Banking, Insurance, Socialism and Obama

I'll warn you, I'm in the mood to ramble. If you paid any attention to the title of this post, you might have guessed this already.

I thought I would mention a few random things that sort of go together - things I've been pondering but have not come to any conclusions about yet.

First, I'll tell you that I miss bank tellers. I never, ever, ever thought I would say those words in my life, but here I am saying it. Bank tellers are a really nice part of banking in America. They don't exist in our bank here.

Here's a photo of our bank.


Here's what we use instead of going to a bank teller.


Machines! See that little shelf with the pen on it on the left side of this photo? There are forms and envelopes on the shelf that you fill out (much like a deposit or withdrawal slip at our banks) in order to make a transaction. Then, you go to one of the machines to do your business.

In the next photo, the machine on the right is our most used machine.


It's for 'versements', or deposits. Each month, we take our money out of our American bank using the ATM machine and then put it into our French bank.

In order to make a deposit, you fill out a form, put your form and your money into an envelope, seal it and put it into this machine.

To me, when you put something into a machine, I just automatically assume it is going to some grand central processing office where it will eventually be handled appropriately. Not so here. Do you know how I know?

Well, in the last few months I have begun to help Mark with some of our banking work. He carefully explained to me how to make deposits at our bank. "You check this box, you put this number here, you sign the form here..." and so forth and so on.

A few weeks ago, I made a deposit and confidently left the bank. The next day, when I went to 'enter' that deposit in our records, I saw my horrible mistake. I had COMPLETELY forgotten to write our account number on the form! UGH! (I tend to overlook details in life, and sadly it's especially easy to do when everything is in French with all sorts of new vocabulary.)

So, I frantically went into the bank to explain my mistake. They do have people in the bank. They are very nice people who are always ready and willing to sell you some insurance or suggest you open a new account. But, they are not tellers. If I had given my form missing an account number to a real bank teller, my mistake would have been caught immediately.

Anyway, when I arrived and explained what had happened, the man at the desk quickly jumped up, went to his desk to get my form and then said, "Oh, I was going to call you. Here's your deposit form and now we can add you account number." He quickly entered the account number correctly, noted the deposit in our account on his computer, and all was fixed. Ahhhh! What relief.

Which made me wonder. Why do they have this big machine to take deposits that end up in the hands of the bank employees who sit just feet from the machine? I'll never know why.

(That glass window that you see in the photo is a security wall which is closed because I took this photo during the lunch hour. The bank closes for 2 hours every day during lunch, but they make the machines available for use. During business hours, the security wall is open and there are a couple of offices across from these machines.)

For some reason, though, when I think of banking in France, I think of insurance. It's just crazy how much insurance we are mandated to have here.

For instance, we have to pay monthly insurance on our account. We pay annual insurance on each of our debit cards. We also pay an annual fee to have the account. And, there's a fee that we don't even understand, but we're told it is just mandatory and all of this adds up to quite a bit of money each year just to do banking in this country.

But, it's not just banking. We must insure each child so that they can go to school. It adds up to quite a lot with three kids.

I just joined a club that allows me to take a knitting class. (A great place to practice speaking French!) I had to prove that I have 'civil' insurance in order to join the club. Who knew? We just learned that, thankfully, it's part of the household insurance we bought through our bank when we arrived.

And, yes, it is absolutely mandatory that every person in France have medical insurance. Period. No questions about that one.

Is this unbelievable, crazy demand to have loads and loads of insurance a French thing, or is it somehow tied to socialism? I'm not sure.

I can tell you what IS socialism. Taxes. I wish that every person in America could come and live in France for one year to see how many things are touched by taxes when the government controls everything. It's truly hard to wrap your brain around this. Nearly every product that we buy has a tax added to it.

Our oven door was coming apart, and we went to buy some screws to fix it. One pack of the smallest size metal screw (a pack of about 20 screws maybe) cost $7. Some of that cost is the actual cost. Some of the cost might be because of the screws being imported (I don't know if they make screws here in France), but a large percentage is taxes taken by the government. It applies to just about everything that we buy, from the smallest to the biggest thing.

At one of our Christmas parties, Mark was asking some of the other men about the cost of gas. I have no idea what the cost of gas is right now, but I can almost guarantee it's more than double the price of gas in America. Mark was asking why gas costs so much here when France is on better terms politically with Arab countries than America. Their answer was simple. Taxes.

But, as a foreigner, it's hard to comprehend how much the people here love this system.

Our daughter Lena is going on a 10 day ski trip in the Alps at the end of March. The entire trip is paid by the government. That's fifty 5th graders going skiing together with their teachers. Hard to believe, huh! And, it's the goal of the government to provide at least one of these trips for each child who goes to school in France. Many other classes are going on trips like this all over France.

We do pay a little for this trip. But, we pay based on our income. Each year, every family unit in this country goes to the mayor's office with a letter that states their income - us included. When they see our salary, they decide what we pay for services in our city. If you make a lot of money, you pay more for everything (ski trips, school lunches, joining sports, music lessons for your children, or whatever it might be). If you make less money, you pay less.

The other day, we watched a TV program where a famous writer, a famous actor, and a politician were having a discussion about how to fix the economic problems in the world, but primarily in France. We only watched about 20 minutes of this 3 hour long program, but we heard again and again how terrible capitalism is. They mentioned Reagan's name multiple times. All I can say is that France is certain the solution is not capitalism. They like socialism, and they like their government controlling all things and working to find the solutions to their very difficult economic problems.

And, so, that leads me to President Obama. People in France think Obama is great. Apparently many people think that Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy (the president of France) are nearly on the same page politically-speaking. (It's been explained to me by one French friend that Sarkozy is a more conservative socialist, which puts him more in alignment with Obama who is a more left-oriented democrat.)

But, it's really become apparent that it is almost impossible to understand another country's politicians without knowing that country very, very well. People really like Obama here. They don't know how Obama fits into the fabric of America. Whether we are for or against Obama and his ideas for America, the things that we would say about him would not really be understood by the people here, because they are so very socialist and see everything through the eyes of socialism.

And, vise versa, we are learning how Sarkozy fits into the fabric of France. But, I can tell you that it is nothing like what we had thought we understood before living here. It's all just very interesting.

At any rate, I'm just rambling here. I don't know when I'll reach any conclusions. Maybe never. But, it certainly makes for interesting thought.

P.S. Only 4.5 months until we get to come home for a visit! Yippeeee!!!! Maybe I'll go to the bank first and make a transaction with a friendly American bank teller, just for the fun of it.