Supprimer l’abattement de 10% pour frais professionnels pour les retraités est une excellente idée. Cette niche fiscale est injustifiée et vouloir s’y attaquer n’a absolument rien de saugrenue.

Idem pour la CSG des retraités qui devraient être remontée au même niveau que les actifs.

Americans marry early. And often.

Let me give you an overly simplified example. You are in a property market where rental yield is 3% (happens in some cities)

You could put a million dollar into buying a house and save $30k in rent every year

or

You could rent a million dollar house for $30k, and invest your million dollar in the market at 7%, returning $70k per year

Obviously this gets more complicated with mortgages, taxes, maintenance, interest rates, etc. but the gist of it is that owning your home always comes with an opportunity cost, every dollar of house equity is a dollar that isn’t invested somewhere else. Depending on circumstances, renting might be the most economical choice.

What you forget is the cost of opportunity: the money that is stuck in a house is money that would yield income if it was invested somewhere else. Long term stock markets typically return 7%+, while rental return (or the rent you save by buying) can be anywhere from 3 to 7% depending on market, minus maintenance and other holding costs.

So there’s no fast and hard guarantee that owning or renting is best - you need to run a proper simulation with the right parametres taking everything into account. In markets with low rental returns, renting is typically optimal.

Maintenance cost and property taxes too though.

What happened to the French speaking African countries?

if “someone is wrong on this Internet” is more important to you

If you think misinformation and propaganda is “someone being wrong on the internet” you are clearly a lost cause. Hope you enjoy the troll farms!

$5k per person is 30% cheaper than $10k”

Never wrote such a thing. Good strawman.

but when you were shown to be wrong about your 30%

You showed nothing. Both the US and Europe mostly rely on making the employer pay, though in Europe it’s typically mandatory and sent to a national system rather than the employer deciding by itself (or not) to pay for a private insurer for varying level of coverage. So there’s just no way the US employers pay 300% more for a system which is “only” 50% more costly.

(also co-pays are fairly standard everywhere in Europe, to avoid abuses)

So that’s my best guess at your motivation, but please correct me. Why?

My motivation is fighting misinformation. Just because the misinformation comes from the side you support doesn’t mean you should ignore it. In this case someone just made up shock numbers to get engagement and clicks, and that’s not how you support a sound health care policy.

US GDP is much higher than most (all?) European nations.

And as you accurately pointed out, US population is also higher, and have different costs of living. Which is why we compare countries in % of GDP and not in raw dollars spent nationwide, which would make no sense at all.

The US also has a massive population, which means a much larger insurance pool, which means the risk is spread out over a much larger swathe of people (and ethnicities, lifestyles, etc.).

Doesn’t make any difference when you go over a few million people (or possibly much less)

So I’m not going to say this pic is accurate, as I have no actual numbers on this

Well I do, and this pic is clearly bullshit.

Just because you like the message doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to point out obvious lies.

The point is that the USA relies primarily on employers paying for the insurance (through a pay cut) whereas in the EU it is generally subsidised with taxes.

This is a huge misconception. In the EU it’s also funded by the employers, the difference is that it’s usually mandatory (a tax taken out of the paycheck at the employer level) and also typically goes into a governement-run insurance system (ie the British NHS or the French sécu).

Ultimately it’s always people who pay for health care, because companies are just legal entities. The difference is how it’s organized and how much it cost.

It’s a meme, it’s not meant to be accurate

That’s what every boomer on FB propagating fake news about immigrants eating pets also say. Just because it’s a picture means outright lying is okay. (and if it was lying in the other political direction, you’d likely be the first calling bullshit)

Why you our here shilling for big business pal?

Ah yes because everyone who isn’t into lying is “shilling for big business”? Life must be simple in your head. Maybe some people think the truth matters more then coddling their feeling?

As usual with those sorts of memes, the numbers are completely wrong. European nations spend around 11-12% of GDP on healthcare vs about 17% for the US. So you’d likely pay significantly less (about 30% less) with a similar public healthcare system, but far more than this pic pretends.

Remember kids, don’t believe everything you see on the internet.

Looks about right. Those that I have seen on this list were mediocre at best, and a far cry from the quality of the previous movie(s) which would have been fine being left alone.

Macron is hell-bent on dismantling public service

This is a complete myth: France public spending has never been this high (yes, even adjusted for inflation). France has never had so many public employees. France’s health care spending has grown (fast) every year. Taxes have not significantly been dropped either.

Macron’s government has also passed many left-oriented bills: 1 € meals for poor student, free contraceptive and morning after pills, culture check for youth, increased paternity leave, alleviating the SNCF debt, coverage of listening and dental prosthesis, subsidies for increasing housing insulation or repairing clothes, higher taxation on polluting cars, the shutdown of the airport project in Nantes, surrogate mothers, etc. You are telling me none of this could be worked on further with the left?

People voting for the retirement age to be 60 will never agree with people saying it should be 70.

For one nobody is saying it should be 70, for two the 60 year age is being quietly dropped by the left. Everyone knows we ain’t going back to the 1981 age, given the demography.

But the centre and left can recognize there’s an obvious demographic and financial issue. And surely can find a compromise where people with long career and hard labor retire early, and those with office jobs and long studies can probably retire a bit later. In other countries like Germany, alliances ranging from far left to centre right can work on compromises and agree on a single program. It’s perfectly doable to find middle ground.

but you fail to realize how this confirms how bigoted

I think you fail to realize that in 1982, perspectives on LGBT issues were FAR FAR different than they are today. Huguette Bello, a communist which was proposed as a prime minister by the left, refused to support gay marriage, and that was in 2013 not 1982. But she is not a bigot and Barnier is?

Not much no. The far right strategy for the past few years has been to be quiet and appear moderate and dignified, so as to shed their image of fascist extremists. (and yes, that seems to work)

Any compromise with Macron is unfortunately impossible. There is no way a single measure of the NFP would have gotten adopted if they had bent the knee

Of course there are. There’s plenty of ideological overlap on public services, LGBT rights, the environment.

And, sure, the far right should never be an ally, but if the idiots are going to follow you, why tell them to fuck off?

Because when the situation was reversed and the far right voted along with Macron’s party, the left cried about a supposed “alliance with the fascists”.

voted against the decriminalization of homosexuality

This is outright misinformation. He voted against lowering the age of consent for gay sex with minors from 18 to 15 yo. And that was more than 40 years ago too. Homosexuality is legal in France since basically the French revolution back in the 18th century.

You’re so full of shit it’s not even funny.

Says the guy broadcasting fake news.

And, sure, the far right should never be an ally, but if the idiots are going to follow you, why tell them to fuck off?

In a time when avoiding a far right government should be his first concern, I strangely mostly read about him shooting against the left

That’s because the left has also been shooting mostly against his government as well, while ignoring the far right.

Macron can’t run for another term so he doesn’t really care about his future electoral chances.

26,000 people in Paris. That’s basically nothing, the NFP militants came out but there’s no popular support for the protest beyond that.

For the left to call itself “the winner” was a mistake: not only do they control 1/3 of the parlement only, but by refusing all compromise and branding Macron’s party “the enemy” they were guaranteed to never be able to gather more support for their bills. It’s so bad that they were seriously discussing passing some bill on pension reform with the help of the far right.

Except the US tax rate is much lower. Paying the sky high French taxes while getting zero in public services in return (unlike actual French tax residents) is basically robbery.

Also just because the US does it means it’s good.