A paradox because it shouldn’t happen. Investors should be scared off by restrictive labor laws, high income-tax rates, high cost of labor, and now the mud-wrestling bouts over nationalizing some industrial plants [Nationalizations Take Off In France].

But turns out, astute multinational corporations pay practically no income tax.

As if to underline the harsh reality in France, the article ran the same day that Texas Instruments announced its intention to shutter a research and development plant at Villeneuve-Loubet, near Nice, in southern France, as part of its corporate weight-loss program.