Tuesday, July 21

French Income/Wealth Gap + Socialing Health Care Costs

When I stayed in France for a while, I knew a man who was 2nd-in-charge at a pretty large company.

I ate at his house a couple of times. He had a full-sized minivan, a lot of privacy in his neighborhood and a lot of landscaping / no lack of comfort in his house...
...but not marble everywhere, either.

At the time, I think back on him and wonder if he was one of the European executives who allegedly don't make much more than a few double-digits times bottom-of-the-company workers.

Did I possibly see a typical French "top 1%" person's house? It really wasn't that much different than my other friend's parents' house, which is probably a typical French "top 20%" person's house, and not too terribly much different from my other friend's parents' house, which might be a typical French "top 50%" person's house.

I mean, maybe he was only "top 20%" himself and I'm overestimating his income percentile.

But what if I really did see the life someone in the top 1%, and that's all he got as a member of the top 1%, with the rest of the portion of the country's GDP that he'd be allowed to take home in America going towards things like health care instead?

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