I apologise to Alpheccar and my other French readers for nationalistic slur in the title but it was exactly what passed through my mind when I saw this poster on the RER in Paris last night.
I'm not quite clear whether it will be good for the USA to get inundated with Frenchmen via the green card lottery, but I don't see it as anything other than a negative for France. A commenter on one of my recent HP rants made the excellent point that the French have won a lot of Fields Medals in recent years (although I feel forced to point out that a certain fenland university won 2 out of 4 of those given in 1998) but I wonder how many of these mathematicians will remain in France. Far worse for France, I wonder how many wealth-creating entrepreneurs will remain, given the attitude of the French government (and media) towards successful businessmen.
On that note this morning the Hotel gave me a free Figaro which contained, in addtion to an interview with an incredibly smug P Mandelson, an interview with the boss of HP France who said - basically - that demands for him to repay state aid would be more effective if he had actually made use of any in the past.
Je ne peux que le répéter : HP n'a jamais bénéficié de subvention pour créer des emplois. Comme toute entreprise qui s'installe dans une ville, nous avons bénéficié de travaux d'aménagement de voiries et d'accès aux terrains sur lesquels le groupe a bâti. Je trouve légitime que le premier ministre rappelle qu'une entreprise qui aurait bénéficié de subventions liées à des créations d'emplois les rembourse si elle ne tient pas ses engagements. De mon côté, je ne peux pas rembourser quelque chose que je n'ai pas touché !
Apparently HP thought that its business should stand on its own two feet and not receive some sort of government subsidy other than the usual one of building roads etc. that one expects from a government back development project. Moreover, as he points out, HP has paid €700 Million in taxes during the last 10 years ...
Just to add insult to injury the Figaro also points out that the people who will be paying for the reforms to the French health service are "les entreprises" and/or their "salariés" because of an additional tax of 7.5% on their profit-sharing arrangements. So here you are a hypothetical M. Entrepreneur sitting in the RER on your way to your job in central Paris. You read the Figaro and discover that if you are successful in France the government refuses to let you lay people off and no matter what you get extra taxes on top of other taxes if you dare to make a profit. Then you look up and see this poster. C'est une grande tentation n'est ce pas?