In a recently published columnthe economist Thomas Piketty proposed exceptional taxation of the 500 richest French people whose overall fortune has increased from 200 to 1,200 billion euros since 2010. At the level of 10% of this increase in wealth, this “tax of billionaires”, as he cleverly designated it, would bring France 100 billion, or two thirds of the deficit: a godsend for a Prime Minister struggling to pass his finance law.
This idea is fundamentally stupid. On the one hand, because these famous 1,000 billion are not liquid, but invested in the capital of companies. “Never mind,” replies the economist, “let everyone pay their tax in shares”: an undoubtedly brilliant idea which would make the State, known worldwide for its brilliant managerial abilities, a huge owner of securities. . On the other hand, because it is a one-shot measure, leaving the issue unchanged for next year.
Income inequality is not getting worse
If there is one point that we can nevertheless concede to Piketty, it is that the tax on billionaires is indeed a political debate. And this in three aspects. The first concerns the role of tax as a criterion of social justice and that of social justice as an objective of tax. Contrary to the rhetoric of the left, income inequality is not getting worse in our country.
After redistribution, the gap in living standards between the most privileged decile of the population and the least privileged decile has hovered around 3.4 for around forty years (according to the Observatory of Inequalities). Thanks to globalization, a small fringe of French people have certainly seen their salaries explode, but what the immense mass of our fellow citizens suffer from is worry about the future, the absence of prospects, the stagnation of purchasing power, the minimum wage and the bankruptcy of public services. Appropriating 10, even 20% of the wealth of the super rich would flatter the egalitarian passion of the French, but would in no way resolve the fundamental problems of the French economy which are called the work deficit, deindustrialization, the insufficiency of investment, state dysfunction and widespread impoverishment.
The second concerns the inability of public officials to promote equality other than through tax and benefit. Of course, equalizing income by taxing on one side and subsidizing on the other is suitable for mass management, but what a lack of finesse and imagination when it is necessary to combat the inequality of conditions through equality chances! We have been in the new millennium for almost a quarter of a century, but we continue to think about social policies with the concepts and tools of the 1950s.
France has exhausted all its room for maneuver
The third concerns awareness of the seriousness of the budgetary and economic situation in our country. Entirely dedicated to reducing debt, the billionaires’ tax would reduce the public debt by 3%, a straw. With the highest rate of compulsory deductions in the OECD, the highest level of public spending in the world and a public debt threshold which places it at the mercy of its creditors, France has exhausted all its room for maneuver budgetary and fiscal.
Its economic policy consists of subsidizing business productivity and supporting the purchasing power of households through the drift of public finances, a disaster. Only drastic and cumulative measures, weighing on a large part of the population, such as freezing pensions or increasing VAT, would be likely to initiate an initial recovery, but they are unfair and would weigh on an already struggling population. purchasing power. To restore public finances, the only option is therefore growth, which involves massively reducing taxes and social charges while investing in public services. It’s a dead end. The situation of public finances has become the Algerian ball and chain of the Fifth Republic. This, as well as the collective and individual responsibility of those who led us there, must be politically debated, other than at the end of the mandate, with our backs to the wall. Because everyone knows how the history of Republics that run with bullets on their feet ends.
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