In France, any political debate now ends in a jousting TV show on the question of the ultra-rich. Whether we’re talking about climate, pensions, debt or public deficit, it doesn’t matter! Some unsheath, at one point, the argument of the billionaires (their jet, their tax rates, their tax advisers). Immediately, the camp opposite rushes in, deplores the spirit-so-narrow-of-the-French-who-hate-success, and presto: the discussion only revolves around that. So we are experiencing a Bernard-Arnaultisation of public debate.
Let us clarify right away: asking the question of tax justice and tax optimization strategies seems to me to be of public health. Denounce the behavior of certain wealthy people who think they are above the law, ditto. But these questions – framed – today go far beyond their field of relevance: the ultra-rich are no longer a “theme”, they are a totem, a magic formula that engulfs everything in its path. Because according to some, we could solve all of our social problems by better taxing billionaires… The world is so simple, and we had missed it.
“Sloth of Thought”
Raymond Aron, who was one of the great figures and one of the great feathers of these columns, used to say: “French vanity consists in blaming oneself for all faults, except the decisive fault: laziness of thought.” Shortcuts, “magical thinking”, or even “laziness to know” (this formula is from Marc Bloch)… let’s call it what we want. In any case, claiming to be able to solve all the country’s problems by better taxing a few ultra-fortunate people is demagoguery. A country’s economy, the financing of its welfare state and its public services must be sustainable without them. What a fragile nation would we be, moreover, if we had to depend only on fifty billionaires and their decision (or not) to stay in France! But each time, by the power of the figures and the proportions, by their evocative force, the argument hits the mark and sweeps everything away. That we thus exempt ourselves from a more general thought on the conditions of survival of our model is more than worrying.
I say “laziness of thought”. But it is not excluded that the reduction of the social debate to the question of the “richest 1%” is also, for some, hypocrisy. It is the famous geographer Christophe Guilluy who explains it best: “The denunciation ad nauseam of the ‘richest 1%'” is today THE fight of the subversive and radical bourgeoisie. It mobilizes to denounce the “1% of the rich who own 40% of the wealth”. Rhetorical question: who does not find this scandalous? In reality, this 1% allows the upper categories to include themselves in the mass of the exploited. However, without confusing these upper classes with the billionaires of Silicon Valley, there is indeed a social group that benefits from the model (20-25% of the population), and the progressive bourgeoisie is one of them”*. Guilluy raises an essential point here: the “1 percentism” not only offers an easy reading grid for all our problems, but it also offers its heralds the magnificent gift of diversion. They are the winners of the system – integrated into the metropolises and the tertiary sector, consumers of subsidized culture – but they indulge in the luxury of appearing to be wronged by it.
So much for the “1 percentism” camp. However. In the camp opposite, and whatever one says there, one does not always give there in the “complex thought” either. The reflex – defensive – is to oversell the balance sheet of the “runoff”: this idea that the success of the wealthiest would rain down its benefits for everyone “below”. However, while there are of course redistributive effects of taxes and job creation, we have seen in recent decades that the social, geographical and cultural divide has continued to grow in Western societies… We must believe that runoff has its failures… So let’s talk about distribution between dividends, investment and wages; let’s talk about real estate prices; let’s talk about transport, metropolisation, school… Let’s talk about a model that now needs to be reformed through intelligent discussion, diagnosis and examination of the means of action available to our nation. Instead, the little theater of postures that we too often witness will solve nothing. And it’s not even fun.
*the dispossessed, Flammarion.