Just to remind people that what you read in papers about foreign countries is not always correct [View all]

[Mass]

(or even concerning events that happened in this country).

Yesterday, I saw this Newsweek article about France and how bad it is and I thought I was in the Twilight Zone. Sure, French bashing is something the media and American people love (just as French people and the French media love to bash the USA), but here, while the argument (the legitimacy of which is supposedly based on the fact that the person lives in France -- in a very ritzy part of Paris) is common to most Republican writers, reporters and politicians (as seen by the number of pols saying that Europe has unlimited unemployment insuracne??? Seriously? Not true, but who cares) this was just so full misstatements that it was unclear where the arguments came from.

Here is the article, for amusement purposes only.

http://www.newsweek.com/fall-france-225368

t’s a stretch, but what is happening today in France is being compared to the revocation of 1685. In that year, Louis XIV, the Sun King who built the Palace of Versailles, revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had protected French Protestants – the Huguenots. Trying to unite his kingdom by a common religion, the king closed churches and persecuted the Huguenots. As a result, nearly 700,000 of them fled France, seeking asylum in England, Sweden, Switzerland, South Africa and other countries.

The Huguenots, nearly a million strong before 1685, were thought of as the worker bees of France. They left without money, but took with them their many and various skills. They left France with a noticeable brain drain.

Since the arrival of Socialist President François Hollande in 2012, income tax and social security contributions in France have skyrocketed. The top tax rate is 75 percent, and a great many pay in excess of 70 percent.

What is more surprising is that Le Monde, arguably the equivalent of the New York Times in France, found necessary to answer, in an article called The Fall of Newsweek

Here is the link to the English translation - atrocious, but this will give you an idea

In contrast, M me di Giovanni - which bases its legitimacy on the fact of living in Paris - commits an incredible number of factual errors which remove much of the credibility of this indictment.

1 / "Since the election of François Hollande, in 2012, the income tax and social contributions peaked. The higher rate reached 75%, and a large number of people pay 70%."

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It is not known if the article here talking about income tax or social security contributions, obviously, it mixes the two. But to say that the "top tax rate" , the maximum tax threshold is 75% is wrong.

Beyond 500,000 annual, the marginal rate of income tax is 49%. As for the tax to 75%, it was censored by the Constitutional Council as supplementary tax bracket, and is now paid by companies.

Just remember that when you read papers on countries that are much more culturally different than France. What you read is not necessarily true.