I can't talk about Japan but, having visited France and Paris extensively, living in Paris is my number 1 nightmare.

Terrible housing, terrible traffic, tons of homelessness and dodgy people harassing you in the street (trying to sell you drugs or scam you). The situation got progressively worse over the last 10 years.

Other big cities have similar problems.

The rest of France, outside of the main cities, is actually quite nice but incredibly rural and with very little services. And all of this for 33% corporate tax and progressive income tax 5-40%. You'd be better off crossing the sea and staying in the UK, which is much more livable and offers some tax benefits and higher salaries.

I place the USA a bit higher than France in the chart, but not much more. The high level of taxation and the high cost of health insurance + political craziness going on (the latest BLM riots especially) makes me happy I stayed in Europe, despite missing out on half a million salaries in big tech.

In the end I can't say I find France approach to be much different than the American one: it's the old take half of the economical output and redistribute it. The USA may not have public healthcare but they spend more than enough (13 billions per day) maintaining a public army, handing out benefits or what else. I find it ridiculous to picture the states as the land of freedom. That was more than 100 years ago.

Having lived in both Paris and London during the last decade, I can’t really agree with your observations. Taxes in France and the U.K. are very comparable for the middle class down: ~20% for national insurance and ~10% for income tax vs something much more complicated, but which amounts to about the same. London is great, but Paris is actually very similar in most respects (though quite different culturally). But when you step outside the capital, inequality is much worse in the U.K. Other cities in England really aren’t that nice compared to, say, Strasbourg, Lille or Lyon. And the trains fall apart so getting anywhere is a pain in the neck. And broadband is rubbish.

I lived in Paris for 5 months in 2006 and I loved it. Took the subway everyone and had no problem with homeless people (at least no more than with other major American east coast cities). Did get targeted by scammers once. I thought the subway system was great and the city was beautiful.

> tons of homelessness and dodgy people harassing you in the street (trying to sell you drugs or scam you)

I agree with that. It’s not because of the social safety net however; or it is in a way, but only because it got combined with other laxist laws and policies that drew people in for the bad reasons.