LONDON — A poll on the front page of left-leaning Le Monde newspaper shows that more than 70 percent of the French feel taxes are “excessive," and 80 percent believe the president’s economic policy is “misguided” and “inefficient” — a situation that has many ambitious French looking elsewhere to live and work, reports The Telegraph.
After decades of living in one of the most redistributive systems in western Europe, 54 percent of the French believe that taxes – of which there have been 84 new ones in the past two years, rising from 42 percent of GDP in 2009 to 46.3 per cent this year – now widen social inequalities instead of reducing them, The Telegraph reports.
By 2014, France’s public expenditure will overtake Denmark’s to become the world’s highest: 57 percent of GDP.
One out of four French university graduates wants to emigrate, “and this rises to 80 percent or 90 percent in the case of marketable degrees,” says economics professor Jacques Régniez, who teaches at both the Sorbonne and the University of New York in Prague. “In one of my finance seminars, every single French student intends to go abroad.”
“The French workforce is now two-speed,” explains a headhunter who shuttles between Paris and London. “Among the young, perhaps a third speak English, are willing to relocate, and want to work.
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