Daffersd

As I have stated I live in France, yesterday we had a family get together and I had my wife’s brother and oldest sister over with their respective other half’s.

The first question is when is a tax not a tax, when it is made to look like insurance?

The discussion went like this, that the schemes such a retirement and sickness etc. are insurance and not a tax, I pointed out that I had no option but to participate, he replied that car insurance is obligatory, but I replied it was my choice whether to have a car or not and I was forced to buy cover against causing injury to others, not for myself.

The French system has numerous mutual funds that take a slice of ones money, and cover retirement, health and sickness etc., they are obligatory and you can not opt out and they are paying for the costs now, not building the fund for the future, but are guaranteed by the state, its almost as amusing as Americans talking about social security ruining the European economies while out of control health and pension costs are killing GM and Ford.

So in my opinion they are a tax, while my socialist brother in law thinks they are an insurance, because you only pay for them if you work and of course you are only covered if you have paid into them, the complexity of who qualifies and how much you get is typical French. My point of view is that they are an insurance paid from tax, this is re-inforced by the application of CSG & CRDS applied to all of your revenue, not just salary, which are taxes designed to reduce the deficit in these funds, fat chance that...

The second question, you say you’re a socialist and core to socialism is the even distribution of wealth so why does 25% of your income come from working on the black and you call yourself a socialist? The answer was and I have some sympathy for this is that big companies and rich people have the system tied up so us middle class pick up all the tax costs. But I have never fiddled my tax, so redistribute my wealth while he does, put your money where your mouth is baby.

So where did this get me, well we sort of agreed that a flat tax system on revenue was the way forward. We all agreed that there was no difference between the political parties in France, all were fleecing the middle class.

Sister in law suggested that Ms Royal would bring a womans touch and change things, I asked her how did she know this when she refused to answer direct questions, her policies seem to be window dressing and the only politician who answered any question with a degree of honesty was Sarkozy. Anyway, she can vote and I can’t…

Well then we got into a key aspect, called work, it was funny but all three family groups had decided to forget about producing more wealth, the reason was that all did was feed the beast and have a lower quality of life, we would work enough to pay our own costs and that was it. I then made the crushing point that this is exactly what the politicians wanted as they could dish out pork to the grateful low spending power masses. Gallic shrugs all-round…

Anyway started at 12:30 and ended at 19:45, my cave looks quite empty of wine now...