It is wrong to say that the French (European) rich are Americanised.
Bernard Arnault made his money flogging long-established luxury brands to the Chinese. Nothing new has been produced. Most of the products in the LVMH portfolio were invented over 100 years ago. It is just a (very well executed) marketing operation.
Whereas America’s richest men (Musk, Bezos, Larry Ellison, Gates & Bullmer, Page & Brin, Zuckerberg) made their money inventing new things. The other one in the top 10, Warren Buffet made his from investing early in new products.
There is a world of difference between the continents.
The French contributed the word entrepreneur to the world in much the same way that Britain gifted most of the world’s major sports: by inventing them and then letting everyone else show Britain how it’s supposed to be done.
Last edited 11 months ago by John Riordan
T Bone
11 months ago
So does the French Right get into Bastille Day? Are French Nationalists proud of Napoleon? Are French Leftists inspired by Robespierre? Does the Anti-Americanism extend to WW2 when Americans landed on the beaches and drove the Third Reich off French land?
Do the French like anything that isn’t French?! Let’s face it, they are snobby to Americans and always have been. As far back as I can remember as a kid – 50 years ago – one often heard that the French had no use for Americans and that if you visited France they would look down their noses at you. When I finally went to Paris on my honeymoon we got the full treatment. On checking out of our hotel my husband finalized the bill proudly and fluently speaking the French he learned while studying as a child in Lausanne, Switzerland. The insouciant clerk smiled and chirped that my husband spoke like a “savoyard” – a ‘peasant’ to French ears. That said, in subsequent visits the insults have diminished, but I remain an Anglophile. God save the king!
Sorry Cathy, but totally ridiculous comment about French thinking Savoyards are peasants……relax a little bit and leave your biais resting at home should you wish to visit again……which doesn’t look like being the case.
This hotel clerk put his foot in it, probably thinking he was being nice I am sure he didn’t give a hoot. Just surprising to hear an American speaking with the Vaux Canton accent. You should be happy your husband didn’t study in Marseille, that would have been funny. I was once told I sounded like coming from some civilised part of Ireland ……and that was coming from a Brit. His biais ….not mine.
Don’t wish to be rude, but how long ago was your honeymoon ? https://youtu.be/aORS_vYl434?si=ZyEgzJ5gfGrz5o7n
There is basic reason for fewer insults.
When I went skiing to France in 90s, they pretended not to speak English.
When you go to French ski resorts now they are happy to see you.
As countless French bar managers explained:
“We would be bankrupt without English and Dutch tourists.
French don’t even shop in local supermarkets. They buy their food and wine on the way to resorts and you are lucky if they buy coffee lunchtime”.
Obviously, there are rich French tourists who spend money in hotels and restaurants but not enough of them to sustain ski resorts.
Tbone, I fail to see your allusion to DDay !! If you’re asking wether a 30 year old French has gratitude for the ultimate sacrifice young American made then ? well, the answer is…..no. It is like asking if Americans have gratitude for La Fayette and the French troops sent by Louis XVI whose aim was to beat the English. I won’t be offended if the answer is no, knowing damn well that this part would be better forgotten. This is history. Saving private Ryan, at least the first 5 minutes will show younger generations what it was really all about. I have to say that the Battle of Britain is the decisive point. Without these 20 years old young men who proved to the US that Britain was able to hold and wage a war, there would have been no Normandy landing…….the Japs helped with Pearl Harbour.
Are French proud of Napoleon ? I am not, he was clearly a dictator, waged war throughout Europe, but had Louis XVI accepted a parliamentary monarchy and not tried to b****r off to assemble troops outside of France, Napoleon would have been at best, only a Corsican General.
Robespierre ? : My families lost a few members who were obligingly be headed during the terror. The irony is that one of them was siding with the ideas of the revolution, but in those days, a jealous neighbour eager to get your property, was enough to have you guillotined. The only politician fruitcake to love Robespierre and his legacy, is Jean Luc Melenchon….with him police would be disarmed, or even disbanded ……etc ….the litany of his stupidities would be to long to expose here.
Money ? : French detest money as long as they don’t have any. Once on top of the food chain, they love it and can make obscene displays of it.
Jean Jacques Arnaud turned a construction business, mainly building in holiday resorts into the mega luxury business it is today, allowing century old luxury good to survive and flourish, bring gazillions of eur in tax revenue and creating millions of jobs.
Anti Americanism ? : it is true that FDR detested de Gaulle. Personally, I do not like to put my fate into someone else’s hands. I am therefore happy that we have a totally independent strategic policy and Chirac and Dominique de Villepin were then right on the money to refuse to join in in Irak when this war was founded on lies……weapons of mass destruction…..that was a good one……French fries became freedom fries and french wine was drunk in tea cups like in good old times.
There are plenty of young entrepreneurs in France…..of course, they are not google or Apple, but they generate wealth that trickles down in taxes. As to the leftist press, I have to admit I neither read it nor listen to it. I just do what everybody should do, go about my business.
Probably the likes of my mother and aunt who were arrested at the tender age of 22 and 23, sentenced to death then turned into a 2 years vacation in Bergen Belsen and Ravensbrück for innocent anti German activities, like painting anti Germans writings on walls and circulating pamphlets.
Sophie Scholl was less lucky and along with her brother was beheaded following a flash trial.
According to French, France was liberated by Resistance, Vichy never existed and Jews happily moved to German concentration camps.
Their idiotic hatred of USA drives French ideas like “strategic independence” or whatever it is called this week.
Like someone said “France is great country, much too good for the French”.
Peter Kwasi-Modo
11 months ago
I’m a Francophile I find practically everything about France and the French fascinating. so thanks, as usual, to Anne-Elisabeth Moutet for this piece. Compared to France, in the UK the poorest 10% have a smaller share of natoinal income and the richest 10% have a larger share on national income. Less égalité mean less fraternité and a balance must be struck with the third element, liberté, of France’s secular trinity
It is interesting to see the term “Americanisation” being weaponised by both the left and the right in France. Sandrine Rousseau uses the phrase “Americanisation of France” to criticise the increase in millionaires, whereas Jean-Claude Michéa criticises the obsession with identity politics as the “‘cultural Americanisation of the French Left’”.
“Compared to France, in the UK the poorest 10% have a smaller share of natoinal income and the richest 10% have a larger share on national income.” Why should this be a problem? People move up and down the income brackets throughout their lives. Very few people remain in the top or bottom deciles throughout their lives: people leave school with few qualifications and experience and so obviously they are in the lowest decile; you won’t, however, find many 40 year olds in the lowest decile; then in retirement, people move back down in the income brackets. There is no static group of “rich” or “poor” other than in the media. Why should income be equal if outputs are not?
An interestingly optimistic argument – not sure it fits in with the facts. Social mobility in this country has definitely declined due the increasing importance of wealth rather than income. What matters is whether you happen to have family wealth behind you. If you do then you’ll probably become a house owner if not you’ll probably join generation rent. Things are bad all over Europe in this respect but particularly bad in UK.
Wealth and income are separate matters. Yes you are correct about wealth disparity and that is almost entirely due to cheap money. However that does not preclude people from moving up and down the income brackets and this article specifically refers to income.
You raise an important point.
Why should it matter after all if there are rich and poor – as long as there is sufficient social mobility, ie the rich are there because of ability and what they have contributed through their businesses, work and creations and not due to birth. And as long as the poor get taken care of in terms of basic needs.
From that perspective, France is probably worse because it’s appears to be a more class based society than the UK, certainly the US. And the poor are left to rot in banlieus outside city centres.
So you think there are no black ghettoes or trailer parks in USA?
It is very enlightened of you to say “so long as the poor get taken care of in terms of basic needs”. But you need to quantify why you think that this is happening less in France than in the UK. The numbers do not stack up that way.
There may be black ghettoes in the US, but children in two parent black families end up doing as well as Whites, and immigrants from countries like India do far better than Whites.
And I explained why class rigidity is more so in France. There are no equivalent of banlieus in Britain, though overall regions might be relatively deprived.
We are all where we are as a result of birth. Fancy being born in 14th Century England, 21st Century Afghanistan? No thank you! Why should it matter if people are where they are due to their birth as long as the poor get taken care of in terms of basic needs?
“From that perspective, France is probably worse because it’s appears to be a more class based society than the UK”
that’s a good one !! The lower classes are heavily subsidised by the government……that is to say the middle class and the higher earners. This goes from fuel checks, back to school checks, etc ….the complete list fails me as it is a jungle that even makes it difficult for these people to claim these subsidies. Your claim is outrageously funny when one thinks about the House of Lords…… https://youtu.be/w-qh_cjKxaw?si=oVYK_RI49r26u6TX
No class system here :))))
I did not say it is a problem. I did say that there might be a trade-off between high levels of inequality and other societal goals. But of people are happy with the trade-off then there isn’t a problem.
Last edited 11 months ago by Peter Kwasi-Modo
P N
11 months ago
Scrape beneath the anti-capitalism and you will find anti-semitism. The two go hand-in-hand.
It seems the Bible’s teachings about coveting neighbours’ donkeys was lost on those using Catholicism as an excuse to tax the rich.
Capitalism is simply freedom. Some people just don’t like others having freedom, particularly if that freedom results in those others being more prosperous than them.
“Capitalism is not an ‘ism.’ It is closer to being the opposite of an ‘ism,’ because it is simply the freedom of ordinary people to make whatever economic transactions they can mutually agree to.” – Thomas Sowell
Wrong. Capitalism is borrowing huge piles of money, other people’s money, to fund a profit making business opportunity. Or, on the other side, lending these piles, with interest, to fund the profit making ambitions of others.
This guy Sowell’s definition is just a defense of indentured servitude, child labor and all sorts of crimes and coercions. “Sell your children. You can always make more!”
The problem with the child market is that the commodity depreciates in value very rapidly, and pretty soon you’re stuck with an adult and no child at all. And then you have to go buy another one! I mean, maximum, we’re talking 12, 13 years of productivity out of the child, which is ridiculously rapid planned obsolescence.
This guy Sowell?
Capitalism does not preclude someone from borrowing huge pile’s of money to fund a profit making business opportunity. Why should it? Why do you say, “other people’s money”? Do you not believe in the law of private property?
Thomas Sowell’s definition is widely accepted. How is “indentured servitude” a mutually agreeable transaction? Your comment is nonsense from start to finish.
“a defense of indentured servitude, child labor and all sorts of crimes and coercions.” Sounds more like a definition of the Soviet Union to me.
Profit-making, productive businesses create employment and tax revenue i.e. the foundation of a free economy. Or maybe you’re an academic and don’t dirty your hands with anything as demeaning as wealth creation?
He is most likely one of parasitic lefties who believes that Soviet Union and now China, Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela is better model.
However, he doesn’t move there from Capitalist West because he can criticise it freely while enjoying its freedoms.
There were and are millions of hypocrites like him.
The computer you are typing on, the software in that computer, the internet you are using to transmit your thoughts, the electricity powering your computer, all a product of capitalism.
Ah, for the good old days of the robber barons who mutually agreed with their workers that starvation wages were slightly better than outright starvation. Or monopolists like Rockefeller who mutually agreed with their competitors that competition was silly when a monopoly was so much more profitable — and who’s customers then mutually agreed with them that they’d pay whatever the monopoly demanded rather than go back to candles — or sit in the dark.
I tend to agree BUT our capitalism is rigged due to limited companies and the company structure enabling the haves to invest and never really face the consequences of failures etc. And also due to the power that Big Business has to get the regulations, investment and backing that it wants.
Getting rid of limited companies would much improve society.
The limited company is one of the most important and successful inventions in our history and a, if not the, reason the world is so wealthy today. I’m sorry, I don’t wish to be rude but what you write is complete nonsense. The biggest single driver of economic growth is people willing to take investment risk. The incentive is massively reduced if the investor could lose more than his or her initial investment. It would be ludicrous. If losing your investment isn’t facing the consequences of your failures then what is? It’s not rigging capitalism.
I agree with you about big business and regulations. That’s not capitalism; that’s corporatism.
I am sorry but claiming that anti-capitalism means anti-semitism is nonsense.
There were a lot of Jews in communist movement.
Pre ww2 Polish Communist Party was mostly Jewish.
Many senior party officials in Soviet Block were Jewish, many more than proportion of the population.
My aunt was Jewish but from the trade background, so not pro Communist at all.
Last edited 11 months ago by Andrew F
Tyler Durden
11 months ago
Parisians pay so many taxes that year upon year they find it within themselves retain their solidarity within the immediate impulse within the media to condemn reformers of the liberal persuasion (economically speaking).
In fact, most wouldn’t be (working) Parisians at all if they hadn’t seized upon a substantial pot of family money to pay for their unpaid media work placements and eventual centrally-located apartment.
The only recent innovation is the funding of rolling-news networks by foreign money which entails that several hours an evening is devoted to promoting the Ukraine war.
Kathleen Burnett
11 months ago
Another instance of a (western) country with no idea of what it stands for. European civilisation and its fruits, is what gave many parts of the world a decent standard of living. Can’t the nations of Europe come together and stand strongly behind a rational, scientific set of values (and please, not human rights, the ‘go to’ of the herd). Distinguish between rational values and primitive beliefs. Enact laws which promote the former and discriminate against the latter. Stand up for reason over superstition. I voted for brexit, but this is the sort of Europe I could get behind.
Germany was the most educated nation in the World yet two Nobel Prize winners in physics, one in literature, Martin Heidegger one of the top philosophers and Sengler the historian supported the Nazis as early as mid 1920s. “Philosophers and the birth of National Socialism” – meeting with Professor Stephen Hicks – YouTube
Sartre supported Mao in the late 1960s and GB Sshaw Stalin in the 1930s.
The 20th century has shown highly educated people have supported hose who commit mass murder.
I suggest a sense of fair play, humour, common sense and enjoy the rough and tumble of life are qualities far more likely to support civilisation.
Your figures about Germany are completely wrong.
They have well over 100 Noble Prize winners.
Yes many (or most?) Jewish and driving them out was great factor in Germany defeat in ww2.
Charles Hedges
11 months ago
By the mid 1550s, Protestant theology said if one worked hard and was honest, one would prosper so it attracted merchants and tradesmen , especially in Northern France and Germany. Roman Catholic theology said it did not matter if one was poor as one would get into heaven provided one went to mass. The Thirty years between Protestants and RCs developed further the divide in Europe; Protestant Industrial North and Catholic South.
Weber said the Industrial Revolution was due to Protestant work ethic.The swing from Jesuit Catholic to marxist is common in South America; Liberation Theology.There is the conflict between the individual who betters themself and collective, whether Roman Catholic or Communist, where the persons fate is controlled by the priest or apparatchick.
Most of this is true, but Bavaria is richest part of Germany and is Catholic.
J S
11 months ago
French skepticism toward wealth (and much else American, like censorship and social media) is a breath of fresh air for this American in Paris. And don’t tell, but French tax laws and benefits are nicer to the rich than American ones…
Christopher Barclay
11 months ago
Has France had bumper economic growth? No. So the increase in the number of millionaires is not due to economic development but the impoverishment of others.
The French hatred of America is because France is a nothing power like the UK and America has usurped the position of world power. And the French hate that! Add to that the French abuse of West Africans is now being exposed.
David Morley
11 months ago
Almost anywhere in the world, you would have confidently expected people to celebrate their country overtaking Japan, the UK and Germany, to clock more millionaires than everywhere else except the United States and China.
Really? I think this going to depend very much on the state of the country. If it’s a sign that everyone is getting richer then yes. But if things are getting worse for many people then it’s just a kick in the teeth.
I can’t honestly say I’d be opening a bottle of bubbly (cider, that is) to celebrate.
Last edited 11 months ago by David Morley
Samuel Ross
11 months ago
There is nothing wrong with money, as long as you give me some of it.
Dumetrius
11 months ago
I think these articles are written by people who never had sex in France.
I have disappointing news for you . . .
Right-Wing Hippie
11 months ago
France’s historic strength was its social model, withstanding all crises, and its level of inequalities, which is among the narrowest in the world’s rich countries
Such a sentiment is true, to the extent that it is true, only for the last 70 years or so. And let me tell you, if there’s one phrase I’ve associated with the France of the last 70 years, it’s “national greatness.”
George Venning
11 months ago
The French keep up fizzing fusillades against the rich and yet they have some of the lowest inequaility in the rich world (according to the article). They despise tax-dodgers andyet, the median income in France is almost £10k a year higher despite similar GDP/capita. The French tear the place up and set defenseless motorcars on fire if anyone so much as threatens their employment rights. And, to the enormous surprise of all concerned, they have much better employment protections than we do.
These coincidences sure are confusing and it stops them from learning the truth. If only they’d learn to tug their forelocks at the rich and accept a more flexible labour market they’d be doing much better.
Mike K
11 months ago
En paye de merde, episode 4578754
Jerry Carroll
11 months ago
Behind every great fortune there is a great crime. I believe this originated with the French.
Those poor rich people. What is the point of such rants? A more interesting one, at least, would the be the rich’s contempt for the poor. I wish we were anti-American here. USA out of Europe.
I agree. Trump was right on the money when he questioned the viability of NATO, 75 plus years after WW2. But look where that has gotten him. The powers that be will have none of it. There’s just too much money involved. No matter, it’s time for the USA to leave.
Tell this to Baltic States or Poland.
Russian invasion of Ukraine shows clearly where French and German “leadership” of Europe leads to.
Without USA most Europeans would be speaking Russian or German (assuming they would be alive).
It is wrong to say that the French (European) rich are Americanised.
Bernard Arnault made his money flogging long-established luxury brands to the Chinese. Nothing new has been produced. Most of the products in the LVMH portfolio were invented over 100 years ago. It is just a (very well executed) marketing operation.
Whereas America’s richest men (Musk, Bezos, Larry Ellison, Gates & Bullmer, Page & Brin, Zuckerberg) made their money inventing new things. The other one in the top 10, Warren Buffet made his from investing early in new products.
There is a world of difference between the continents.
It’s an attitude that stifles innovation. I mean, do the French even have a word for “entrepreneur”?
The French contributed the word entrepreneur to the world in much the same way that Britain gifted most of the world’s major sports: by inventing them and then letting everyone else show Britain how it’s supposed to be done.
So does the French Right get into Bastille Day? Are French Nationalists proud of Napoleon? Are French Leftists inspired by Robespierre? Does the Anti-Americanism extend to WW2 when Americans landed on the beaches and drove the Third Reich off French land?
“Americans landed on the beaches”
Is that you, John Wayne?
The Bud Light Socialist is never at a loss for words.
I sense that the French would have hated speaking German and consuming pumpernickel 70 years ago more than they detest the Americans today.
Really? Then where was the French resistance?
Do the French like anything that isn’t French?! Let’s face it, they are snobby to Americans and always have been. As far back as I can remember as a kid – 50 years ago – one often heard that the French had no use for Americans and that if you visited France they would look down their noses at you. When I finally went to Paris on my honeymoon we got the full treatment. On checking out of our hotel my husband finalized the bill proudly and fluently speaking the French he learned while studying as a child in Lausanne, Switzerland. The insouciant clerk smiled and chirped that my husband spoke like a “savoyard” – a ‘peasant’ to French ears. That said, in subsequent visits the insults have diminished, but I remain an Anglophile. God save the king!
Sorry Cathy, but totally ridiculous comment about French thinking Savoyards are peasants……relax a little bit and leave your biais resting at home should you wish to visit again……which doesn’t look like being the case.
This hotel clerk put his foot in it, probably thinking he was being nice I am sure he didn’t give a hoot. Just surprising to hear an American speaking with the Vaux Canton accent. You should be happy your husband didn’t study in Marseille, that would have been funny. I was once told I sounded like coming from some civilised part of Ireland ……and that was coming from a Brit. His biais ….not mine.
Don’t wish to be rude, but how long ago was your honeymoon ?
https://youtu.be/aORS_vYl434?si=ZyEgzJ5gfGrz5o7n
There is basic reason for fewer insults.
When I went skiing to France in 90s, they pretended not to speak English.
When you go to French ski resorts now they are happy to see you.
As countless French bar managers explained:
“We would be bankrupt without English and Dutch tourists.
French don’t even shop in local supermarkets. They buy their food and wine on the way to resorts and you are lucky if they buy coffee lunchtime”.
Obviously, there are rich French tourists who spend money in hotels and restaurants but not enough of them to sustain ski resorts.
Tbone, I fail to see your allusion to DDay !! If you’re asking wether a 30 year old French has gratitude for the ultimate sacrifice young American made then ? well, the answer is…..no. It is like asking if Americans have gratitude for La Fayette and the French troops sent by Louis XVI whose aim was to beat the English. I won’t be offended if the answer is no, knowing damn well that this part would be better forgotten. This is history. Saving private Ryan, at least the first 5 minutes will show younger generations what it was really all about. I have to say that the Battle of Britain is the decisive point. Without these 20 years old young men who proved to the US that Britain was able to hold and wage a war, there would have been no Normandy landing…….the Japs helped with Pearl Harbour.
Are French proud of Napoleon ? I am not, he was clearly a dictator, waged war throughout Europe, but had Louis XVI accepted a parliamentary monarchy and not tried to b****r off to assemble troops outside of France, Napoleon would have been at best, only a Corsican General.
Robespierre ? : My families lost a few members who were obligingly be headed during the terror. The irony is that one of them was siding with the ideas of the revolution, but in those days, a jealous neighbour eager to get your property, was enough to have you guillotined. The only politician fruitcake to love Robespierre and his legacy, is Jean Luc Melenchon….with him police would be disarmed, or even disbanded ……etc ….the litany of his stupidities would be to long to expose here.
Money ? : French detest money as long as they don’t have any. Once on top of the food chain, they love it and can make obscene displays of it.
Jean Jacques Arnaud turned a construction business, mainly building in holiday resorts into the mega luxury business it is today, allowing century old luxury good to survive and flourish, bring gazillions of eur in tax revenue and creating millions of jobs.
Anti Americanism ? : it is true that FDR detested de Gaulle. Personally, I do not like to put my fate into someone else’s hands. I am therefore happy that we have a totally independent strategic policy and Chirac and Dominique de Villepin were then right on the money to refuse to join in in Irak when this war was founded on lies……weapons of mass destruction…..that was a good one……French fries became freedom fries and french wine was drunk in tea cups like in good old times.
There are plenty of young entrepreneurs in France…..of course, they are not google or Apple, but they generate wealth that trickles down in taxes. As to the leftist press, I have to admit I neither read it nor listen to it. I just do what everybody should do, go about my business.
As soon as the French realized the Germans were gone for good, the ranks of The Resistance swelled astronomically.
Probably the likes of my mother and aunt who were arrested at the tender age of 22 and 23, sentenced to death then turned into a 2 years vacation in Bergen Belsen and Ravensbrück for innocent anti German activities, like painting anti Germans writings on walls and circulating pamphlets.
Sophie Scholl was less lucky and along with her brother was beheaded following a flash trial.
According to French, France was liberated by Resistance, Vichy never existed and Jews happily moved to German concentration camps.
Their idiotic hatred of USA drives French ideas like “strategic independence” or whatever it is called this week.
Like someone said “France is great country, much too good for the French”.
I’m a Francophile I find practically everything about France and the French fascinating. so thanks, as usual, to Anne-Elisabeth Moutet for this piece. Compared to France, in the UK the poorest 10% have a smaller share of natoinal income and the richest 10% have a larger share on national income. Less égalité mean less fraternité and a balance must be struck with the third element, liberté, of France’s secular trinity
It is interesting to see the term “Americanisation” being weaponised by both the left and the right in France. Sandrine Rousseau uses the phrase “Americanisation of France” to criticise the increase in millionaires, whereas Jean-Claude Michéa criticises the obsession with identity politics as the “‘cultural Americanisation of the French Left’”.
“Compared to France, in the UK the poorest 10% have a smaller share of natoinal income and the richest 10% have a larger share on national income.” Why should this be a problem? People move up and down the income brackets throughout their lives. Very few people remain in the top or bottom deciles throughout their lives: people leave school with few qualifications and experience and so obviously they are in the lowest decile; you won’t, however, find many 40 year olds in the lowest decile; then in retirement, people move back down in the income brackets. There is no static group of “rich” or “poor” other than in the media. Why should income be equal if outputs are not?
An interestingly optimistic argument – not sure it fits in with the facts. Social mobility in this country has definitely declined due the increasing importance of wealth rather than income. What matters is whether you happen to have family wealth behind you. If you do then you’ll probably become a house owner if not you’ll probably join generation rent. Things are bad all over Europe in this respect but particularly bad in UK.
Wealth and income are separate matters. Yes you are correct about wealth disparity and that is almost entirely due to cheap money. However that does not preclude people from moving up and down the income brackets and this article specifically refers to income.
You raise an important point.
Why should it matter after all if there are rich and poor – as long as there is sufficient social mobility, ie the rich are there because of ability and what they have contributed through their businesses, work and creations and not due to birth. And as long as the poor get taken care of in terms of basic needs.
From that perspective, France is probably worse because it’s appears to be a more class based society than the UK, certainly the US. And the poor are left to rot in banlieus outside city centres.
So you think there are no black ghettoes or trailer parks in USA?
It is very enlightened of you to say “so long as the poor get taken care of in terms of basic needs”. But you need to quantify why you think that this is happening less in France than in the UK. The numbers do not stack up that way.
There may be black ghettoes in the US, but children in two parent black families end up doing as well as Whites, and immigrants from countries like India do far better than Whites.
And I explained why class rigidity is more so in France. There are no equivalent of banlieus in Britain, though overall regions might be relatively deprived.
We are all where we are as a result of birth. Fancy being born in 14th Century England, 21st Century Afghanistan? No thank you! Why should it matter if people are where they are due to their birth as long as the poor get taken care of in terms of basic needs?
“From that perspective, France is probably worse because it’s appears to be a more class based society than the UK”
that’s a good one !! The lower classes are heavily subsidised by the government……that is to say the middle class and the higher earners. This goes from fuel checks, back to school checks, etc ….the complete list fails me as it is a jungle that even makes it difficult for these people to claim these subsidies. Your claim is outrageously funny when one thinks about the House of Lords……
https://youtu.be/w-qh_cjKxaw?si=oVYK_RI49r26u6TX
No class system here :))))
I did not say it is a problem. I did say that there might be a trade-off between high levels of inequality and other societal goals. But of people are happy with the trade-off then there isn’t a problem.
Scrape beneath the anti-capitalism and you will find anti-semitism. The two go hand-in-hand.
It seems the Bible’s teachings about coveting neighbours’ donkeys was lost on those using Catholicism as an excuse to tax the rich.
Capitalism is simply freedom. Some people just don’t like others having freedom, particularly if that freedom results in those others being more prosperous than them.
“Capitalism is not an ‘ism.’ It is closer to being the opposite of an ‘ism,’ because it is simply the freedom of ordinary people to make whatever economic transactions they can mutually agree to.” – Thomas Sowell
Wrong. Capitalism is borrowing huge piles of money, other people’s money, to fund a profit making business opportunity. Or, on the other side, lending these piles, with interest, to fund the profit making ambitions of others.
This guy Sowell’s definition is just a defense of indentured servitude, child labor and all sorts of crimes and coercions. “Sell your children. You can always make more!”
The problem with the child market is that the commodity depreciates in value very rapidly, and pretty soon you’re stuck with an adult and no child at all. And then you have to go buy another one! I mean, maximum, we’re talking 12, 13 years of productivity out of the child, which is ridiculously rapid planned obsolescence.
This guy Sowell?
Capitalism does not preclude someone from borrowing huge pile’s of money to fund a profit making business opportunity. Why should it? Why do you say, “other people’s money”? Do you not believe in the law of private property?
Thomas Sowell’s definition is widely accepted. How is “indentured servitude” a mutually agreeable transaction? Your comment is nonsense from start to finish.
“a defense of indentured servitude, child labor and all sorts of crimes and coercions.” Sounds more like a definition of the Soviet Union to me.
Profit-making, productive businesses create employment and tax revenue i.e. the foundation of a free economy. Or maybe you’re an academic and don’t dirty your hands with anything as demeaning as wealth creation?
He is most likely one of parasitic lefties who believes that Soviet Union and now China, Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela is better model.
However, he doesn’t move there from Capitalist West because he can criticise it freely while enjoying its freedoms.
There were and are millions of hypocrites like him.
The computer you are typing on, the software in that computer, the internet you are using to transmit your thoughts, the electricity powering your computer, all a product of capitalism.
Wow! How brilliant! You’ve mastered the straw man argument.
I can’t remember who said that antisemitism was the socialism of fools.
It sounds like something you would say
Thanks! And champagne is the Martinelli’s of wine!
Ah, for the good old days of the robber barons who mutually agreed with their workers that starvation wages were slightly better than outright starvation. Or monopolists like Rockefeller who mutually agreed with their competitors that competition was silly when a monopoly was so much more profitable — and who’s customers then mutually agreed with them that they’d pay whatever the monopoly demanded rather than go back to candles — or sit in the dark.
I tend to agree BUT our capitalism is rigged due to limited companies and the company structure enabling the haves to invest and never really face the consequences of failures etc. And also due to the power that Big Business has to get the regulations, investment and backing that it wants.
Getting rid of limited companies would much improve society.
The limited company is one of the most important and successful inventions in our history and a, if not the, reason the world is so wealthy today. I’m sorry, I don’t wish to be rude but what you write is complete nonsense. The biggest single driver of economic growth is people willing to take investment risk. The incentive is massively reduced if the investor could lose more than his or her initial investment. It would be ludicrous. If losing your investment isn’t facing the consequences of your failures then what is? It’s not rigging capitalism.
I agree with you about big business and regulations. That’s not capitalism; that’s corporatism.
I am sorry but claiming that anti-capitalism means anti-semitism is nonsense.
There were a lot of Jews in communist movement.
Pre ww2 Polish Communist Party was mostly Jewish.
Many senior party officials in Soviet Block were Jewish, many more than proportion of the population.
My aunt was Jewish but from the trade background, so not pro Communist at all.
Parisians pay so many taxes that year upon year they find it within themselves retain their solidarity within the immediate impulse within the media to condemn reformers of the liberal persuasion (economically speaking).
In fact, most wouldn’t be (working) Parisians at all if they hadn’t seized upon a substantial pot of family money to pay for their unpaid media work placements and eventual centrally-located apartment.
The only recent innovation is the funding of rolling-news networks by foreign money which entails that several hours an evening is devoted to promoting the Ukraine war.
Another instance of a (western) country with no idea of what it stands for. European civilisation and its fruits, is what gave many parts of the world a decent standard of living. Can’t the nations of Europe come together and stand strongly behind a rational, scientific set of values (and please, not human rights, the ‘go to’ of the herd). Distinguish between rational values and primitive beliefs. Enact laws which promote the former and discriminate against the latter. Stand up for reason over superstition. I voted for brexit, but this is the sort of Europe I could get behind.
Germany was the most educated nation in the World yet two Nobel Prize winners in physics, one in literature, Martin Heidegger one of the top philosophers and Sengler the historian supported the Nazis as early as mid 1920s.
“Philosophers and the birth of National Socialism” – meeting with Professor Stephen Hicks – YouTube
Sartre supported Mao in the late 1960s and GB Sshaw Stalin in the 1930s.
The 20th century has shown highly educated people have supported hose who commit mass murder.
I suggest a sense of fair play, humour, common sense and enjoy the rough and tumble of life are qualities far more likely to support civilisation.
Your figures about Germany are completely wrong.
They have well over 100 Noble Prize winners.
Yes many (or most?) Jewish and driving them out was great factor in Germany defeat in ww2.
By the mid 1550s, Protestant theology said if one worked hard and was honest, one would prosper so it attracted merchants and tradesmen , especially in Northern France and Germany. Roman Catholic theology said it did not matter if one was poor as one would get into heaven provided one went to mass. The Thirty years between Protestants and RCs developed further the divide in Europe; Protestant Industrial North and Catholic South.
Weber said the Industrial Revolution was due to Protestant work ethic.The swing from Jesuit Catholic to marxist is common in South America; Liberation Theology.There is the conflict between the individual who betters themself and collective, whether Roman Catholic or Communist, where the persons fate is controlled by the priest or apparatchick.
Most of this is true, but Bavaria is richest part of Germany and is Catholic.
French skepticism toward wealth (and much else American, like censorship and social media) is a breath of fresh air for this American in Paris. And don’t tell, but French tax laws and benefits are nicer to the rich than American ones…
Has France had bumper economic growth? No. So the increase in the number of millionaires is not due to economic development but the impoverishment of others.
The French hatred of America is because France is a nothing power like the UK and America has usurped the position of world power. And the French hate that! Add to that the French abuse of West Africans is now being exposed.
Really? I think this going to depend very much on the state of the country. If it’s a sign that everyone is getting richer then yes. But if things are getting worse for many people then it’s just a kick in the teeth.
I can’t honestly say I’d be opening a bottle of bubbly (cider, that is) to celebrate.
There is nothing wrong with money, as long as you give me some of it.
I think these articles are written by people who never had sex in France.
I have disappointing news for you . . .
France’s historic strength was its social model, withstanding all crises, and its level of inequalities, which is among the narrowest in the world’s rich countries
Such a sentiment is true, to the extent that it is true, only for the last 70 years or so. And let me tell you, if there’s one phrase I’ve associated with the France of the last 70 years, it’s “national greatness.”
The French keep up fizzing fusillades against the rich and yet they have some of the lowest inequaility in the rich world (according to the article). They despise tax-dodgers and yet, the median income in France is almost £10k a year higher despite similar GDP/capita. The French tear the place up and set defenseless motorcars on fire if anyone so much as threatens their employment rights. And, to the enormous surprise of all concerned, they have much better employment protections than we do.
These coincidences sure are confusing and it stops them from learning the truth. If only they’d learn to tug their forelocks at the rich and accept a more flexible labour market they’d be doing much better.
En paye de merde, episode 4578754
Behind every great fortune there is a great crime. I believe this originated with the French.
This NYT article puts the Chaban-Selmas dividend credit in a less innocent light than the author of this post: https://www.nytimes.com/1972/02/20/archives/a-premier-explains-or-at-any-rate-tries-france.html
Those poor rich people. What is the point of such rants? A more interesting one, at least, would the be the rich’s contempt for the poor. I wish we were anti-American here. USA out of Europe.
I agree. Trump was right on the money when he questioned the viability of NATO, 75 plus years after WW2. But look where that has gotten him. The powers that be will have none of it. There’s just too much money involved. No matter, it’s time for the USA to leave.
Tell this to Baltic States or Poland.
Russian invasion of Ukraine shows clearly where French and German “leadership” of Europe leads to.
Without USA most Europeans would be speaking Russian or German (assuming they would be alive).