For anyone who has reached the free article limit for NYTimes, while the article is loading just cancel loading in your browser (this works for me in mobile). The limit popup won't appear and you'll be able to read the article.
i submit that if you transmit data to me, i have a right to observe it. the immoral thing is to expend my bandwidth, cpu and memory with data and content you're obscuring.
Or just thank the newspaper for the former free stuff and stop loading the web this time as they politely ask you; as a sign of respect towards the journalist.
Serious question: does anyone know where to get some good in-depth data which deal with the middle class's fortunes in Europe, and possibly some interpretations?
Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century is an empirical analysis of wealth distribution in capitalist countries over the long term, as well as a discussion of possible causes and consequences. It's very good.
There are only 18,000 people in this town. To hit his goal of 60 diners a day would require the average person in town to visit more than once a year. How many middle class people are going to spend $130 on an entree on an average Tuesday night? I've never spent that much on a meal and my income is too high to be considered middle class in the US.
You need to count tourists, especially those specifically looking to tour Michelin star restaurants. There's the reason a tyre company is publishing a food guide in the first place.
Almost all middle class families can afford a $130 meal once or twice a year. It's really just about what else they're giving up. Think about how many "middle class" families own Harley motorcycles - and those things are inflated money sinks, similar to a boat, ATV+trailer, RV, lifted truck, or dirtbag travel habit. Most "middle class" families can afford one toy. On that scale, $130 even once a month is quite affordable.
Do they have kid menus? $130 for 4 people would be $520. That's insane.
That's the monthly rent for a many bedroom flat in France (outside of major cities). The after tax income is twice or three times that number. Don't expect a middle class family to eat there.
I don't have kids (although I might be insane), but apparently there's a thing called a "baby-sitter" you can deploy in situations like this and for considerably less than $130 per child.
$520 for a group of 4 at a high-end restaurant isn't insane. It's actually fairly reasonable, especially if you throw a bottle of wine or two into the mix.
For upper-middle class people that value high-end dining experiences, $130/person for a meal a few times a year isn't particularly unusual (in the USA, at least). Such people are easy to find if you join a local foodie/dining interest group.
I'm aware. I think my comment made it clear that I was speaking to the middle-class experience in the USA.
That said, $130 USD or €110 /person still isn't unreasonable for a truly good restaurant in France. It might be above what the 'middle class' is generally willing to spend, but you can practically throw a rock in France and hit a restaurant that charges these kind of prices. And people (including myself) go out of their way to travel to France to indulge in dining experiences at these sorts of places.
I've been to a few one-star restaurants, they have kid menus though they of course aren't quite a bargain. We spent just short of 200 euros for four, with only a glass of wine for each adult.
I grew up in a decidedly lower-class family (at least as concerns income) and my parents would have been able to afford $130 a year. Of course the kind of financial discipline that lets you save money while on unemployment benefits/working a low-income job makes it quite unlikely to spend it all on a single meal.
I'm fairly certain that a middle-class family would be able to afford a $130 meal if they really wanted, it's just that they don't feel like they are getting more enjoyment than 4 $30 meals would provide, and that's OK. Don't pretend that middle-class people have no money to spend, when in reality they just have none left over after spending it on all kinds of things.
> Almost all middle class families can afford a $130 meal once or twice a year.
It might be different in other countries I guess, but I live in France and Belgium, and nobody I know around here (family, friends, spanning from lower to upper middle class) would even consider eating at a restaurant with that kind of prices.
Nobody I know owns Harley motorcycles either, anyway, but it doesn't seem very relevant.
There's a difference between a family that wouldn't consider spending $130 each on a meal for two because they'd rather spend that money on a weekend break for two or a meal for five and a family that couldn't afford to spend $260 on a leisure pursuit though
How many people do you know who smoke? A lot of middle and lower-class people smoke.
Some searching reveals that the smoking rate is north of 25% in both France and Belgium, and a pack of cigarettes in France is 7 EUR, let's round that down to 5.
So for a 110 EUR (~$130) meal we're talking about the equivalent of 26 days of 1 pack a day smoking, or just under 2 weeks of 2 pack a day.
Which I believe eloquently makes the point that you're out of touch with just how much $130 of disposable income over a year is.
We're talking about saving 30 cents/day, hardly out of reach of even the poorest of people who'd like to treat themselves to something like an expensive restaurant on a yearly basis.
> you're out of touch with just how much $130 of disposable income over a year is.
I'm not actually saying it's much or it's out of reach. I'm saying few people are willing to spend that at a restaurant, not because they're poor (I'm talking about doctors, for example) but mostly because there are so many cheaper and very good restaurants that those expensive ones look like they are just meant for other occasions or other people. The aforementionned doctors sometimes get invited there by pharmaceutical compagnies trying to sell them things, for example.
Around my homeplace I know quite a few restaurants with Michelin stars (two-star Coutanceau in La Rochelle for example, from where I came back just this week) and honestly most often the people there seem to be foreign tourists.
The context of this thread is whether dropping $130 at a restaurant is a "middle-class hobby", you were replying to a comment saying that was perfectly reasonable for someone of even limited means.
I'm not defending spending $130 at a restaurant, I can afford it and I don't, I think it's a dumb waste of money, but I think the same of a lot of other people's hobbies. Whether those hobbies are affordable to them if they're in the middle class is another question, and clearly dropping $130 at a restaurant every once in a while is.
I think one of the points that is worth making, is that middle class is not what it used to be. It should be OK to consider a $130 meal if you are middle class. The economy has been booming (for the rich). But the middle class is no more...
This comes entirely down to how you define "middle class" and IMHO it's far too broad of a group to make sweeping statements on what they can and cannot afford. A family with 50k income total might be considered middle class and I doubt they would feel they could afford a $130 per person meal even once a year. A family with 200k income on the other hand might be just as you described. Both could easily consider themselves (or be considered by others) to be "middle class"
The number you are looking for is household discretionary income -- the money left over after taxes, housing, utilities, food, transportation, and other necessities are paid for. It is the money available for saving or spending on luxuries.
The US average discretionary income per household: ~$21,000. That leaves plenty of room for a few $130/head meals. Despite income stagnation, the US middle class still has amazing amounts of discretionary income compared to the rest of the industrialized world.
Couple of points: (1) median would be more insightful in this context than average and (2) neither do a great job of describing a range of situations like the term "middle class" does. Your point could be changed to "a family with average discretionary income could afford a few $130 per plate meals", but again my point is it's difficult to sweep that across a term that is increasingly describing a very broad range of financial situations.
What the middle class is certainly has changed over time. I grew up middle class and there is no way in hell we'd ever go for a meal that was more than $100 per person.
Why wouldn't it be? I love eating out at nice restaurants and traveling. Maybe the issue is the middle class doesn't have as much disposable money as it used to.
For folks who live in the general area but not necessarily that particular town, I imagine it easily could be. For folks who have to fly across the world and take significant time off from work, probably much less so.
1 Michelin star: "A very good restaurant in its category"
2 Michelin stars: "Excellent cooking, worth a detour"
3 Michelin stars: "Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey"
But OP is abour one-star restaurant, which means it is only recommended for people who are already in the neighborhood or passing by.
It’s actually the reason Michelin ( which is a tyre brand) invented this guide in the first place : to incite people with cars to hit the road and visit good restaurants outside their town.
> I think most middle class people go out to nice dinners a few times a year for anniversaries and birthdays.
I grew up "upper middle class" in the USA. We went out to nice dinners on anniversaries and birthdays - meaning $30 entrees and $5 desert, not $130 entrees. A $130 meal is a once in a lifetime type celebration (e.g. 50th wedding anniversary, making partner in a company you've worked for for a decade), not a few times a year. At least for my family.
> And don't get me started on trying to define how American definitions of class have evolved in the last fifty years...
Yeah I don't understand what Americans mean by middle class... in the UK middle class means educated, successful, with a respected profession and more sophisticated cultural tastes. A doctor or lawyer who owns their own home and takes a couple of foreign holidays a year with children in private school would be a classic example of the UK middle class.
Middle class in America seems to basically mean poor? The phrase doesn't seem to translate at all.
All Americans like to imagine themselves "Middle Class" and woe betide the politician that says otherwise. The doctor making 250k per year, and the workman making 25k. Its the American love of egalitarianism and pretense of no classism.
British middle class is... nuanced. The examples you have are certainly middle class, but then so is the primary school teacher on £25k a year. Private schooling only covers 8%ish of children, but about half the country consider themselves middle class.
> Middle class in America seems to basically mean poor?
Middle class has a slightly vague economic definition in the US. The US also commonly uses variations such as upper and lower middle class, and then there is poor, upper class, and rich. Middle class does not basically mean poor. The US middle class has an extraordinary income compared to the middle class of all but a few nations:
It means your household income is typically between $40,000 to $100,000; above that and you're either upper middle class, or upper class; below that and you're either poor or lower middle class depending. For example, two people working median full-time jobs in the US will earn nearly $100,000. The median household income in the US is about $60,000.
To help the foreigners, generally in the USA getting most of your lifetime income from the government welfare means lower class, from a job means middle class, and from investments means upper class.
There are of course numerous lifestyle choices and plenty of classes copying other classes behavior often without even understanding the reason why. Our economic system is set up to keep the classes separate to the point of nearly being unable to communicate with each other. It is almost like three separate cultures that happen to coexist in the same space, mostly. Tomorrow I'm paying estimated quarterlies, which is a phrase that won't even make sense to people not in the upper class, whereas in comparison our mass media pop music is solely lower class to the point that you need an urban dictionary website to make any sense out of "our" music if you're not poor.
I'm 25. I make about $150k. My father would never tell me how much money he makes ("it's rude to talk about money") but he probably makes at least double what I make. My mother doesn't work.
In the OP, $130 is for a full Prix Fixe meal on New YEars Eve.
> $130 meal is a once in a lifetime type celebration (e.g. 50th wedding anniversary,
Most "traditional" weddings (like you see in TV shows) cost $130 per guest for meal and alcohol. Many people attend many of these in a lifetime.
> making partner in a company you've worked for for a decade
People in that situation would tend to do a $130 email to celebrate their annual bonus, not just the one time they get up to the $500k+/yr income band.
> > $130 meal is a once in a lifetime type celebration (e.g. 50th wedding anniversary,
> Most "traditional" weddings (like you see in TV shows) cost $130 per guest for meal and alcohol. Many people attend many of these in a lifetime.
Right, but the host pays for it all. Your children getting married is a "once in a lifetime event" like a 50 year anniversary or a major career promotion.
Definitely doesn't sound "upper middle class" to me.
According to Wikipedia, an "upper middle class" household has about U$ 120.000 in income - that means that splurging on a Michelin meal for 4 would be 4% of the monthly budget - definitely doable for a birthday or anniversary if you want to. Many people spend that much or more on a gift.
We didn't want to. And when the economy crashed in 2009, I saw my neighbors whose parents made more money than us sell their homes and move to cheaper neighborhoods and my parents used their savings to make it through comfortably.
Lots of people in the US with enough income to swing an occasional $250/couple dinner out consider The Olive Garden fancy and go somewhere like that for their “special” dinners. Source: personally know way more people in that situation than I do people who appreciate and can afford non-microwaved meals out. Could be regional—this is the midwest, after all. “Prix Fixe” isn’t in most people’s vocabulary here, even if they can easily afford good meals. It’s a socialization/class thing.
I'm in Iowa and people really do think Olive Garden is "fancy". I got an Olive Garden gift card for Christmas and my and I even cracked a joke about going on a "fancy" date there, because so many people here think that it's what a "nice" restaurant is.
The Olive Gardens around here are worse than the middle tier of frozen Italian dinners you can grab at the grocery store, these days (they've definitely gotten worse over the last 10-15 years—I think they've preferred lowering quality over raising prices, though they've done that a bit, too). Some dishes are worse than cheap frozen dinners, even. Last time I went it seriously had the taste and consistency (and general watery-ness) of microwaved food, too. Actually that last part's true for most of the non-fine-dining Italian I've had around here lately, including a few mom & pop places, not just chains. If the cheap to middling sections of the frozen aisle are better than what you're making... please stop. Then again, it sells for some reason, so who am I to say.
[EDIT] and to back up Marpster below, it is nonetheless "fancy" around here to many (Missouri), including those who could certainly afford better for their special nights out.
There are about four Michelin starred restaurants within a 30km radius, there are also other towns within that radius, so its a little more complicated than one town of 18,000 one Michelin starred restaurant. Also menu items started at 30 and went up to approx 110 euros.
30 Euros per entree is still a lot for a middle-class family. I don't see how this makes it an issue of a declining middle class rather than just the decline of a particular town.
Prices are rather reasonnable here, on the expensive side but I would consider eating there. While a menu where items go from 30 to 110 euros is completely out of the question for anyone I know.
It's the 110 euro part of the menu that he's ditching and losing the star over. The article mentions how much expensive sea bass and turbot is wasted because nobody buys it.
At a Michelin starred restaurant, you'd typically want to select a menu, usually the full tasting menu, rather than individual plates. You get a lot more variety and experience a full range of the creativity and skill of the chef. Otherwise it's a bit like going to a variety show and only seeing one or two acts.
If you've never spent that much on a meal, you're not a foodie. That's OK: but there are people who do appreciate excellent food, and are willing to pay for it.
Personally, the most I've spent is about $700 on a tasting menu for two at a place in Washington DC. $130 on a meal for two including wine wouldn't be unusual - I have meals like that maybe 10 to 15 times a year.
Michelin starred restaurants are frequently destination restaurants - they will attract people from some distance. That's why Michelin thought up the idea - to encourage people to drive and wear out their tires!
I've had a $5 plate from an inconspicuous family restaurant taste far better than a $250-per-person meal at a location where you had to reserve 3 months in advance. There are some ingredients that are worth the cost, but you can certainly appreciate and love food without having to spend an average individual's weekly paycheck on a single meal.
You can't generalise like that about the whole of Europe - it's a very diverse region. I walked across Europe this summer, from Ireland to Istanbul. Southern Germany is doing fine, but Northern France has been hollowed out. The humdrum little rural towns and villages are not doing well at all. I passed through many places where empty shops had signs in their windows saying things like "thank you for your custom over the last eighteen years, but we can no longer make a living here."
Yes! Though I walked from Cherbourg rather than Hook of Holland, I crossed the Alps between Salzburg and Kranj in Slovenia, and walked across the Balkans and Bulgaria.
The Ruhrgebiet probably comes close to having the iconoclastic brownfields and abandoned buildings, but don't come close to Detroit's fall. Still, they do have some "rust" areas but have managed better than us.
It's quite the opposite in regards to the Ruhrgebiet. Ruhrgebiet cities like Duisburg, Dortmund, and Essen are growing fast. Not as fast as Munich or Hamburg but fast enough for rents to go up considerably. Gentrification is also in full force there.
The actual losers are the former GDR states that are being bled to death by thousands of little cuts. Siemens recently announced that it's closing two high-tech factories in Saxony and with it whole towns will lose their currently well-paid jobs. This will lead to an even higher loss of jobs in retail etc.
Aren't they more like Pittsburgh, PA? They suffered some brownfielding but have managed to recover due to good govt management? And now the brownfields are getting cleaned up and revitalized.
I'm originally from one of those former GDR states (they became states after reunification, during the GDR they were smaller districts - "Bezirke" [0]).
The countryside is slowly dying, even though it still looks pretty nice in the tiny villages (albeit a bit dead). In the towns it can be a bit depressing. I grew up in a town with >35,000 inhabitants just 5 miles from another town of the same size, and lots of villages all around (you can never really get lost in a German forest, just continue walking and you'll get to the next village or town soon). Those same towns now have ~25,000 inhabitants - and the distribution has shifted towards a lot more old people.
In Thuringia, for example (the geographic center of Germany, home of Goethe and of Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert :-) ), the state capital Erfurt (206,000) is doing well, and Jena (108,000) with its Carl Zeiss optics manufacturing [1] and a good university is too. The rest - not so much. Even though cities like Weimar (65,000) look pretty nice and still attract tourism and the population is stable (not shrinking already is a success) they are not exactly the "place to be".
So the larger cities are doing well - same as everywhere in the world: People are moving to the urban centers. Better services, better/more jobs, better everything (well, except for space and cost of living).
By the way, since we are talking about very good food: This is a sad topic. Germans prefer "cheap" most of all. I have an Italian friend who represents Italian food companies in Germany. He told me they (Italians) sell the good stuff to countries like Spain or France, and the lower quality products to Germany. The reason is not that they dislike Germans, it's the German buyers themselves: In all negotiations the most important topic by far is price, quality doesn't come close. When I visit family in Thuringia it's even worse. I can find okayish food, sure, but it's not easy. Even the Asian fast food in my big West German city is a hundred times better than similar food in a Thuringian town (and they are pretty bad, since they have to offer full meals for 4-8 Euros, no comparison at all to the Asian food I'm used to from when I lived in the Bay Area). I also have a friend who owns a pretty nice middlish restaurant in Thuringia. He has become pretty depressed over the years, and his place is really nice and had good food too (and I say that as a picky eater). His place is not as good as it used to be, he doesn't care all that much any more because it's just not worth it. He's just too old and too well-connected locally to go somewhere else and do something completely new.
Funny you mention much of the good Italian provisions go to Spain and on the other hand Spain is sending much if its Jambon Iberico to China, pricing out some of the locals who cannot now afford the high prices.
Speaking of East German food, how have you found Walzwerk's [in SF] fare to be, IIRC, they are/were East German.
One of the Walzwerk founders (Christiane Schmidt [2]) is from Saalfeld, a town very close to where I grew up. I've been to the restaurant a few times, usually with American coworkers, once with a friend from Saalfeld, so there was a lot of talk with Christiane that evening, and we went out with them after they had closed the restaurant. That was well over ten years ago though, almost fifteen, so I can't speak for the food they serve today. Back then it was quite authentic apart from the Thuringian sausages ("bratwurst thüringer art" on the menu [3]). They still were good, but you won't get Thuringian sausages outside Thuringia, impossible, even if many are labeled "Thuringian". No idea why, the recipe can't be that much of a secret or too difficult. Anyway, the Walzwerk that I knew (until 2004) has my recommendation, since it's under the same ownership it probably still is a good destination :-)
I guess you know that, but just to add a few links for others, the name "Walzwerk" (translation: "rolling mill") refers to an East German steel factory [0] (very very dirty and run-down at the time of the reunification) about 15 miles from where I used to live. Today it looks a lot different [1] (like everything around that area - from lots of ashes, even ash mountains, and gray, to clean rivers and everything is orders of magnitude nicer).
> A brownfield is a property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant. It is estimated that there are more than 450,000 brownfields in the U.S. Cleaning up and reinvesting in these properties increases local tax bases, facilitates job growth, utilizes existing infrastructure, takes development pressures off of undeveloped, open land, and both improves and protects the environment.
It would be interesting to know more - a quick google says that's 3,600 miles, and at a very brisk pace of 3 miles an hour 10 hours a day that's 4 months walking. love to know more.
I spent one week short of mine months on the walk. I averaged about eighteen kilometres a day. On walking days I'd walk about thirty kilometres. I'd highly recommend it! Europe is very beautiful and very safe. I encountered no hassle and wonderful hospitality and generosity.
Actually it's more an example of dying of all medium-size cities in France, mostly because of globalisation and the Euro which is killing French industry (800 factories close every year and it has been so since 2003).
France is doing everything in its power to keep companies from going there and employing people (by improving worker conditions to the detriment of employers).
But the French government budget would surely also benefit from a devaluation here and there as it always did.
On the positive side, without the EU the French agricultural sector would have to face the plain market and get along with a few dozens of billions less per year, so there's that.
"Labor Freedom" is perhaps the most galling. One might think it would cover the right of laborers to organize and collectively bargain. Or the right to have safe working conditions, sick days, severance pay, access to childcare and healthcare.
In fact, it's the exact opposite. A perfectly free workforce in Heritage Foundation's verbiage would be one with no worker protections or individual rights of any kind and a 100% labor participation rate - to them, quite literally, "labor freedom" is slavery.
Maybe France does have to many workers' rights to compete with other countries, who knows. Heritage's numbers aren't granular enough for me (or you) to assess that. But re-defining the meanings of basic words so one can accuse people who disagree with you of "hating freedom" is pathetic. Please try to find some other way to make your case that's befitting educated adults discussing a serious issue.
"Labor freedom" is the freedom to contractually define what the employee does in exchange for money from the employer.
If you have laws that define "8 hours max" (or "10$ per hour" minimum), then poor (or uneducated people, respectively) might struggle to make ends meet (or find a job, respectively).
Another example is "6 months minimum contract" which results in "never employ people if you just have work for 3 months" to employers.
Do you see the common pattern?
Freedom in general is defined (at least at this site) as contractual freedom, i.e., the absence of state-defined contract clauses set via law. Your definition of freedom is "employee rights" (which can be considered a kind of freedom, but to the detriment of employer freedom).
If you maximize employee freedom, you automatically minimize employer freedom and that will take a heavy toll on employment in general.
We’re fine in France, the downward pressure on middle class salaries have been compensated by good healthcare / a high minimum wage / a decent labor code, unlike in the US.
Sure it sucks if you’re a software engineer but as a minimum wage person you’re an order of magnitude better than in the US.
The US middle class has among the highest disposable income levels on the planet, far higher than France. The median full-time job in the US nearly pays $50,000 at this point, far higher than France.
The person at the median in the US middle class has their healthcare paid for by their employer. The US middle class has in fact seen significant compensation increases that are not accounted for, because their healthcare benefits from employers are not accounted for in salary comparisons.
Whether France has a decent labor code, or actually has a backwards labor code that has severely damaged their economy for decades, is clearly open to debate given the high persistent unemployment rate of France.
France's labor code has not resulted in high wages, the US has higher wages in every regard. It has not resulted in high employment, the US always has a lower unemployment rate. It has not resulted in faster growing wages, US wage growth averages three to four times faster over the last decade. It has not resulted in faster economic growth, US GDP growth is typically four or five times faster.
When US wages grow at only 2% or 2.5%, we wonder what's wrong. In France, wage growth has averaged about 0.4% the last three years; the 0.6% growth level it put in a few quarters ago, was a three year high. If the French labor code is so desirable, why is French wage growth so atrocious?
See: "Wage Growth in France averaged 0.53 percent from 1999 until 2017"
(You need to adjust for different levels of required expenditures (different things are subsidised in different countries), different cost levels for local goods and services, different worker participation rates (e.g. dual income vs single income), etc.)
Perhaps. The foundation of the parent's claim, rested on the French middle class seeing stronger wage growth than the US. That claim is very painfully false, as French wage growth is typically far lower than the US wage growth across the board. In fact French wage growth has been extremely poor for the last two decades, which shoots a massive hole in the premise about their labor code somehow being beneficial to that middle class (persistently high unemployment + very low wage growth).
How long can French wage growth continue at 0.5%, while the US continues at 2.5%, before the gap gets extreme? I think it's probably aleady nearing that point, as it pertains to developed nations standards. And that obviously isn't to say the US is the best in the world at any of this, it's simply that the French economy has performed so miserably in general. They've basically been failing to keep pace with global economic growth for three decades, watching their macro, per capita & household rankings slide persistently.
About 3% of the American labor force made the federal minimum wage in 2016, not 1%. This number is vastly higher when included those who make state minimum wages that are higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
>The person at the median in the US middle class has their healthcare paid for by their employer.
The median US worker most certainly does not have their healthcare paid for my their employer. Some are partially subsidized, some receive nothing. Very few "middle class" workers have their healthcare paid for, let alone their full health insurance premiums or deductibles. The average worker pays $4,200 for their own healthcare out of pocket after all employer subsidies.
New results from an industry organization's annual study shows that large employers expect the total average per-employee cost for health insurance benefits — which includes premiums and out-of-pocket costs for employees and dependents — to rise in 2018 to $14,156 from $13,482 this year.
With employers covering about 70 percent of that cost, the average worker will pay 30 percent of the tab, or about $4,200.
That is $4,200 out of the worker's income. Median income last year in the United States was $31,099. Depending on what state the worker lives in they are taking home ~$25,000 after taxes and tax rebates. This means that even after employer subsidy they are paying about 1/6th of their total annual income on healthcare.
>The US middle class has in fact seen significant compensation increases that are not accounted for, because their healthcare benefits from employers are not accounted for in salary comparisons.
For most workers they are paying more for healthcare while receiving less coverage than they have in past years and decades in the United States. Somewhat ironic, but not surprising given your other comments, that you equate receiving less of a lower quality product as "increased compensation". Next year, when deductibles rise and workers have to pay more, should we also count that as increased compensation? Perhaps what we can call it what it is - a direct transfer of wealth to the ownership class on Wall Street. A massive corporate welfare program for pharmaceutical companies, HMOs, insurance companies, managed care conglomerates and their shareholders.
France is not perfect, but when people get sick, they can go to the doctor for treatment even if they don't have enough money. When someone gets hit by a car in France, they don't have to limp away because the cost of an ambulance ride could bankrupt them. When someone in France has a life threatening abscess in their tooth they can go to a dentist for proper treatment instead of hoping it goes away until they have thousands of dollars.
I am also French, did you realize that the state keep more than half of your net salary for "la sécurité sociale" (cotisations sociales employeur).
And that you will still have to pay the taxes ("part sociale employé: 20% again for "la sécurité sociale) plus 6% of CSG for "la sécurité sociale/CSG) plus direct taxes like TVA (roughly 20% again nobody knows why anymore, but initialy for "la sécu des vieux").
However after having collecting this stack of whealth, the state still has to borrow half of its revenues to pay its own bills (including "le trou de la sécu", plus recurrents debts from SNCF and banks and Orange).
"He could no longer pay for the personnel, produce and precision that go into charging one-star prices." Apparently the NY Times can no longer pay for the precision that goes into subject-verb agreement.
A bit off topic, but journalism thses days is brimming with minor grammatical errors, such as omissions of articles, repeated ‘the’, etc. It seems no one cares enough to hire rigid proofreaders and the software tends to miss little things. Does anyone care?
I'm sure there's a reason, but I always thought it strange that when the subject in singular, the verb often gets an 's' ending (mirroring the plural ending for most nouns) but when the subject is plural (often ending in an 's') the verb normally doesn't get an 's' ending.
The frogs play in water.
The frog plays in water.
Why does the 's' effectively swap locations?
Why not, "the frogs plays in water." Or "the frog play in water"?
Or why not drops the singular/plural distinction from verbs altogether?
What makes you think the -s ending is naturally plural, rather than just being completely arbitrary?
I am pretty sure the etymology of the plural ending -s and the third person present verb ending -s (which used to be -eth in pre-modern forms of English) are unrelated, and they just sound the same by coincidence.
Well at it's core language is sort of completely arbitrary, but that's beside the point I'm making. I'm not debating the origin or why it is the way it is, but simply observing that this is how it is currently and it looks strange and counterintuitive.
I still don't understand what's strange about it. There is nothing inherently plural or singular about "s" or any other combination of sounds.
English evolved a 3rd person singular verb ending. It randomly happened to be "s". It also evolved a plural noun ending. That too randomly happened to be "s". There's nothing deeper going on than that.
I'm not suggesting there's anything deeper nor do I understand why you think I am. I'm just pointing out that as English exists today, an 's' on the end of noun makes it plural while an 's' on the end of a verb makes it singular.
I'm not suggesting plurals be removed from language, merely a different way of representing it. Such as the Indonesian structure you mentioned, I like that.
What's interesting to me is that we use the same morphological operation (-s suffix) to express two very different concepts. You see this in other places as well, for example the Germanic -en suffix is used in at least 3 different ways in English: as the past participle verb tense (speak -spoken), as a way to transform adjectives into verbs (wide-widen) and (a very old) way to transform nouns into adjectives (gold-golden).
Why not use different morphology for these different grammatical concepts? The language would be cleaner and more consistent. My theory is that, basically, it's hard to learn to pronounce many different sounds, but it's easy for our brains to sort through the ambiguity that the morphological overlap produces.
It's because that's the way English verbs are conjugated. English actually has a very simple way of conjugating (regular) verbs. Most of the complexity of the ancestral Germanic has been lost. Contrast that to other Germanic languages. Swedish present tense, for example, is very simple. German still retains a complex morphology.
The only inflection English retains in the present indicative is the -s suffix for 3rd person singular (frog). Third person plural (frogs) does not have an -s.
The -s suffix for noun plurals, and for possessives (vestigial genitive case), add exceptions that make learning English a little harder.
The amount that people care is measured in dollars. We can likely conclude that the amount that people care is less than the prevailing wage of a professional proofreader.
A publication may one day be able to accumulate those who care the most as their customer base, and thereby assure the production of grammatically correct ephemera, but for now, other business interests prevail.
Please don't take HN threads into such nitpicky weeds, whether you happen to be right or not. In this case I don't think you were—Muphry's Law and all that—but there's nothing wrong with being wrong as such. Far worse on HN is being snarky.
Would it have been possible to change to a cheaper menu while still keeping the Michelin star? There's plenty of affordable — and even cheap — Michelin starred restaurants.
There’s also bib gourmand ratings in the same guide for exactly that, which is something like half a star. Less prestigious, but still an accomplishment. If he were starred and then started serving similar quality at the lower price point, I don’t see why they wouldn’t give him one, unless they consider the PR we are reading now a disqualifier for further consideration.
Maybe, but there still would have been the worry that the star was scaring people away.
Also, I could be wrong but I thing the "Michelin starred food truck" and other cheaper starred restaurants are all outside France, in France there's still much more of a common standard that Michelin starred restaurants feel they need to live up to including experience and price.
And of course, it's much better to renounce the star than to lose it.
This. For example, I talked to the chef of the restaurant that won Le Fooding's best chef in 2017 about his older restaurant and there is a whole movement in France called bistronomie, which is all about serving great creative food, without the trapping of the luxury restaurant. That is no tablecloths, no hierarchy of waiters, just a bistrot, but with Michelin level food.
What are you thinking of as a cheap Michelin starred restaurant in France? It's important to be specific to the country; standards are different in different places. The French Michelin stars are still very hidebound by things like quality of flowers and number of extra service on the floor.
I am missing something. The chef believes that in order to maintain his star he must do something different to what he was doing to achieve the star in the first place?
I am not an expert on Michelin guides, but that seems unlikely.
I wonder if his new menu will be cooked well enough to earn him a star?
He has cut his prices and is offering a more down-to-earth cuisine of stews, including the classic blanquette de veau, and serving cod instead of the more expensive sea bass.
He believes the star hurts him because it signals high prices, which scares away potential patrons. So he asked the guide to take the star down, and is now offering more ordinary and traditional recipes.
It should also be noted that many French people are extremely conservative and dislike anything invented after 1950, so the blanquette may please them more than fancy nouvelle cuisine.
From the article his restaurant cannot continue to afford to pay for the personnel, produce, and percision that the star requires.
So even if his new menu with economical ingredients was star worthy, it's likely that the level of service in the restaurant won't be the same. Waiters serving more tables, no dedicated sommelier, that type of thing.
Also its likely that they won't put as much effort into the visual design of the plates in the kitchen.
From what I always heard, the Michelin Guide has very very particular demands on your service. It has to be so and so. It's not only how it tastes, but also the formality with which it is served. (This has to be checked though.)
It's indeed strange about the hawking stall, but I suppose the standards are not the same abroad as domestically - or for a stall for that matter.
Having been to 1-star restaurants thrice, and to gastronomic restaurants a few more times, I have to say the distinction isn't that helpful, and didn't reflect the quality of the food or service. For contrast, Trip Advisor is a better discriminator for lower-level establishments, even if it has its faults as well.
No. While it’s impossible for imperfect humans to completely separate the meal from the overall experience, Michelin claims that its star ratings are solely based on the cuisine.
On the other hand, diners often have a certain level of expectation of the service and ambiance surrounding a meal that costs as much as is typically required to economically produce Michelin-ranked cuisine.
>> “Maybe the star scared people,” Mr. Mathus said. “I understand. He’s saying, ‘Don’t be scared to come here.’ Here, it’s simple people, with modest incomes.” <<
100+ euro menus in a town of 18,000 sounds ambitious. Above quote from previous mayor sounds about right to me.
Being 5 miles from Windsor castle and also from Eton college might have something to do with it. Heathrow is only 15 miles away on motorway.
Bray has about 300 millionaires and Windsor around 900 [1] (few other villages from that list are also just short drive away).
I've never understood the point of Michelin stars or their relative value, compared to, for example, 500 5-star yelp or trip advisor reviews.
The last thing I care about is advice on food from a tire company. In fact if it wasn't for Gordon Ramsay related conversations, I would have never known Michelin Stars are an actual thing.
Can you? I thought yelp and google were very aggressive about burying businesses for this sort of thing. Maybe you could go on fiverr or something and collect a few, but there's no way that yelp doesn't catch 500 fraudulent reviews. They are way too aggressive with false positives as is, such that a good third of my actual reviews are hidden.
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[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 207 ms ] threadWe in tech(I presume most people in this community is in tech) thrive because of good contents. Might as well pay for them. :)
The method you've described works on AFR.com though
That's the monthly rent for a many bedroom flat in France (outside of major cities). The after tax income is twice or three times that number. Don't expect a middle class family to eat there.
For upper-middle class people that value high-end dining experiences, $130/person for a meal a few times a year isn't particularly unusual (in the USA, at least). Such people are easy to find if you join a local foodie/dining interest group.
That said, $130 USD or €110 /person still isn't unreasonable for a truly good restaurant in France. It might be above what the 'middle class' is generally willing to spend, but you can practically throw a rock in France and hit a restaurant that charges these kind of prices. And people (including myself) go out of their way to travel to France to indulge in dining experiences at these sorts of places.
French families don't have that kind of money to spend on a restaurant. That could work with international tourists in Paris.
I'm fairly certain that a middle-class family would be able to afford a $130 meal if they really wanted, it's just that they don't feel like they are getting more enjoyment than 4 $30 meals would provide, and that's OK. Don't pretend that middle-class people have no money to spend, when in reality they just have none left over after spending it on all kinds of things.
It might be different in other countries I guess, but I live in France and Belgium, and nobody I know around here (family, friends, spanning from lower to upper middle class) would even consider eating at a restaurant with that kind of prices.
Nobody I know owns Harley motorcycles either, anyway, but it doesn't seem very relevant.
Some searching reveals that the smoking rate is north of 25% in both France and Belgium, and a pack of cigarettes in France is 7 EUR, let's round that down to 5.
So for a 110 EUR (~$130) meal we're talking about the equivalent of 26 days of 1 pack a day smoking, or just under 2 weeks of 2 pack a day.
Which I believe eloquently makes the point that you're out of touch with just how much $130 of disposable income over a year is.
We're talking about saving 30 cents/day, hardly out of reach of even the poorest of people who'd like to treat themselves to something like an expensive restaurant on a yearly basis.
I'm not actually saying it's much or it's out of reach. I'm saying few people are willing to spend that at a restaurant, not because they're poor (I'm talking about doctors, for example) but mostly because there are so many cheaper and very good restaurants that those expensive ones look like they are just meant for other occasions or other people. The aforementionned doctors sometimes get invited there by pharmaceutical compagnies trying to sell them things, for example.
Around my homeplace I know quite a few restaurants with Michelin stars (two-star Coutanceau in La Rochelle for example, from where I came back just this week) and honestly most often the people there seem to be foreign tourists.
I'm not defending spending $130 at a restaurant, I can afford it and I don't, I think it's a dumb waste of money, but I think the same of a lot of other people's hobbies. Whether those hobbies are affordable to them if they're in the middle class is another question, and clearly dropping $130 at a restaurant every once in a while is.
The US average discretionary income per household: ~$21,000. That leaves plenty of room for a few $130/head meals. Despite income stagnation, the US middle class still has amazing amounts of discretionary income compared to the rest of the industrialized world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_Guide#Stars
1 Michelin star: "A very good restaurant in its category" 2 Michelin stars: "Excellent cooking, worth a detour" 3 Michelin stars: "Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey"
But OP is abour one-star restaurant, which means it is only recommended for people who are already in the neighborhood or passing by.
That $130 is most likely for an entire several course meal, not an entree.
I think most middle class people go out to nice dinners a few times a year for anniversaries and birthdays.
I grew up "upper middle class" in the USA. We went out to nice dinners on anniversaries and birthdays - meaning $30 entrees and $5 desert, not $130 entrees. A $130 meal is a once in a lifetime type celebration (e.g. 50th wedding anniversary, making partner in a company you've worked for for a decade), not a few times a year. At least for my family.
And don't get me started on trying to define how American definitions of class have evolved in the last fifty years...
Yeah I don't understand what Americans mean by middle class... in the UK middle class means educated, successful, with a respected profession and more sophisticated cultural tastes. A doctor or lawyer who owns their own home and takes a couple of foreign holidays a year with children in private school would be a classic example of the UK middle class.
Middle class in America seems to basically mean poor? The phrase doesn't seem to translate at all.
Middle class has a slightly vague economic definition in the US. The US also commonly uses variations such as upper and lower middle class, and then there is poor, upper class, and rich. Middle class does not basically mean poor. The US middle class has an extraordinary income compared to the middle class of all but a few nations:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/05/through-an-a...
It means your household income is typically between $40,000 to $100,000; above that and you're either upper middle class, or upper class; below that and you're either poor or lower middle class depending. For example, two people working median full-time jobs in the US will earn nearly $100,000. The median household income in the US is about $60,000.
There are of course numerous lifestyle choices and plenty of classes copying other classes behavior often without even understanding the reason why. Our economic system is set up to keep the classes separate to the point of nearly being unable to communicate with each other. It is almost like three separate cultures that happen to coexist in the same space, mostly. Tomorrow I'm paying estimated quarterlies, which is a phrase that won't even make sense to people not in the upper class, whereas in comparison our mass media pop music is solely lower class to the point that you need an urban dictionary website to make any sense out of "our" music if you're not poor.
> $130 meal is a once in a lifetime type celebration (e.g. 50th wedding anniversary,
Most "traditional" weddings (like you see in TV shows) cost $130 per guest for meal and alcohol. Many people attend many of these in a lifetime.
> making partner in a company you've worked for for a decade
People in that situation would tend to do a $130 email to celebrate their annual bonus, not just the one time they get up to the $500k+/yr income band.
> Most "traditional" weddings (like you see in TV shows) cost $130 per guest for meal and alcohol. Many people attend many of these in a lifetime.
Right, but the host pays for it all. Your children getting married is a "once in a lifetime event" like a 50 year anniversary or a major career promotion.
According to Wikipedia, an "upper middle class" household has about U$ 120.000 in income - that means that splurging on a Michelin meal for 4 would be 4% of the monthly budget - definitely doable for a birthday or anniversary if you want to. Many people spend that much or more on a gift.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_middle_class_in_the_Unit...
Maybe you're having the same problem many people have, where they have price anchoring on some points in the past - $130 now is about $80 in 1997.
We didn't want to. And when the economy crashed in 2009, I saw my neighbors whose parents made more money than us sell their homes and move to cheaper neighborhoods and my parents used their savings to make it through comfortably.
[EDIT] and to back up Marpster below, it is nonetheless "fancy" around here to many (Missouri), including those who could certainly afford better for their special nights out.
Is it another restaurant than this one http://www.jeromebrochot.com/media/original/575147df7d79e/ca... ?
Prices are rather reasonnable here, on the expensive side but I would consider eating there. While a menu where items go from 30 to 110 euros is completely out of the question for anyone I know.
Here is the chef's website, with various menus and prices: http://www.jeromebrochot.com/fr/cartes-et-menus.html
It goes as low as 21€ for the Winter menu (starter, main course, dessert): http://www.jeromebrochot.com/media/original/575147df7d79e/me...
Up to 110€ for the New Year's Eve menu (170€ with drinks included): http://www.jeromebrochot.com/media/original/575147df7d79e/me...
Personally, the most I've spent is about $700 on a tasting menu for two at a place in Washington DC. $130 on a meal for two including wine wouldn't be unusual - I have meals like that maybe 10 to 15 times a year.
Michelin starred restaurants are frequently destination restaurants - they will attract people from some distance. That's why Michelin thought up the idea - to encourage people to drive and wear out their tires!
I've had a $5 plate from an inconspicuous family restaurant taste far better than a $250-per-person meal at a location where you had to reserve 3 months in advance. There are some ingredients that are worth the cost, but you can certainly appreciate and love food without having to spend an average individual's weekly paycheck on a single meal.
The actual losers are the former GDR states that are being bled to death by thousands of little cuts. Siemens recently announced that it's closing two high-tech factories in Saxony and with it whole towns will lose their currently well-paid jobs. This will lead to an even higher loss of jobs in retail etc.
The countryside is slowly dying, even though it still looks pretty nice in the tiny villages (albeit a bit dead). In the towns it can be a bit depressing. I grew up in a town with >35,000 inhabitants just 5 miles from another town of the same size, and lots of villages all around (you can never really get lost in a German forest, just continue walking and you'll get to the next village or town soon). Those same towns now have ~25,000 inhabitants - and the distribution has shifted towards a lot more old people.
In Thuringia, for example (the geographic center of Germany, home of Goethe and of Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert :-) ), the state capital Erfurt (206,000) is doing well, and Jena (108,000) with its Carl Zeiss optics manufacturing [1] and a good university is too. The rest - not so much. Even though cities like Weimar (65,000) look pretty nice and still attract tourism and the population is stable (not shrinking already is a success) they are not exactly the "place to be".
So the larger cities are doing well - same as everywhere in the world: People are moving to the urban centers. Better services, better/more jobs, better everything (well, except for space and cost of living).
By the way, since we are talking about very good food: This is a sad topic. Germans prefer "cheap" most of all. I have an Italian friend who represents Italian food companies in Germany. He told me they (Italians) sell the good stuff to countries like Spain or France, and the lower quality products to Germany. The reason is not that they dislike Germans, it's the German buyers themselves: In all negotiations the most important topic by far is price, quality doesn't come close. When I visit family in Thuringia it's even worse. I can find okayish food, sure, but it's not easy. Even the Asian fast food in my big West German city is a hundred times better than similar food in a Thuringian town (and they are pretty bad, since they have to offer full meals for 4-8 Euros, no comparison at all to the Asian food I'm used to from when I lived in the Bay Area). I also have a friend who owns a pretty nice middlish restaurant in Thuringia. He has become pretty depressed over the years, and his place is really nice and had good food too (and I say that as a picky eater). His place is not as good as it used to be, he doesn't care all that much any more because it's just not worth it. He's just too old and too well-connected locally to go somewhere else and do something completely new.
[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bezirk_%28DDR%29
[1] https://www.zeiss.com/carl-zeiss-jena/home.html
Speaking of East German food, how have you found Walzwerk's [in SF] fare to be, IIRC, they are/were East German.
I guess you know that, but just to add a few links for others, the name "Walzwerk" (translation: "rolling mill") refers to an East German steel factory [0] (very very dirty and run-down at the time of the reunification) about 15 miles from where I used to live. Today it looks a lot different [1] (like everything around that area - from lots of ashes, even ash mountains, and gray, to clean rivers and everything is orders of magnitude nicer).
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyxg9JUSkDE (German video)
[1] http://www.stahlwerk-thueringen.de/
[2] 2011: Article in the local Thuringian newspaper about the Walzwerk (German): http://www.otz.de/web/zgt/leben/detail/-/specific/In-einer-S...
[3] http://www.walzwerk.com/menu/
https://www.epa.gov/brownfields/overview-brownfields-program
In contrast to "greenfield" projects where they don't have to worry about previous environmental contamination.
France is doing everything in its power to keep companies from going there and employing people (by improving worker conditions to the detriment of employers).
But the French government budget would surely also benefit from a devaluation here and there as it always did.
On the positive side, without the EU the French agricultural sector would have to face the plain market and get along with a few dozens of billions less per year, so there's that.
For a little bit more data I cannot recommend enough the Economic Libery Index: http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
France is 72nd, quite a few ranks after countries such as Albania, Kosovo, Rwanda, Kazakhstan, ...
Unsurprisingly, Government Spending and Labor Freedom are the worst elements of its index value.
"Labor Freedom" is perhaps the most galling. One might think it would cover the right of laborers to organize and collectively bargain. Or the right to have safe working conditions, sick days, severance pay, access to childcare and healthcare.
In fact, it's the exact opposite. A perfectly free workforce in Heritage Foundation's verbiage would be one with no worker protections or individual rights of any kind and a 100% labor participation rate - to them, quite literally, "labor freedom" is slavery.
Maybe France does have to many workers' rights to compete with other countries, who knows. Heritage's numbers aren't granular enough for me (or you) to assess that. But re-defining the meanings of basic words so one can accuse people who disagree with you of "hating freedom" is pathetic. Please try to find some other way to make your case that's befitting educated adults discussing a serious issue.
"Labor freedom" is the freedom to contractually define what the employee does in exchange for money from the employer.
If you have laws that define "8 hours max" (or "10$ per hour" minimum), then poor (or uneducated people, respectively) might struggle to make ends meet (or find a job, respectively).
Another example is "6 months minimum contract" which results in "never employ people if you just have work for 3 months" to employers.
Do you see the common pattern?
Freedom in general is defined (at least at this site) as contractual freedom, i.e., the absence of state-defined contract clauses set via law. Your definition of freedom is "employee rights" (which can be considered a kind of freedom, but to the detriment of employer freedom).
If you maximize employee freedom, you automatically minimize employer freedom and that will take a heavy toll on employment in general.
Sure it sucks if you’re a software engineer but as a minimum wage person you’re an order of magnitude better than in the US.
The US middle class has among the highest disposable income levels on the planet, far higher than France. The median full-time job in the US nearly pays $50,000 at this point, far higher than France.
The person at the median in the US middle class has their healthcare paid for by their employer. The US middle class has in fact seen significant compensation increases that are not accounted for, because their healthcare benefits from employers are not accounted for in salary comparisons.
Whether France has a decent labor code, or actually has a backwards labor code that has severely damaged their economy for decades, is clearly open to debate given the high persistent unemployment rate of France.
France's labor code has not resulted in high wages, the US has higher wages in every regard. It has not resulted in high employment, the US always has a lower unemployment rate. It has not resulted in faster growing wages, US wage growth averages three to four times faster over the last decade. It has not resulted in faster economic growth, US GDP growth is typically four or five times faster.
When US wages grow at only 2% or 2.5%, we wonder what's wrong. In France, wage growth has averaged about 0.4% the last three years; the 0.6% growth level it put in a few quarters ago, was a three year high. If the French labor code is so desirable, why is French wage growth so atrocious?
See: "Wage Growth in France averaged 0.53 percent from 1999 until 2017"
https://tradingeconomics.com/france/wage-growth
vs
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wage-growth
And that can be confirmed by simply Googling "french wage growth" and looking at dozens of recent news sources.
Your order of a magnitude claim is very obviously wrong.
There's another chart here, from OECD with similar distribution and levels: https://mises.org/blog/when-it-comes-household-income-sweden...
(You need to adjust for different levels of required expenditures (different things are subsidised in different countries), different cost levels for local goods and services, different worker participation rates (e.g. dual income vs single income), etc.)
How long can French wage growth continue at 0.5%, while the US continues at 2.5%, before the gap gets extreme? I think it's probably aleady nearing that point, as it pertains to developed nations standards. And that obviously isn't to say the US is the best in the world at any of this, it's simply that the French economy has performed so miserably in general. They've basically been failing to keep pace with global economic growth for three decades, watching their macro, per capita & household rankings slide persistently.
About 3% of the American labor force made the federal minimum wage in 2016, not 1%. This number is vastly higher when included those who make state minimum wages that are higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2016/home.htm
>The person at the median in the US middle class has their healthcare paid for by their employer.
The median US worker most certainly does not have their healthcare paid for my their employer. Some are partially subsidized, some receive nothing. Very few "middle class" workers have their healthcare paid for, let alone their full health insurance premiums or deductibles. The average worker pays $4,200 for their own healthcare out of pocket after all employer subsidies.
New results from an industry organization's annual study shows that large employers expect the total average per-employee cost for health insurance benefits — which includes premiums and out-of-pocket costs for employees and dependents — to rise in 2018 to $14,156 from $13,482 this year.
With employers covering about 70 percent of that cost, the average worker will pay 30 percent of the tab, or about $4,200.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/09/employers-to-spend-about-100...
That is $4,200 out of the worker's income. Median income last year in the United States was $31,099. Depending on what state the worker lives in they are taking home ~$25,000 after taxes and tax rebates. This means that even after employer subsidy they are paying about 1/6th of their total annual income on healthcare.
>The US middle class has in fact seen significant compensation increases that are not accounted for, because their healthcare benefits from employers are not accounted for in salary comparisons.
For most workers they are paying more for healthcare while receiving less coverage than they have in past years and decades in the United States. Somewhat ironic, but not surprising given your other comments, that you equate receiving less of a lower quality product as "increased compensation". Next year, when deductibles rise and workers have to pay more, should we also count that as increased compensation? Perhaps what we can call it what it is - a direct transfer of wealth to the ownership class on Wall Street. A massive corporate welfare program for pharmaceutical companies, HMOs, insurance companies, managed care conglomerates and their shareholders.
France is not perfect, but when people get sick, they can go to the doctor for treatment even if they don't have enough money. When someone gets hit by a car in France, they don't have to limp away because the cost of an ambulance ride could bankrupt them. When someone in France has a life threatening abscess in their tooth they can go to a dentist for proper treatment instead of hoping it goes away until they have thousands of dollars.
And that you will still have to pay the taxes ("part sociale employé: 20% again for "la sécurité sociale) plus 6% of CSG for "la sécurité sociale/CSG) plus direct taxes like TVA (roughly 20% again nobody knows why anymore, but initialy for "la sécu des vieux").
However after having collecting this stack of whealth, the state still has to borrow half of its revenues to pay its own bills (including "le trou de la sécu", plus recurrents debts from SNCF and banks and Orange).
A lot of top chefs don't want the pressure of a star. And all michelin restaurants are fully booked in Belgium.
I'm sure there's a reason, but I always thought it strange that when the subject in singular, the verb often gets an 's' ending (mirroring the plural ending for most nouns) but when the subject is plural (often ending in an 's') the verb normally doesn't get an 's' ending.
The frogs play in water. The frog plays in water. Why does the 's' effectively swap locations?
Why not, "the frogs plays in water." Or "the frog play in water"?
Or why not drops the singular/plural distinction from verbs altogether?
I am pretty sure the etymology of the plural ending -s and the third person present verb ending -s (which used to be -eth in pre-modern forms of English) are unrelated, and they just sound the same by coincidence.
English evolved a 3rd person singular verb ending. It randomly happened to be "s". It also evolved a plural noun ending. That too randomly happened to be "s". There's nothing deeper going on than that.
And I think that's strange. That's it.
You could also go Indonesian: repeat a noun for plural. "Frog-frog play in water!"
Why not use different morphology for these different grammatical concepts? The language would be cleaner and more consistent. My theory is that, basically, it's hard to learn to pronounce many different sounds, but it's easy for our brains to sort through the ambiguity that the morphological overlap produces.
The only inflection English retains in the present indicative is the -s suffix for 3rd person singular (frog). Third person plural (frogs) does not have an -s.
The -s suffix for noun plurals, and for possessives (vestigial genitive case), add exceptions that make learning English a little harder.
Edit: grammar :)
A publication may one day be able to accumulate those who care the most as their customer base, and thereby assure the production of grammatically correct ephemera, but for now, other business interests prevail.
How do you think it ought to read instead?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
Also, I could be wrong but I thing the "Michelin starred food truck" and other cheaper starred restaurants are all outside France, in France there's still much more of a common standard that Michelin starred restaurants feel they need to live up to including experience and price.
And of course, it's much better to renounce the star than to lose it.
I am not an expert on Michelin guides, but that seems unlikely.
Consider the recent news of the street hawker getting a Michelin star: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/singapore-cheapest-mi...
I wonder if his new menu will be cooked well enough to earn him a star?
He has cut his prices and is offering a more down-to-earth cuisine of stews, including the classic blanquette de veau, and serving cod instead of the more expensive sea bass.
He believes the star hurts him because it signals high prices, which scares away potential patrons. So he asked the guide to take the star down, and is now offering more ordinary and traditional recipes.
It should also be noted that many French people are extremely conservative and dislike anything invented after 1950, so the blanquette may please them more than fancy nouvelle cuisine.
just curious if there is something specific to 1950
So even if his new menu with economical ingredients was star worthy, it's likely that the level of service in the restaurant won't be the same. Waiters serving more tables, no dedicated sommelier, that type of thing.
Also its likely that they won't put as much effort into the visual design of the plates in the kitchen.
It's indeed strange about the hawking stall, but I suppose the standards are not the same abroad as domestically - or for a stall for that matter.
Having been to 1-star restaurants thrice, and to gastronomic restaurants a few more times, I have to say the distinction isn't that helpful, and didn't reflect the quality of the food or service. For contrast, Trip Advisor is a better discriminator for lower-level establishments, even if it has its faults as well.
On the other hand, diners often have a certain level of expectation of the service and ambiance surrounding a meal that costs as much as is typically required to economically produce Michelin-ranked cuisine.
100+ euro menus in a town of 18,000 sounds ambitious. Above quote from previous mayor sounds about right to me.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10054043/Top-te...
how much do the stars impact a restaurant's business? i usually just talk to people (even strangers) and ask for personal recommendations.
The last thing I care about is advice on food from a tire company. In fact if it wasn't for Gordon Ramsay related conversations, I would have never known Michelin Stars are an actual thing.
Trip Advisor was recently in the news for having a #1 restaurant in London that didn’t even exist.
AFAIK, there have been no such scandals with the Michelin Guide in recent memory.
When was the last time you heard "this is not a michelin star restaraunt, I won't eat there" ? The answer should be never.