice job and that's it._

what most people don't realize is that the time of uninterrupted careers and
job security is over, and so even if you want to be just an employee, you're
still essentially an entrepreneur. You'll still have to do constant R&D to
keep your products (job skills) current, and do sales to get the next job.

This way you may not have to invest into things and get into debts beyond
typical mortgages or car loans, but you'll also lack the potential upside of
being in business for yourself.

~~~
pmjordan
I think part of the problem is that job security is still drilled into
everyone's heads: older, educated European parents are quasi-unfireable at
this point (having been hired on old-style contracts with ridiculously
favourable terms), and even young teachers are typically state employees with
exceptionally high job security and exceptionally low competition - my sister
is studying to be a teacher in Austria, _and she already knows what her salary
will be when she starts work in 3 years' time_. And these are the only adults
with whom young people spend any significant amount of time.

Meanwhile, in industry, there are jobs available, but often not as actual
employees. Companies will bend over backwards to hire young people on a
"permanently temporary" basis, i.e. perpetual, full-time, single-client
freelancers. Legally, this tends to be a very grey area, but if you complain
they'll obviously just not renew your contract. So nobody does.

The decrease in job security is probably also contributing to the "brain
drain": if salaries are higher elsewhere, and there's no longer a security
advantage to staying at home, then why not move?

~~~
anonymouz
> even young teachers are typically state employees with exceptionally high
> job security and exceptionally low competition

This is definitely no longer true in Austria. For the first couple of years of
their career, young teachers are usually hired on a contract basis. If they
are not needed the following year, their contract is simply not renewed.

Together with the infamously bad ability by Austrian schools and school
administration to estimate demand for the following years, I've heard horror
stories of teacher who didn't know at the end of August whether or not they
will have a job in September.

That said, at the moment there seems to be a shortage of teachers, caused by
the attempts of the last decade or so to steer people away from becoming
teachers (because we have too many ...). So with a decent choice of subjects
it shouldn't be too hard to find a job.

------
pg
This chart makes it clear how big the difference is: <http://bit.ly/Qcrv3R>

~~~
Ra1d3n
Well maybe europeans make good midsize companies?

~~~
fforw
Here in Germany that would be <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelstand>, SMEs
that are the major backbone of German economy.

~~~
Silhouette
I'd argue that SMEs are the backbone of _every_ successful economy.

If you look at big business, say the Fortune 500 for example, these
organisations are typically much more high profile than their smaller
brethren, but there are still... well, only 500 of them. And while the list
includes giant individual employers like Walmart, those businesses
collectively still only employ something like 20M-30M people depending on how
you count. Similarly, while your revenues are probably $5B+ if you made the
500 this year, plenty of the businesses towards the lower end of the list only
made perhaps $20M-30M in profit, and one or two didn't even land a profit at
all.

Depending on whose definition you take for the maximum number of employees,
companies of up to 100-300 people might be considered SMEs. At that point, you
could certainly be earning profits that compete with the lower end of the
Fortune 500, and there are a lot more SMEs out there than industry giants.

And that's just the most basic, raw economic data about business performance
and employment, without even considering cultural differences and efficiencies
and innovation and numerous other factors that make smaller businesses
important to the wider economy.

~~~
tptacek
?!

There are only 500 F500's because the F500 is the top 500 companies. It feels
weird to have to point out that there is in fact a 501th company. You probably
haven't heard of #500, but #499 --- second from the bottom of the list --- is
KeyCorp, one of the country's largest regional bank chains.

~~~
Silhouette
Sorry, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.

I was just trying to demonstrate that although "big" businesses tend to get a
lot of attention, they don't actually employ a large proportion of the working
population, nor do they necessarily make much more profit than a large SME. In
other words, really big business isn't the driver behind a successful economy,
something else is. I contend that the "something else" is SMEs.

~~~
tptacek
Hard to support that without torturing definitions:

<http://www.census.gov/econ/smallbus.html>

~~~
thaumaturgy
Those charts are abysmally bad [1]; they also don't seem to agree with what
other branches of the government are saying. From the SBA [2]:

"Small firms represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms; employ half of all
private sector employees; pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll; create
more than half of the non-farm private GDP; hire 43 percent of high tech
workers..."

I think Silhouette has got the details pretty wrong, but if he had said that
SMEs were _as important_ to the U.S. economy as BigCos, and especially the
Fortune 500, then it looks like the SBA agrees with him.

[1]: The data between businesses with no employees and businesses with less
than 500 employees is mutually exclusive; you can't use those carts to make
any points about the contributions to the economy of businesses with less than
500 employees, including those without employees, because that data is
missing. "Annual Payroll" is a pretty bad data point to use for judgements
about contributions to the economy; "sales or receipts" would be better, but
that's only available for all employer firms, with no further breakdown, for
some reason. All in all, pretty useless here.

[2]: <http://web.sba.gov/faqs/faqIndexAll.cfm?areaid=24> \-- seems to be down
right now, try the Google cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Wv_OfwD...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Wv_OfwDi_lIJ:web.sba.gov/faqs/faqIndexAll.cfm%3Fareaid%3D24)

~~~
Silhouette
_I think Silhouette has got the details pretty wrong_

How so? All the specific figures I quoted were lifted directly from mainstream
reporting of the Fortune 500 for 2012, starting with Fortune's own web site.

This doesn't make much difference to my argument anyway. Whoever's figures you
take, it's clear that in raw numbers SMEs are a significant contributor, at
least on par with big business. But if we're talking about what really drives
an economy and keeps it developing, I would argue that a disproportionate
amount of the innovation and a lot more flexibility is found in SMEs. BigCos
are good at industrialising and achieving economies of scale, but they aren't
particularly good at innovating or creating new markets. All I'm saying in
this thread is that SMEs don't sacrifice their own direct contribution to the
economy at the same time.

~~~
tptacek
The only point I'm trying to make is that it's misleading to characterize the
median or modal size of US employers by using the Fortune 500.

Census offers statistics on which employer size brackets employ how many
people. ~41MM people in the US are employed by firms with fewer than 100
employees, ~72MM people are employed by those with more than 100 employees. In
the smaller company bracket, more people are employed by companies with
between 20 and 100 employees than at smaller companies.

All the Fortune 500 tells you is the size of the 500 most profitable
companies. And my earlier point was simply this: the "501th company", which
just missed being included on the F500, is presumably gigantic; KeyCorp just
barely got onto the list.

------
lifeisstillgood
Ok, this is my favourite rant subject (pace wonga.com).

It's the welfare state and related systems. But _not_ a Ron Paul style get rid
of the lot, we should recognise that unemployment and welfare payments make a
huge amount of short term sense. We do not want a skilled worker made
redundant to lose house and family becaause it takes three months to find a
job.

But we should look carefully at long term welfare payments (long term
unemployment, chronic disability and especially _retirement_ ). Just when we
should change the expectation from how many jobs did you apply for, to how
many customers did you advertise to is important not only for an
entrepreneurial society, but a sane and fair one.

Look for work for three months, then look to create a company, and welfare
will support you.

Most importantly I would change the focus for those under 24, whose first
encounter with welfare (pretty much all school leavers and graduates in this
climate it seems) should be a positive creative experience, not a dismal on
the scrap heap one

~~~
_delirium
There are some aspects of Denmark's system re: your last point that I think
other European countries could benefit from. However, it's still quite poor
when it comes to providing a way for starting a business to be recognized as
an alternative exit from unemployment.

The good parts are a general vibe that the unemployment system is less about
welfare, and more about matchmaking. One structural help is that it's run
quasi-independently by several non-governmental (though state-subsidized)
organizations. Each of these organizations, an "a-kasse", focuses on different
areas. For example, I'm a member of one that focuses on researchers. This
means they can provide more specific advice to my situation, and also means
they develop relationships with both sides of the unemployment puzzle:
companies in relevant areas will come to them looking for talent, and the
a-kasse will try to connect unemployed people with seeking companies. So they
see themselves not only as an unemployment agency, but also as a recruiter to
some extent. If you can't find a researcher specializing in data mining, for
example, you might go to the researcher "a-kasse" and ask them if they can
hook you up with one. This also makes the a-kasse much more informed about
what the job market in their area looks like, which in turn guides their
educational programs.

Initially it's fairly self-serve, with an assumption of good faith that you're
just temporarily unemployed and doing your best to fix the problem; there are
offices where you can get assistance, or you can get it online, with things
like resumes or job listings. Then, if you're still unemployed after some
time, it becomes more mandatory, where you have to go in regularly, so they
can try to debug why you're still unemployed, and what could be done to fix
the problem. That might include assistance finding/applying for jobs, taking
training courses, or other things.

Past that, if the problem is lack of demonstrable skills or work experience,
there's a quasi-paid internship program: a company will "hire" you for 3-6
months, but you remain on unemployment, so are almost free to the company, but
they do have to pay your pension contribution (this gives the intern a modest
financial benefit, but mostly serves to make sure the company takes it at
least a little seriously, since the intern isn't 100% free). The hope is that
that will turn into a regular job, or at least gain you enough
skills/experience to get a similar job elsewhere.

If all that fails, after some years, then it becomes more like a regular
welfare system, but this up-to-2-years "a-kasse" system is much more geared
towards assistance/adaptation/upskilling.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
There are indications that is where UK system is trying to go, but there is a
huge weight of baggage - everything from pointless stories about 14 children
families living in million pound mansions and sponging off the state to
reluctance to deal with structural geographic issues (frankly if you are under
25 move to London to get a job, there is nothing anywhere else for a certain
value of nothing)

Sounds interesting approach though.

------
qwertzlcoatl
2011 growth rates for the US: 1.5% UK: 1.1% EU: 1.6%.[1] Now the EU is more
than the eurozone, but with the UK dragging down the non eurozone component, I
can only imagine that euro-nations averaged above the 1.6% EU wide average and
so outperformed the UK and US by a large margin (more than the 0.2%ppt margin
of error anyway).

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_real_GDP_g...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_real_GDP_growth_rate_%28latest_year%29)

~~~
Retric
Subtract the population growth rate and EU looks even better. Population
growth rate EU 0.212% vs. US 0.97%.

Economic growth per person US = .5%, EU 1.4%.

~~~
gaius
The averages can hide all sorts of things. Without the mighty German
industrial powerhouse, how do things stand?

~~~
fabjan
Without the coastal states, how does the US stand?

~~~
gaius
Quite.

------
lifeisstillgood
On a slight tangent, but the Economist ought to know better than to lump
spotify, Skype and _wonga.com_ together. Wonga lends short-term cash to
desperate families at an APR of 4,500 % (yes, four thousand).

Come on Economist, money lending at rates the Kray twins used to do is not an
indicator of a functioning entrepreneurial society

Other than that usual Economist quality

~~~
gaius
Not that I am defending predatory practices, but you have to put things in
perspective. Firstly check out Wonga's advertising - they're an iPhone app.
People who can afford luxury smartphones are not "desperate families". That is
why it makes sense to lump them in with other dotcommy companies.

Secondly, if a week before payday I lend you fifty quid, and you pay me back
and buy me a pint to say thanks when you get paid, that's a higher "APR" than
Wonga charges, because APR is meaningless for any loan of less than a year.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Website, iPhone app does not matter - desperate does not mean low income,
desperate means insufficient income.

A quick look at their site - if I borrow 400 quid today and pay it back in one
month (seems short term to me) I pay back 159 quid extra ontop of 400!!

And with all due respect I borrow 50 and pay it back a week later costs 9.50,
so if you don't mind I am not going drinking at your pub. :-)

------
flexie
I don't know about all this Euro bashing. I believe America is dominant in
entrepreneurship mainly because of the language. Other factors are the huge
home market and the few public sector jobs.

I've been starting businesses in two very different European countries, and
lived in a third, just like I've been living in America. And I certainly don't
believe America is equipped with better laws for entrepreneurs or with a more
risk encouraging mentality.

~~~
pmjordan
I get the impression that America's public sector is anything but small. Sure,
the spending is distributed differently, but it's still colossal.

 _And I certainly don't believe America is equipped with [...] with a more
risk encouraging mentality._

While this is certainly not true for all of Europe, I grew up in Austria, and
when I visit, I'm struck by the total apathy towards entrepreneurialism,
especially amongst the younger generation. There are of course exceptions, and
they tend to congregate, so you notice them more. But the vast masses still
seem to believe in the "cushy job for life", despite most of my classmates
from school not having found it, 10 years after finishing high school. They
find it completely unfathomable why you could possibly want to start a
company.

------
VeejayRampay
Europe provides more of a safety net for poor and lower middle-class people
than more dynamic economies.

It's all a matter of choice: do you want REALLY good conditions for the top
10% or decent conditions for everyone?

Economies like China, the USA or Canada favor the former, lots of European
countries the latter.

------
tici_88
The article makes the mistake of talking about France and Germany and maybe
Spain and then of generalizing it to mean "Europe". There are in fact lots of
other countries in Europe, 30+ or so in the EU alone where the reality can be
very different than France and Germany. Many European countries have flat
taxes (Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, etc), hiring and firing is at
will like in the US, low to no capital gains taxes, etc. Some provide lots of
government incentives, loans and capital, Denmanrk and some of the other
Scandinavian countries come to mind here.

Europe is a big continent and taking Germany and France and extrapolating it
to the rest of Europe doesn't always work.

------
hdivider
Interesting article, especially the part about the maximum time it takes for
bankruptees to be freed from debt (makes you feel sorry for entrepreneurs in
France who have to go into debt to start their business).

I think a lot of this stuff is due to the attitude of the general population
towards entrepreneurs. If the only question that matters to people is "Have
you made any revenue yet?" there's probably not much hope for Europe ever
catching up with the US in terms of new fast-growing tech businesses.

(I'm hoping the UK is something of an exception, but I'm not really sure. Lots
of people here are still very sceptical or pessimistic about new tech
companies, especially very small, innovative ones.)

~~~
tluyben2
I'm not sure that bankruptcy is not an exception rather than rule. The cases I
have seen in the EU where 'done' after the court case. Which didn't take long
at all. But it is true that it is a stigma; to US entrepreneurs if you tell
you have a bankruptcy it means you tried, in the EU it means you failed.

~~~
mddw
I don't know about the UK or the US, but in France, Bankruptcy don't always
mean paying your company's debts. Small business often start as "limited
responsability companies", where you can only loss your capital.

~~~
tluyben2
I think that's what the economist refers to as well; otherwise the owners will
have to pay the debt or personally go bankrupt (and _that_ IS a bad thing). I
think the economist refers to limited liability companies which are liable to
the starting capital and the bad thing is, they say, that _even_ those, where
you know the outcome, are taking so long.

This is because every party involved who wants money from that bankrupt
company stands to gain if they can show that there was malpractice going on.
If this can be shown, the shareholders (if they have more than 4.9%) become
liable personally and then there is something to get (while usually, after the
taxes visited the carcass, there is nothing left). This is why sometimes it
takes a long time to resolve.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
We have limited liability in the UK however a small business won't get a loan
from a bank without a director personally guaranteeing it. The reality is a
failing business can often mean the founders bankruptcy.

~~~
tluyben2
Yes, that probably means you are done, the rest of your life. It takes away
your spirit to try again and the bank (at least here) forces you to get a job
to be able to regularly pay back the agreed amount. You are in prison without
the bars when that happens.

------
ExpiredLink
USD:EUR = 1:1,2859 (today)

I laugh at the media-fabricated 'Euro crisis' and the 'Economist'.

~~~
Ygg2
Wasn't euro always higher rated than dolar? Anyway overall I don't think the
crisis is over yet, some sources (can't remember which ones) indicate that
there is a slight chance of the economic crisis entering a second cycle
devastating US/Euro again.

~~~
ExpiredLink
> Wasn't euro always higher rated than dolar?

No.

BTW, sorry but "There Is No 'Euro Crisis'"
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044446430457753...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444464304577535212717236888.html)

------
zerostar07
It's not stressed enough but regulations of markets are one great, if not the
major factor. Companies like Airbnb or Uber wouldn't even get a start in
Europe or their owners would be arrested.

------
sbierwagen
1.) The Economist is always going to be anti-regulation. They're a neoliberal
magazine: repealing laws is the point of the paper.

2.) Even if the EU abolished their unemployment insurance programs and made
labor unions illegal, you'd still see startups moving to SF, just for the
network effects. The legal system isn't the only factor in producing startups.
PG wrote a essay about this.

------
davedx
"For the €1.5m-4m that firms need to work an idea up into a real business
model, though, money is in desperately short supply."

I stopped reading there. I must be living on another planet entirely from
whoever wrote this article.

------
30092012
As usual, Norway is the exception: [http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-
norway-start-ups-say...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-norway-start-
ups-say-ja-to-socialism.html)

------
martinced
/rant on

I don't agree that the various EU governments are starting to "get it". It's
the entire contrary for a lot of countries.

There are very, very few, say, EU success software stories (SAP! Yeah. German.
Not french). And it's not just software and that is for a very good reason.

In some countries like France and all the other socialo-communist EU countries
people are not just looking with a very bad eye entrepreneurs who failed:
they're also and, most importantly, developing a hatred of people who work
hard and a hatred for the fruit of hardwork (they hate both success and money,
success and money being related but not identical).

So there's this entire mindset which is ruining, for example, the France
economy and it's ruining it fast. Rich people are leaving the country
(Belgium, Switzerland and the U.S. all being destinations now seeing more and
more rich french persons coming).

The unions here are way too strong and SMEs and independents are seen as
people you should milk as much as you can.

And for those who "succeed", don't you dare to buy a Porsche because you'll
then be seen as an "ennemy of the (socialo-communist) state".

Honestly it is sad but France is deserving what it is getting now: recession,
SMEs going bankrupt, big companies delocalizing, rich people fleeing, they're
debt skyrocketing (91% of the GDP), the GDP that shall fall (0% Q2 growth and
now a recession that shall start), the loss of its status as the world's fifth
biggest power (should be in 6th place by the end of Hollande's mandate).

Socialo-communist countries spreading the hate of succesful people can only go
one way: mediocrity.

France and it's crazy wellfare system is going the way Greece and Spain went.
This is only the beginning of the eurocrisis and it shall get uglier by the
day. Unemployment is going to skyrocket. In the end debt shall need to be
monetized and we'll see a massive drop in the value of the euro.

Because what we're seeing now is a joke compared to what is coming: how is
France going to save its sinking economy without investors, without
entrepreneurs and without people willing to work?

Want an example as to how crazy the socialo-communists are in a lot of
European countries? In Spain in 5 years 210 000 SMEs went bankrupt.
Unemployment is sky-high and Spain is probably going to default (it's debt is
"low" compared to its GDP but its GDP is falling and its debt is taking +9%
per year... It's only a matter of time before Spain becomes the new Greece).
So 210 000 SMEs bankrupt: can you imagine how many people previously
unemployed are now without a job? And you know what the public servants do?
Public servants who have a friggin' job working for the state do protest in
the street because they had a 3% cut on their salary.

A 3% cut and they protest in the street. While a lot of people who previously
had job working in the private sector don't even have a job anymore.

That is why all these socialo-communist state are f _cked. It's over for them.
The "sense of entitlement" of the people working for the state is way too
important and the part of the state in the economy of these socialo-communist
countries is way too important too. There is no way out.

And that is just _today _... What about tomorrow?

Well, entrepreneurs are way less prone to create a gig in France (or in
Spain). They're moving to greener pasture. I've got friends who created
companies in the U.S. (SoCal) and in Asia (Tokyo). Why would they stay here in
France?

Why would _I* stay? You see, now I may be pitching soon: I'm frequenting the
local "startup" scene but I already have contacts outside Europe. I'm (of
course) willing to move: should I succeed in France I'd be not only milked
like a cow to pay for the 56% of the french economy that is directly directed
by the state (that number only went up and up: France shall soon default, just
like Greece, it's only a matter of time) but I'd also be regarded as a greedy
rich bastard responsible for some perceived slavery (which, ironically, is of
course the fault of the socialo-communist state and the way-too-greedy state
system).

If you live in the U.S. I'd seriously have you consider to not vote for Obama:
the public debt of your country never exploded as much than after five years
of Obama. That wellfare system and the sense of entitlement it creates shall
lead to a socialist country. This has always been the plan of leftists: create
a gigantic number of state jobs and promise more and more wellfare, to make
sure to get reelected. Once you're too entrenched into socialism the only way
out is default.

And then once the nany state defaults you'll get tyranny.

Oh, sure, for a few years your shiny healthcare system shall look nice. And
then the discfonctional system shall be hidden under more and more debt.

And then you'll default, just like Greece. Just like Spain is going to. Just
like France is going to.

It's not that I'm not a good person. It's not that I wouldn't want everybody
to get a good healthcare system. But the only thing socialism leads to is
poverty for everyone, besides the leaders. Don't forget where you're coming
from and what made your country so great.

F*ck socialism.

/rant off

~~~
anonymouz
No matter how often you call western European countries "socialo-communist",
they have never been anywhere close to communist, and lately have been
reducing all kinds of social benefits, going more towards the "totally free
market" (with questionable outcomes...).

But I'm sure you'll find a "socio-communist" reason for e.g. the Spanish real
estate bubble. Silly communists and their real estate speculation!

