Comment by whoamii

The welfare state can not exist in world where the government is against population growth. You cant have a robust welfare state and make through policy and propaganda 4+ child families rare. We need an exponential curve of population to maintain it, especialy when its at european levels. Mass immigration of uneducated people from low income countries doesnt cover the gap, especially when the government extends welfare to them.

This is all a fact.

That is obviously not true. You don’t even define what a welfare state is or when a country stops being a welfare state.

> Which it can’t.

The welfare state for corporate interests is alive and well though, and costs much more.

(2025) "Corporate Welfare in the Federal Budget" -- https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/corporate-welfare-feder...

(2024) https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2024/07/16/100-years-of-risi...

> There is nothing to disagree about. With current demographics projection no amount of taxes can cover welfare states

Okay? Let's get rid of that much more expensive type of welfare then!

As if we have "real capitalism" - not even on a scale of local bakeries any more. Even the small businesses often are just a shop owned by a corporation. Not that I'm against some level of concentration, a lot of economic activity requires it. A lot of products are too expensive and require a certain scale to be viable at all.

What is the goal of economic activity anyway? For the few to live well, while the majority struggles? By "struggle" I don't mean that the majority already lives in the streets, to me it is enough that they have to be afraid. Of getting sick, of losing the job, of anything bad happening. I saw myself how a single unfortunate event could spiral out of control, and a guy making a lot of money in enterprise sales ended up alone, broken, and sick in the streets. I count all those having to fear such a development as part of the "losers", even if they are still making money and living in their house now. That fear, suppressed or not, should not be necessary, and it influences stress levels and decisions, consciously or not.

I mean, you are also right with your message, and I actually agree.

The flow of money around and away from too many people should not be happening. Being part of the economy should be easy for the majority, and real "welfare" should only be necessary for the sick and otherwise temporarily or fully disabled.

If a lot of normal people need welfare, something is not right.

But then you need an economy that provides those easy options to participate and get enough of a share.

You also need a system where an unfortunate event (or some) does not put you into an unescapable downward spiral, and provide a way back into the economy.

Unfortunately you (and of course the wikipedia page) misunderstood the OECD document [1], which says:

"In France, income tax and employer social security contributions combine to account for 82% of the total tax wedge, compared with 77% of the total OECD average tax wedge."

Note how it says "of the total tax wedge" not "of their salary.

The tax wedge itself is 47.2% in 2024 in France. This is indeed high by international standards but nowhere as high as you claimed.

[1] https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...

None of what you've just said can be verified by looking at any of the references you just posted. However having just read through that wikipedia page, I realised that there I'd be paying almost half the income tax I pay living in the UK.

So yeah, thanks I guess. Now I really really want to move to France.

82% tax wedge is not the same as taxes, or even the contribution of an individual.

Also nobody is talking about taxing income even more.

I do agree however with the sanity part, although I think of a whole different subset of people than you.

> The French state spends 57% of all French

That figure is pretty tired. In France, the pension scheme is counted as public spending. In neighbouring countries, the very similar, mandatory, pension schemes count as private.

The comparison makes little sense if you don't compare equivalent spending scopes, and equivalent service provided. If health care was to privatized, for instance, I'm pretty sure we would be worse off, but that number would go down.

> The average rate of social security and tax state contributions from French workers is now 82% of their salary

This figure, on the other hand, is straight up made-up bullshit. I dare you to find a salary that reaches 82% on URSSAF's salary simulator [1]. The OECD report quote is:

> In France, income tax and employer social security contributions combine to account for 82% of the total tax wedge

82% of the State's tax base are from income tax and social security contributions. That doesn't mean peopole are taxed 82% of their income.

[1]: https://mon-entreprise.urssaf.fr/simulateurs/salaire-brut-ne...

How did you arrive at 82% of salary being taken by taxes and social security? I read the Wikipedia article but I don’t how the numbers would add up to 82%.

Man, life must be easy when you can't read and just get to make things up online. Especially when things such as the URSSAF's simulation tool is like, freely available online: https://mon-entreprise.urssaf.fr/simulateurs/salaire-brut-ne... giving you a copy of a pay slip with detailed amounts of where your money goes.

Someone making 2500€ gross will take home 1885€ per month after taxes and contributions. On which you can add a 20% VAT. Even should you want to operate in incredibly bad faith and add employer contributions, it would only amount to 3175 in total. For fun, I tried to figure out what would be needed for someone to have 82% of their salary going away into taxes. It is physically impossible to go anywhere above 55%, the math just stops scaling. Even taking employer costs into account, the max will be 65%. This all starts happening when you have the lowly gross salary of about 30 000€/month, something that I'm sure you're being paid right now to complain about to much about it.

Hell, even the damn link you're posting shows that you can't read:

> In France, income tax and employer social security contributions combine to account for 82% of the total tax wedge, compared with 77% of the total OECD average tax wedge

What the fuck do you think tax brackets cover, ponies ? And acting offended about it like it's some unacceptable thing when the OECD average is... 5 percentage point lower ?

> 82% of the average gross salary in France is indeed taken by the state,

You literally can't read.

> In other words, in France the take-home pay of an average single worker, after tax and benefits, was 71.9% of their gross wage

> his means that an average married worker with two children in France had a take-home pay, after tax and family benefits, of 83.1% of their gross wage

Now, there are ways to solve these expenses, they involve cutting all pensions. I'm sure you'll be okay with letting your parents, and mine, die, right ?

Your wiki link contains only a single random reference to that number, and the page it links to justify it doesn’t exist.

[2] You include pension, healthcare and education in this number. What would be the equivalent number in, say, the US if you were to include all this?

> https:[...]?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Considering the number of replies here saying "source does not contain claim" / "that is a misinterpretation of what it says"... LLMs are still autocomplete functions. Exceptionally good ones, but they don't reason. And they kiss your boots unprompted. Beware of whatever opinions this thing is justifying to you

> "The average rate of social security and tax state contributions from French workers is now 82% of their salary"

This might be the most insane comment I've ever seen on this forum.

What in the hell are you talking about? Did you actually read that first link, completely fail to understand a single word of it, and then the number 82 just magically fell out of the sky?

47% total tax wedge is not 47% of gross wage anywhere except places with no payroll taxes / employer contributions.

You seems to mistake a corruption/grift problem for a wealth redistribution scheme issue.

They do not need to be linked, they generally aren't, in the EU at least.

No, more competition does obviously NOT solve oligarchies. It is what we see RIGHT NOW. It is OUT THERE NOW. Oligarchs buy up competition and either incorporate their ideas or make them disappear if they threaten their established business models.

Why are you keep repeating this myth?

The only relevant player who might break up oligarchies before they become to powerful is the state they operate in.