The Civilization of Entitlements

Francesco M. Bongiovanni

Chapter Six in The Decline and Fall of Europe, 2012, pp 121-153 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Here are three typical stories. Adrian was a good employee, one with a future, doing a good job. Young, dynamic, mid-twenties, with good mental and physical health, apart from a nasty smoking habit and a bit of a paunch. There was nothing unusual when he walked into my office. His request, though, was as unusual as it was simple: ‘Boss, can you please fire me?’ Nonplussed, I asked whether there was any problem at work or with his colleagues. Not at all, he said. Finally, he spilled the beans: he had researched the way the system worked, checked with friends and found that if the company fired him, the government would pay him virtually 70 per cent of his current salary for a couple of years. Whether his figures were exact or not, he felt the unemployment stipend would enable him to enjoy a comfortable two-year holiday, at the end of which he would start looking for a job. Another employee had a similar request a couple of months later. These were surely not isolated cases: The Economist decried France’s rigid labour laws, saying ‘bosses believe some workers try to get fired in order to win generous tax-free redundancy’.1 In this system, long-serving employees have an incentive to get themselves fired.

Keywords: Welfare State; Public Debt; Pension System; Government Debt; Sovereign Debt (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-00906-7_7

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781137009067

DOI: 10.1057/9781137009067_7

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().