I keep hearing from liberal friends about how great France’s healthcare system is, which got me thinking, I bet it seriously effects the economy. If their healthcare is that good, it has to cost a lot. Really what I’m looking for here is evidence that shows it failing.
I’m not going to help you with that. But you need to watch this, because it will improve your life.
If you speak french you can go over to the french forums. .fr is the tag. You can also ask the germans. .de for their websites. Learn a bit of german before you go there, then try and converse with them, once they figure out you aren’t a native speaker they will usually oblige you with english. Haven’t been there in awhile don’t remember their websites, but there are libertarian germans out there.
See Cato’s The Grass Is Not Always Greener, it includes criticism of France’s health care system. You also might be interested in the fact that France’s per capita GDP is far lower at $32,600 than the USA’s at $45,800.
When I lived in France, I was told that although the #1 sport in France is cycling (like the Tour de France), tax evasion is a very close #2 (lol!)
On the plus side, beer is cheaper than Coca-Cola almost everywhere.
Even in good times, the unemployment rate in France hovers around the 9-10% mark (similar in Germany). That’s a lot of dead-weight on an economy - about twice the U.S. average.
Further, minorities (especially blacks and arabs) can enjoy unemployment rates typically in the neighborhood of 20-25%.
Unemployment among recent university graduates is also very high (20% ish) because the costs associated with hiring/firing an employee are enormous.
There are panhandlers/beggars/bums (and they have zero shame) in every village, not just the big cities like Paris.
A pack of cigarettes costs like $9 USD.
A gallon of gasoline costs like $9 USD.
They don’t use shower curtains/shower doors and water goes everywhere in the bathroom.
They drive crappy cars, if they drive a car at all.
Their phone companies charges for incoming calls on land-lines.
Relatively few homes have air conditioning and practically none have central air (I was living very near the Mediterranean where summer temps range 90-100 degrees during the day).