Is France Serious???

WheelsRCool

As long as France continues to believe in socialism and that governmetn creates jobs, corporations are evil and destroy jobs, that economic growth is bad, that if you are a young person and get a job the business should not be allowed to fire you for the first few years even if you are a complete slacker, that ultra-high taxation is good, etc...France will continue to have a very lousy economy.

So will Germany.

I think pretty much the only thing most of Europe can even sell at a profit these days are cars, and that is likely going to change soon.

Anttech

At least you arent attempting to vale your bigotry.

Art

Which is a long winded way of saying oops you were right they didn't decrease taxes on multi-nationals they increased it.
Spending was reduced by EU mandate - deregulation of the Ireland-UK route came about through EU competition laws and I have already given the Irish gov't credit for it's investment in education.



This is mostly a crock of **** from a right wing rag.


Simple really when workers were no longer paying 72% of their wages in income tax and nat'l insurance they felt less inclined to emigrate and more inclined to work and add wealth at home. The article you quoted massively understates the contribution of the EU structural funds to Ireland's development. For example a key problem in attracting overseas companies to locate in Ireland was the abysmal transport system. The EU paid for roads to be constructed linking major cities such as Dublin and Cork with, for the first time, something better than a dirt track.
I imagine one reason why other countries which received structural funds haven't fared so well is because they are far larger and so the grants wouldn't make such an impact on their transport systems.

As for theft, to give just one example, on interest earned on illegal overseas accounts alone the rich evaded £1 billion in taxes during this time, which for the tiny economy in Ireland was a HUGE amount. BTW when this came to light instead of punishing them they were offered tax amnesties if they promised to be good in the future and as they weren't they were offered a second amnesty and then a third. So yes Ireland was far, far better off when most of the critical decision making was taken away from the criminals running the country and handed over to the EU.

And my point is France is not the basket case it is depicted as and that the problems they do have are more to do with their xenophobia than socialism as Ireland under it's commitment to the EU Social Charter provides very similar socialist programs as France does.

WheelsRCool

Actually it's called the truth. I don't get why stating facts about the European economies always gets criticized as bigotry. If you tax at ultra-high rates, have a lot of regulations over your businesses, pay for people not to work, etc...your economy is not going to fair very well.

Economist

As some one said in this thread earlier, "There is no free lunch."

Matthieu

medecines' cost is fixed by the government through negociations with laboratories. It's a deal, we buy hundred of thousands of your medicaments but you make us a good price. It's a fair deal since laboratories still make huge benefits from the social wealthare yet they would make more if they didn't have such constrait, the return being mostly (it's not totaly) free healthcare.

DrClapeyron

EDIT: Wrong Topic

Matthieu

In order to get full retirement in France you have to pay for your retreat 40 years long. In order to retire at 50 you would have had to start working at 10.

denverdoc

In my practice many have to buy meds from Canada--often costs them less than the co-pay here for a branded name with no generic equivalent in the US. Health care is never free--its just a matter of detail as to how it is subsidized. I know too many americans who have no recourse but to be ill. I help whom I can, but I need income as well.

Economist

Well, it may be more complicated than this. If the government gets a better price, this maybe due to the fact that the government would be a monopsony (a single buyer) in this case. Just to let you know, a monopsony acts much like a monopoly because they have a large degree of market power. In other words, the government may "underpay" for such medication. Now, I'm not asking you guys to feel sorry for pharmaceutical companies for being underpaid. But I am asking you to think about the unintended consequences of such policy, as it would likely decrease innovation in the medical field. My understanding is that the US produces a very disproportionate percentage of new medication in the world. This may be due to other countries restrictive policies in the medical field (such as intellectual property laws). Luckily for many other countries, they are allowed to "piggyback" of the US discoveries because they can then purchase medication from US pharmaceutical companies. Sometimes I wonder how good medical care would be if all developed countries innovated as much as the US?

ShawnD

Economist, you've clearly never worked for a private company if you believe selling to a single customer is bad. Companies willingly sell bulk product at huge discounts because it assures that the product will move faster. Right now I work for a pharmaceutical company that produces a cream for soaking drugs into skin, and our biggest customers are warehousing companies like McKesson, Kohl and Frisch, and Amerisource Bergen. Those 3 warehouse companies make up at least 95% of our sales. One product we sell to those warehouse companies is a cream that comes in 6-packs, which we sell to them for $48, which is $8/tube. We sell that exact same product on the internet for $20/tube. Even at less than half the price, the $8 tubes we sell to the warehouse companies make a hell of a lot more money than the $20 tubes since it's a different order of magnitude in terms of how many we sell.

That same thing applies to drug companies. Instead of selling to 10000 places in the US, they sell it to just 1 place in France - the government. Just put a different shipping label for different areas of France you're sending to, and all of the bills go to to the government of France. It's exactly the same as selling bulk cream to McKesson Logistics and letting them deal with each individual London Drugs, Shoppers Drug Mart, Walmart, etc.

Economist

Check out on the research and literature on monopsonies then.

denverdoc

What I found amusing and pathetic is that under the new Medicare Part D plan states have been relieved of any kind of monopsizing, which in the past has saved bucket loads of money--both to the state gov'ts and the consumers. More corporate welfare under Med D and bunches of Economists to defend the decision. That benefits took an overall hit, unnoticed except by those affected and those that service them.

Matthieu

Not really. It's medications made everywhere in the world that gets this discount. In other word the market is the same for French or American or British medications. French medications are exported and French laboratories get important incomes from the US too so our pharmacetical industry, one of the world's largest, does not suffer from this.

ShawnD

Easy. UHC in Canada and other countries. Doctors are all private but their only customer is the government. It's not perfect, but it would be a lie to say it's a disaster. How about all city work? The roads in my city are all built by private companies, paid with government funds. The US military is all private created stuff, paid for by government. Is the US military a piece of garbage? Is healthcare in France garbage? Are the roads in my city garbage? IMO, the answer to all three of those is no. The US military has excellent equipment, France has excellent healthcare, and my city has excellent roads.

Government contracts are significant, so companies compete like crazy to get them. Competition is the one thing that makes capitalism work.
Having things too spread out leads to gross inefficiencies and collusion. An HMO is arguably a form of collusion, and we all know how bad those are. Insurance, hospitals, doctors, and drug companies all banding together to be your one and only provider. If you're sick, you are only covered by an HMO hospital. That total lack of choice eliminates competition and it ends up hurting capitalism whereas people under UHC with cheap drugs have the freedom to go to whichever hospital is closest, whichever clinic is closest, get whichever prescription drug is cheapest.

Having the government fight on your side also helps the people who are unable to fight. Somebody with cancer or HIV is not in a position to say "oh well the price is unreasonable, so I won't buy this". We aren't talking about a computer or a TV where you can simply not buy it. We're talking about something you need to live. Prescription drugs are almost like a kind of extortion where the company says "pay up or die" and you're not strong enough to stand up and say no, because you will die if you do. It would be ridiculous to ask for free drugs, but it's not ridiculous to stand up and tell the companies they need to compete if they want your business. They can't just win by default because they're the only game in town and they have a complete monopoly on drugs (that's what a drug patent is), we need some way to keep them in check.