An example of Socialism actually fostering innovation?

I think it’s called “working the system.”

WOW! I’m moving to France, anyone wanna hire me and then sack me in France?

I think the paragraph about the getting 80% pay for up to 18 months really a distraction, this post could had been titled: “Learn some french and move to Paris” or something like that. Let’s see, none comment abt Fotonauts so far

…and people wonder why the unemployment rate in France is high…

…there is little incentive to look for work and contribute to society.

The bad thing is, there are people in the US that don’t see a problem with this.

Maybe you should wait until at least there is a more than a logo on a page before profiling a company?

“Somebody somewhere is going to create a website” hmmmm - it used to be a lot harder to get an article on this site.

So if the government is footing the tab, could you “hire” a buddy of yours for $1,000,000/year then lay them off immediately? I’m sure there must be rules to try to avoid this sort of fraud, but I’m just as sure there are people who have figured ways around these rules.

umm…. it’s not really stealth anymore if you write about it.. huh?

The french government doesn’t pay. It’s the french citizens, paying taxes, that pay (same idea with health cover and education system actually…).

The indemnity amount is 80% of the reference salary but can’t be more than 250% of the “minimum social income” (smic, about 10€/h), so in other words, the maximum you will get will be 25€/h for the 6 first months and then 20€/h.

And yes, there is rules (you don’t get your indemnities if you’re fired for fault for instance, and to keep getting your indemnities you have to prove that you’re truly looking for a new job (if there is a job available for your profile, you better find a good reason to refuse it otherwise you get kicked off of the system).

More informations (in french):
http://www.adem.public.lu/dema.....larie.html
http://www.adem.public.lu/dema.....larie.html

Anyway, I’m curious to see what fotonauts come up with

And my bet is that if this story comes up to the hears of the french IRS (a.k.a “Le Fisc”), fotonauts will have a difficult time filling paperwork…

Wow! With Keith on board they are going to kill it!

“Hullot returned to Apple when it acquired NeXT in late 2006 for $400 million”

Didn’t that happen in 1996????

“Keith Teare, who formerly co-founded Edgeio with me, has recently joined the Fotonauts team.”

Now, there is a telling little tea-Leaf that forebodes the Ides of March..

There is nothing like hiring J.P. Donleavey’s alter ego to to run a tech company through the cheese grater.

I think under the french law, you get to collect unemployment benefits based on previous pay (like in many other countries), that much is true.

But having the engineers work for the company with government paying unemployment benefits is not ‘working the system’, it sounds a lot more like they may have a legal liability in front of them.

Just want to give a shout-out to the new, new widget, making its grand appearance in this post. Notice the ‘minimize’ button at the top-right. Plus, it’s way faster. So hats off to you, new widget. You’ve made us so proud.

@5. You seriously telling me that you wish you didnt get paid 80% of your salary to support your kids, family and morgage while you were looking for another job?

Oh, I get it. Everyone who looses their house because they cant find another job in 3 months is lazy.

“But under French law, laid off workers can receive 80% pay for up to 18 months after losing their jobs, directly from the government.”

That statement is true *if and only if* you don’t find another job. You’ll collect unemployment as long as you are unemployed (provided it’s not for more than 18 months), like in any other country. When you find another job you stop getting money from the government.

I doubt that Mr. Hullot had his 5 engineers work while officially being unemployed, that’d be an incredibly stupid thing to do for a startup.

ahhh..the French..35hr work wks, 2hr lunches, 6wk vacations, 18mos reward for getting fired…superpowere aspirations..

That fotonauts.com html page as it is now renders quite differently in Firefox and IE’s… leads people to wonder how good their upcoming products are, if they’re meant to be photo-manipulations-centric…

@16

I think a year and a half is a bit excessive. It is no wonder they had 10 percent unemployment rates in 05-06.

Only 41% of French adults work, one of the lowest labor participation rates in the world. Of those that do work, a US citizen will work 30% more hours in their lifetime.

Government spending in France is 54% of GDP. 25% of French citizens are employed by the government.

…about half of the French electorate is dependent on the state for wages, benefits or pensions…

For someone with a corporate job, it could take over one hundred days to fire them because of regulations. Naturally, most business will only hire if absolutely necessary…not exactly greasing the wheels for a robust economy.

Their social policies keep economic growth from occurring. This is why the US has outgrown Europe, economically, for 13 of the last 14 years.

The safety nets here in America are more than appropriate. If you like big government…I hear France is nice in the Summer. I also hear Alec Baldwin has an extra airline ticket…the one he didn’t use after promising to move to France when GWB was elected a second time.

@18: only a one-liner cliché? You can make better, I’m pretty sure.
35hrs/week aren’t for start-ups and hardly for executives, neither 2hr lunches, 6 (it’s 5 btw) weeks of vacations or 18mos of taxes going back to you when you need them … Oh you forgot to mention related top productivity and good education of french workers and also forgot to bash scandinavian countries where life is much better for unemployed imho.

@Pierre: it could be Accre, but it’s 12mo long so maybe Eden? (unemployed willing to create a startup or whatever or buy an existing society can be funded by ‘Accre/Acre’, replacing their wages. The ROI is quite good economically, considering the unemployed creates his own employment and could begin to recruit others and is politically excellent: it’s not counted in unemployment statistics for a while even if the person doesn’t succeed so politics are happy … /sarcasm)

@20: “Only 41% of French adults work”> don’t know, but do you take into account our (I’m french) extra longevity? That makes a lot of french adults not working, for sure. In other news, they worked for 37-40 years before retirement and paid taxes for that, and we chose healthy lifestyle and “good healthcare even for elders” over “not so meaningful statistics”, sorry.

“25% of French citizens are employed by the government.”> maybe, but that statistics doens’t take into account any details. Education and health system (hospitals and nursing homes mainly) is mainly public in France, at least half of it and it belongs to private sector in many other countries. Does it change anything to the qualification of the nurses? No. Does that mean we have too many ‘fonctionnaires’ (public sector)? Hardly, public or private it’s the same service for citizens. Countries don’t have the same definition of what ‘public sector’ is, so statistics made of it is quite useless.

If you want to bash french economy, please do a little research. RMI (Revenu Minimum d’Insertion) and its (in)efficiency would be a great start I hint. Or you could look in US to sooo efficient Amtrak, homeless and healthcare system and not-so-capitalist economic aids to Boeing and others and draw the conclusion that each country has its problems, that it’s hard to figure how other countries manage theirs if you don’t adapt to their ‘culture’ (in a broad sense) or way of thinking and that YMMV … Not as fun as a little bash I guess.

Now, what about Apple bashing?

I live in France and work in IT consultancy. I was fired last August. As an employee of a French based software company and under a French contract I received around 2.5 - 3 years salary (most of the payment tax free)

Then I have my state benefits which are as the article suggests; 80% of salary paid tax free.

However as I received a decent pay off I am not entitled to receive the money until May. But I do accrue money until May. In the meantime I found a new job and start in a couple of weeks.

So the end result was 2.5 years salary, 6 months worth of state payments starting in May and a salary starting in March.

Getting fired in France was the most financially rewarding thing that has ever happened to me.

However the folks at Fotonauts are walking a fine line here. Whilst its true to say that a fired layed off employee gets 80% of his salary the individual must report their status every month and confirm that (a) He has not worked in the last month (b) He has been looking for a job in the last month (c) He is available for employment etc.

I imagine the folks at Fotonauts have been working on this project an receiving state benefits at the same time?

So Michael you say they are ‘working the system’ which is correct but technically they may be breaking the law and committing fraud and obtaining state money illegally.

22 You’re totally right on our problems, and part of our sentiment comes from the fact that most of those problems come from government intervention. Amtrak is an absolute abortion of a system, made more disgusting by the fact that it rides the rails produced by privately funded industry originally, by kickass people like James Hill.

As for ‘good healthcare for the elderly’, that’s debatable, and that heatwave a couple years back didn’t exactly show it in the best light– how many did they lose in Paris?

On Fotonauts– that’s not even news. That’s just a badly resized, highly jaggied logo. I do not have high hopes for an online image company whose first step is resizing a PNG from 1397 to 600 pixels within HTML. They’d be better off ‘invisible’ than ’stealth’ so far.

I strongly suggest you read French law before you make ludicrous statements about fraud and illegal activities. It’s not John Smith taxpayer who is paying for these people, it’s their former employer. And the Assedics explicitly help people in the process of creating their business as long as they don’t pay themselves.

Let’s hope they come up with something better than iPhoto.

Is this going to be like SnagIt cload app or what? And the money comes form..? Oh yes, I forgot, the French government.

@steve - in summary if they are building a business that’s great but they are not entitled to the state benefits if this is the case. And Steve, no, the previous employer does not pay the benefits, the state does and thus the tax payer. Thats one of the many reasons why we in France have such high taxes.

I strongly suggest you get your facts correct.

I am in French too. Please note that creating a company using this benefits is prefectly legal. You can both find a new job, or create your own job / company ,and being helped by the Assedic (French state). And I think that’s probably a good thing as by helping this, govermnet create new jobs, and reduce unemployment, which is probably much better than keeping people wating for a job.

But what I do not understand, is the fact that this article include this remark outside of the context. Is it just to generate some flames?

I’ll take some Freedom Fries with that…

@InFrance: I have trouble believing you are French or live in France. Since 1998, it’s the Assédic which both collects the unemployment insurance tax and sends the unemployment paychecks. And guess what? The Assédic is a private organism. The state does not pay anything. Seriously, dude, get your facts straight.

@InFrance, @Steve:

Steve, I support your position.
The former employer pays a “tax” or “fine” for firing the employee; that is why so many companies in France are afraid of taking on new employees.
It is also true that the unemployment system (the “government”, if you like - I prefer saying the Social System, as today’s government would love to get rid of this) will help you if you set up a new business :
1) you may get your unemployment paid for for 18 months, because everyone knows that when you set up a new business, there is never enough cash in there, at the beginning, to pay yourself an income
2) If you are slightly richer, you can, instead, choose a second option which will cover you for the first 3 years in case of failure of your new business. This is interesting because, in France, when you start a new business, your personal status changes : you are no longer salaried, and thus are not covered by unemployment insurance. If your new business goes down the drain, you go with it.
This option does not provide any income, but the assurance of being able to come back to unemployent income after a possible failure.

I used the first option to set up my business 3 years ago in France, and could not have done it without this help.
I am now happy to pay my taxes to help others take the jump.

Cheers,
Rup

wow what a way to earn money. Learn french, work in france and ask to be laid off