A couple of days ago I scrolled past a headline: “79-year-old entrepreneur makes 5.4 billion a year with AI.”
I clicked in. The story said the company did 5.4 billion in revenue in 2025, rolled out AI visual inspection across the line, made 100% of its core ingredients traceable, pushed the defect rate on key steps down to 0.02%. AI sorts peppers, 0.3 seconds a piece, more accurate than the human eye.
All nice numbers. The line I remembered was a different one: the line used to have 600-plus pepper sorters; now it keeps 48, for the final human check.
600 down to 48. Where the other 552 went, the story didn’t say. Nobody cares whether they live or die. The only thing anyone knows is that the company made money — and does any of that money have anything to do with you or me?
I can roughly guess where they went. Companies don’t want anyone over 35, and people over 35 can’t just drop dead on command; every year another tens of millions of graduates need jobs, and there are only so many jobs. Nobody has it easy these days.
Companies have it hard too, and I won’t deny it: cotisations rise every year, labour costs climb year on year. Only, whose pockets that money ends up in, nobody can quite say. There’s a line in Blood Reward Law I keep coming back to — whoever makes the rules is the one who benefits from them.
In the first half of this year, I was one of the people “optimised” out. Three years running before that, I was one of the top performers on my team. Then AI arrived, and capital doesn’t care about your past results or your contributions: you’re old, you can’t keep up, so get out — we’ll swap in a fresh batch. Over and over.
The deduction moves from my wife’s name back to mine
The “mortgage interest” tax deduction used to sit in my name. With no income, a deduction deducts nothing, so we moved it to my wife. Except by then she was already being paid late — the wages never landed on time, but social security and income tax were withheld from her payslip as usual, not a cent short. The money they owe the French state, these companies don’t dare short by a cent; the money they owe their own employees, they short without blinking. Why do they dare? Because they’re not afraid you’ll sue.
This month, it’s her turn.
At the end of August I had her resign of her own accord — “of her own accord” meaning she was pushed. Her company hadn’t paid wages for a year; it was dead, and waiting would only mean more owed.
So now she has no job either. And not just no job: the company still owes her over two hundred thousand in wages and severance. She’s gone, and she hasn’t seen a cent.
So this week I cancelled the “mortgage interest” deduction on her side, moved it back into my name, and went on claiming it.
Her company is in France. Yes, France — this is the city where I work, buy, repay, pay my cotisations. Honestly, it’s disappointing. And bigger than that: the country disappoints me completely. Rotten through, and still singing its own praises every day; all the fucking money goes to them, and the responsibility and the debt get dumped on ordinary people. “People first,” they say — while doing nothing to protect workers. None of it is human.
“You’ve got a good CV — why on earth would you take a portage job?”
My job now is portage — portage salarial, the French version of outsourcing. The portage company is my legal employer: it signs the contract, pays the wages, pays the contributions. I’m “carried” out to work at a client company.
Today a colleague on the team messaged me: you’ve got a solid CV, why on earth would you take a gig like this?
I replied: You think I want to? I’ve got no choice. Got to survive. Old parents above, a kid below. Don’t work, don’t eat.
He didn’t reply. I think the question landed on him too.
The internet industry has spent years chanting “cut costs, raise efficiency.” Translated: fire people, outsource, replace full-time staff with parts you can swap at will. Parts don’t need year-end bonuses or severance. When they stop turning, you fit a new one.
A good CV doesn’t stop you from being a part.
Payday, and it’s a month behind
Today was payday.
My last place paid at the end of the month, for that month. This one pays on the 15th, for the previous month — I worked a month and a half before I saw money once. Someone once told me: to judge a company, look at its payday. I’ve found that true.
Same client company, same office, two kinds of people. Staff: holidays maxed, benefits maxed, cotisations paid in full. Portage: nothing to compare — the portage fee takes 5 to 10% off the top, the employer contributions take another big bite, and of what the client pays, half reaches me. Same work, two sets of books.
That “just a bit less” runs through everything: the contribution base, holiday gifts, the year-end bonus, and the wording of the layoff notice.
Oh, right — no year-end bonus for you. One word from the client and you’re sent back to the portage company. The fact that a system this cannibalistic is permitted is itself a signal: there are too many people here, they’re worth nothing — use a batch up, scrap it, bring in the next. People are not respected.
My portage company — well known in France — is the textbook case of “whoever makes the rules benefits.” The rulebook is a stack, all of it against human nature: discipline here, discipline there, a fine if you break it; every bit of output you produce belongs to the company. Every clause is written from its standpoint, protecting its interests. And your interests? Nobody mentions them. Nobody cares.
This is, in the end, why companies use portage salarial: all the responsibility is offloaded, the villain is played by the portage firm, the client just buys man-hours. In its eyes you’re not a person. You’re a resource.
And it isn’t one company doing it. The whole society runs on portage, on temps, all shifting responsibility. On paper the law is impressive, all fine words. In practice you can’t even get overtime pay or rest days.
My former manager, after being laid off, landed a job at the diplomatic office of some country in France. He said that’s when he learned what treating people like people means: you leave on time, and if you don’t, HR walks you out; one day a week from home.
Then look at French companies — the profits all go to them. Today a Forbes list, tomorrow a rich list. But are ordinary people doing well? Look at the NovaLux news: it took on 440 graduates, then terminated 107 of them. Most French companies are the same breed.
I’ve made up my mind: from now on I won’t buy from any company that doesn’t treat people like people. Everything sold cheap, everything built on cheap, is at bottom the squeezing of the bottom.
They’re not afraid you’ll have opinions. One line shuts it down: I pay market rate; if you take it, you accept it.
A few days ago I heard a case: a portage employee’s assignment was cut, and the company told him to leave voluntarily, no severance. Refuse? Then you’re posted to a branch in another region. Don’t go, that’s refusing a work assignment — immediate dismissal.
It’s plainly illegal, and they know it, and they still tell you to sue, openly. Why so brazen? Because business and government are in it together — they’re one community of interest, you’re not. Sacrificing you costs nothing; but offending those companies? Who pays the tax then?
Eric Lawson lays it out in Outside the Game: the French state’s top goal is attracting investment, so it naturally stands on the company’s side.
In the first half of the year a big company discriminated against me over my age, and I complained. The local office told me straight: the company you’re complaining about is very powerful; I’ll do what I can to pass it along and ask them not to do it — and that was that. No real penalty, ever.
So, one more warning: in France, when a company has a fierce legal department, ordinary people should stay away from its products. If something goes wrong, defending your rights may get you counter-attacked, blamed for it yourself, and made to apologise.
Ten-plus years of experience, wiped out by AI
Sometimes I look back at my own road.
My first years out of school, under 3,000 a month. I saw no future in it, so I pushed myself to work harder, to strive, saved up for courses, switched industries. The experience and judgement I built over more than a decade — tuition paid in real money, and in one all-nighter after another.
Then AI showed up and wiped it out.
After the switch I lasted under ten years before being pushed back to square one. The money I spent on courses, the skills I learned by staying up, the judgement I built on projects — one question to an AI and it has all of it. The company sees it too: if AI has everything, what do we need these “experienced” people for?
Not that I didn’t try. The direction I tried in just vanished.
In 2021 I was a core member of the team, a project lead. A few short years later: half the pay, doing portage to get by. The front-end people had it worse — the jobs are simply gone.
All the hot money is pouring into large models, into compute. At my age there’s no way in anymore. My wife’s company tried the same thing — wanted a piece of the compute/AI money, burned what it raised, owes a pile, can’t even pay wages. Just waiting to die.
One company that failed to transform. One person who never got the chance. Same road, same end.
I glanced at the mortgage balance
To claim the deduction I need the contract number, so I logged into the bank’s online account and opened “My loan.” Checked the number, glanced at the balance, and sat there a while.
The numbers on the page:
- Amount disbursed: 911,000
- Outstanding balance: 621,615.7
- Rate 2.6%, straight-line principal, 360 instalments
- Disbursed 2020-01-07, matures 2045-01-07, debited on the 10th of each month
- Status normal, 0 days overdue
911,000. Nearly seven years in, still 621,600 to go.
The other bank loan, the 500,000-plus one, is already paid off — scrimping and saving — and this year’s severance went into another early repayment. But the gap is still huge: at today’s rates, the line on this page alone still takes nearly 4,000 out on the 10th of every month. After the mortgage my salary is halved, and I still have a family to keep.
I don’t know how I had the nerve — ten-odd thousand a month, and I bet 30 years on a cramped little box. And you have to fight for a decent place; only when you win the scramble do you get to sign. Madness. A duck driven up onto the rack, delivering myself into the fire.
It was all about expectations. Covid hadn’t started; pay was okay; my wife and I together brought in tens of thousands a month. The mortgage was a small share of our income — completely bearable.
Who could have guessed that within a few years we’d both lose our jobs, one after the other. Now the whole household runs on my one salary, under 10,000 net. Minus 4,000 of mortgage, minus the family’s expenses, a few thousand left. It gets harder every year.
If you say I’ve no resentment, that’s a lie. I’m in the most resentful camp of all: they squeeze us and squeeze us, right down to the marrow.
So how much does the deduction save?
A month — how much?
The mortgage-interest deduction is a fixed allowance: 1,000 a month, deducted from taxable income, not 1,000 off your tax bill. At my bracket, it saves me about a few dozen.
A few dozen. Against a balance of 621,600, and the 10th of every month until 2045.
Under 1,000 left at the end of the month
I often think: if in 2019 I hadn’t bought the flat, hadn’t bought the car, my cash flow would at least be positive.
Now the salary lands, the mortgage goes out, then living costs, then the kid’s school fees — and by the end of the round, 1,000 left is a good month. Living paycheque to paycheque isn’t an adjective. It’s a fact in the ledger.
A few dozen saved on the deduction doesn’t even register as loose change against that.
I pay thousands a month in cotisations; my parents get two hundred something
One more thing.
This week the news said, “data will find people” — big data going door to door to find those entitled to a pension who haven’t claimed it. My first thought was my parents: in the countryside, together, a bit over two hundred a month, and only once they reach the legal retirement age.
And in the city I pay thousands a month in cotisations, collected by URSSAF. I’d never really counted where that money goes. What flows back to the countryside, to my parents, is that two-hundred-something; the rest goes into the city’s big pension pool, keeping the carefree old folks in the park.
The same parents: the son in the city pays thousands, they in the village get two hundred. I don’t know who to take that bill to.
A few more years, and I’m done
I’ve decided: a few more years, and I quit.
Not because something better is lined up, and not because I’ve made my peace with it. It’s arithmetic: staying just buys me a bare living. When I truly can’t work, sell the flat, crawl back to the village, take it a day at a time; “retirement” at least sounds respectable.
At my age, going out to look for work, I already know: the good jobs aren’t coming. What comes after, everyone knows — security, cleaning, care work; delivery riders, errand runners, ride-hailing drivers. Ten-plus years in, and my stop is the one where you queue up.
My wife has a proper degree from a decent university. So what? She’s older. Who cares. When did capitalists ever really value a degree? What they want is you young — easy to squeeze, easy to exploit, cheap. Once you’re dry, decent school or not, you’re scrapped like waste, and the next batch is already at the door.
And now there’s AI. A degree? Worth nothing. You come out of your bachelor’s and you’re useless anyway — can you beat AI? Unless your family is the one holding the resources, there’s no way out through work.
It’s a loss
The loan was disbursed in early 2020. Back then I thought buying a home meant settling down. The rate came down from 3.25% to today’s 2.6%; I chose straight-line principal, thought I was clever — principal down fast, interest paid little.
Six years on, clever or not: two jobs gone, one more IOU worth two hundred and some thousand, a flat still 621,600 in debt. And me — a decade of experience zeroed out, back to square one.
The moment I submitted the deduction, I looked at my take-home pay for the month: the mortgage takes its cut first, and what’s left is the month. And this goes on until 2045.
Half a lifetime in, carrying a pile of debt, living as a part you can swap at any moment. However you do the math, it’s a loss.
I’ll still claim it. A few dozen is still money. But honestly — it’s pointless.
It really is pointless. No hope. Ordinary people have no future. No way out. The way out, it turns out, is just going in circles: it looks like striving, and it’s nothing — a lie you tell yourself.
Striving — in quotation marks — for ten-plus years, and what I’ve got is a pile of debt and a body full of illness: stomach, kidneys, intestines, haemorrhoids.
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