Certainly in France the initial rate of unemployment benefit is a high percentage of your previous pay packet but it doesn't last forever.That's right. Unemployment starts at a high percentage of your salary at first but drops away quickly unless you enter the workforce again. IOW the incentive is to spend as much time as possible working so that if you do need a benefit, it's still worth something.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
