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

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 strongly suggest you get your facts correct.

Tech Crunch reports that a French startup has developed a cool new product while merrily collecting their 18-month unemployment checks. It is ironic that I actually get a peek into the pathetic rules that govern the French, while I was reading about …

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.

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.

“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?

@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)

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.

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.

What are five former Apple employees planning for Fotonauts? (something photography related but what?)…

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