[Fjslfj]

French entrepreneurs are upset because they can't get as rich in an exit as they would like, so they protest? And you want the rest of the country to support you in this? Okaaaaay.... This is the sort of greedy childishness that we could do without in the tech business world. If you're in it for hacking cool shit, you're not going to spend this much time thinking about your exit. This is similar to people protesting the tax rate on lottery winnings -- absurd.

Go back to work, stop whining.

[VSerge]

Greedy childiness? We sweat our asses off trying to build a business and overnight we're being told that in the rare case we do get an exit, it'll be taxed at 60% as opposed to 30%. How is that either greed or childiness? Do you even know what the live of a founder with little funding and no personal income can be like?

And of course we love what we do, but bills don't pay themselves. And maybe one day I want to have a family and a better income to support it, as opposed to not paying myself for over a year now (goodbye savings from 5 years of working before that), year during which I did pay my team btw.

We're not whining. We're fighting this.

[digitalengineer]

(Trolling here but) perhaps president Hollande can take an example from another famous president and claim " If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet".

[justincormack]

Or go to Belgium just next door where there is no capital gains tax on exits at all.

[mseebach]

Ah, so there's the taboo against wanting to be rich babarock was referring to. As a francophile european, I am grateful for your volunteering to be poor so my vacations will be cheaper. Keep up the good work!

[subsystem]

Not fixing the deficit is surly a superior way to "volunteering to be poor".

[mseebach]

It was mainly in reference to the attitude (how DARE you want to make money?). Step number one in creating growth is to stop casting suspicion on the ambition and successful - and France is not alone in being bad at this, most of "old" Europe is.

But anyway, thinking you can fix the deficit by doubling your already high capital gains taxation while your neighbor Belgium, which whom you have open borders and share a language, have a 0% rate is ... naive, at best. Same naivety covers the 75% income tax rate, which is attempted applied to the single most mobile class of people ever to walk this earth.

[digitalengineer]

Who do you think provides jobs and economic growth? Your government or new businesses?

[rguillebert]

On the other hand, who paid for the education of your employees ? Who pays when they go to a hospital ? Who built the roads they use to get to work ? Who is going to give them money when they get old ? Who pays the policemen who protect your office from robberies...

[digitalengineer]

I see you. You think government paid for all those things. Let me correct your view: You and I pay for all those things (through government which takes it's own cut out of everything).

[rguillebert]

yes, and if you pay less taxes, then it won't be able to pay for it, and if a government can't pay education, then there's less employees competent enough for your start-up. Same goes for a lot of thing the government pays. And government is the only one who is (realistically) able to pay for it.

[digitalengineer]

We're not talking about paying less taxes. We're talking about the more and more taxes to pay for a government that is -in essence- broke. Hollande basically promised everybody everything and is now facing reality. Like they say: "You can deny reality, but you can not deny the consequences of denying reality".

[rguillebert]

Let's face it, there's not an infinite number of unnecessary spending, at some point you have to be close to a balanced budget and even though I think taxing entrepreneurs too much is a bad idea, they aren't starving and I think asking for a little solidarity isn't too much to ask.

You probably don't want to pay for "those lazy public sector employees" (and if you do, forget this sentence) but it's just a front for selfishness.

[raverbashing]

Funny, the US should be the worse place for startups then since the government doesn't pay for people to go to universities there.

[mempko]

Notice many people working at tech startup in silicon valley are either A) Rich already and went to Ivy League or could afford a good university education, or 2) Foreigners who got their education elsewhere.

[rguillebert]

They still pay until high school.

[mseebach]

When you get a chance, go find a copy of your national budget and find out how much of it goes towards education, health and infrastructure. Then stop using that argument.

[rguillebert]

http://voila-le-travail.data-projet.com/budget2012 in proportion, I think the budget is fine, more than 1/4th goes to education (if you include universities)

[mseebach]

Wow, that's a great visualisation!

Total: 676,625 millions (hover on the top bar, I can tell what the 366 bln in the headline refers to?).

Schools: 62,330 mln = 9.21%

Higher ed+research: 25,439 mln = 3.76%

Transport: 4,307 mln = 0.64%

Health: 1,379 mln = 0.2%

For a grand total of 13.81%. I'm not sure how you get to 1/4 going to education?

[rguillebert]

There's an error with the 676,625 millions I think, the correct total is 366,000 millions

If you look at this one from 2011 : http://www.performance-publique.budget.gouv.fr/fileadmin/med...

you can see that 23.6% went to education in 2011

[l0nk]

I agree.

Please stop whining :)