[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.

[digitalengineer]

"Asking for a little solidarity" is in my opinion not the point. You know, entrepreneurs are a resourceful bunch. Every society needs people that are willing to take risks. Hollande is acting like he's on an island. I can tell you right now his actions are causing reactions. Startups that won't happen in France/ Paris but in Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, London... All are just a few hours away.

By the way, you make it sound as if being selfish is a bad thing ;-)

[rguillebert]

Then what are they complaining about ? If you don't care about France, just leave

[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.

[raverbashing]

Well, before the student loan craze it was not difficult to find an affordable university in the US.

Certainly not Ivy League, but not bad.

E.g.: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2004-09-08-tui...

Today an Ivy League tuition year will set you back around 40k (possibly more) http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/...

[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

[mseebach]

OK. Not being fluent in French, and not knowing the vocabulary used in France, I can't evaluate these and find other sources. But, for one thing, however, the pie chart doesn't seem to include debt payments. Also, a proper comparison would include the regions.

[rguillebert]

The 12.7% is debt payment, regions are in charge of secondary education and transportation mainly