Pave: The Lifelong Suck At The Teat Of French Socialism

Le jour 314 de Sarko

Today the French enjoy their national (paid) religious holiday, Lundi de Pâques. Pave celebrates French socialism, the cradle-to-grave nanny service that pays for France's national religious holidays* and so much else (and here and here).

MMMMM...YUMMY SOCIALISM
Always Plenty For Me

The poster text reads (top to bottom):

La mamelle endolorie de l'abondance governementale

[The sore teat of governmental abundance]

SOCIALISME
Ajourd'hui
L'ABONDANCE POUR MOI
Aux chiottes le futur !

[SOCIALISME
Today
PLENTY FOR ME
Screw the future!]

Le modèle social français ...
... le modèle qui me va !

[The French social model...
...the model for me!]

French socialism is premised on net winners leveling up the losers in society. Winners are those who can pay for their own housing, food, clothing, and healthcare. The goal of socialism is to have everyone at the level of winners. In French socialism, the attainments of winners eventually become legal rights extended to losers (e.g., Droit au logement, DAL, or this).

Bravo, France! [Wait as applause subsides.] Now here's the rub.

Socialism raises losers at the expense of winners.

To pay for all the socialist candy, winners are extravagantly taxed. At tax rates over 50%, a winner is foremost working for the state, though the winner is still responsible for his own paycheck.

Socialist tax booty is redistributed to the losers without any productivity offset by them. As greater state obligations squeeze winners from the system (and this),** more citizens come to live off the state than to work for the state. To compensate, socialism raises the tax burden on winners. The level rises as losers begin to gain on winners. Eventually the burden of supporting losers comes to overwhelm the productivity of winners [Cheerless pause.] and the system fails.

And that is a terrible surprise to the losers. [Pause.] What the state giveth with ease, the state taketh away with ease.

NEW POLL REVEALS A BLEAK VIEW OF RETIREMENT SYSTEMS

PARIS March 14, 2008 (IHT) - Despite widely varying national retirement systems, people in five major European countries and the United States share the view that the systems are broken [and here] and that they will have to work 5 to 10 years longer than they would like, a poll conducted by Harris Interactive for the International Herald Tribune and France 24 shows.

... When people from the six nations were asked when they thought they would actually retire, the earliest were the French, at 64.2 years old, and the oldest the Americans, at 67.2.

Ángel Gurría, head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris:

The No. 1 problem is not retirement. The No. 1 problem, with a population which is aging, and with a population which in many countries of the OECD is falling in absolute terms, is how to have more of the population working [and here]. That is the only way in which some of our countries can continue to have growth.

------------------------------------
* Pâques, Lundi de Pâques, Ascension, Pentecôte (observed in the breach -- oh, wait, no, it's legal again), Assomption, Toussaint, and Noël. Also Fête des Rois (Épiphanie), La Chandeleur (la présentation de Jésus au temple et la purification de la Vierge), and Vendredi saint (Good Friday) are all widely observed in secular France.

** Another driver squeezing winners from the system, the prospect of being a loser (and here and here).

PFFT (What is this?): The state taketh 4 | The state giveth 2½ | The state taketh back 4 | Rayonnement français 0