Sébastien Laye is an entrepreneur and associate researcher at the Thomas More Institute.
Didier Long is a physicist.
In France, an inhabitant works an average of 600 hours per year.
It is the total number of hours worked in France divided by the number of inhabitants, all inhabitants combined, retirees, children and adults, that is to say the 67 million French people.
In Switzerland, this number is 900 hours per year per inhabitant.
The gap between France and its Swiss neighbor, enormous, is thus 50%.
The solution to France's problems lies in increasing the total number of hours worked.
This means getting out of the straitjacket of 35 hours for those who are already working, but also encouraging an increase in the number of those who are working.
Sébastien Laye and Didier Long
It is more or less the same ratio when we compare with the other developed countries, Switzerland being however in the highest levels. We work too little in France. Only 40% of the population works for 50% in Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Denmark, even more in Switzerland. All this gap has occurred gradually during these last 45 years as the assistantship, almost non-existent in 1975, developed in France to reach 7 million people who should work if we compare to other countries and who do not work. Obviously, the 35 hours made the problem considerably worse. These 7 million people are retired too early, or start their professional careers too late,are unemployed too often and for too long at different stages of their careers or take unnecessary or inefficient training. All this results in too low a total number of hours worked in France.
We can speak of an undersizing of the French economy in the light of these figures: it explains the collapse of our welfare state (which is not supported by enough hours worked and wealth creation) and the purchasing power difficulties of our fellow citizens.
Because the hours worked must first of all make it possible to cover the irreducible expenses: it is necessary to find accommodation, food, treatment, pay pensions, finance the sovereign state (justice, police, foreign affairs, army), pay the maintenance of roads, paying for his car, gasoline, heating, electricity and paying for the education of his children.
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In a way, the quality of life begins once we have paid all these incompressible expenses and which have been largely planed over the years in reality: we are less well housed, we eat less well, we receive less care, our retirees have difficulties at the end of the month, our army has been transformed into a poorly equipped scale model, our justice system lacks resources, like our police, and we give our children to poorly paid and frustrated teachers and in no way considered up to the task that is theirs. We use our car to the tune, we calculate its movements, we reduce our heating even if it means falling ill, etc.
The quality of life is what is left after you pay for all of that.
This can be measured by outings to restaurants, the cinema, the opera, visits to museums, trips in France and abroad.
And for the vast majority of French people, at this stage, there isn't much left, if anything at all for a growing number.
It is therefore essential to understand that this difference of 300 hours per year per capita is enormous, even more when it comes to considering the quality of life.
Each worker or retiree in France would earn 1,500 euros net of tax (you read that right) more each month if it were possible to go instantly from 600 hours to 900 hours, which is not possible since companies are undersized too.
1000 euros per additional month and per worker or retiree going to companies for their development and profits, the monthly increase in production per employee and retiree being 2,500 euros.
This figure makes it possible to measure the difference with Switzerland.
We need to go from 27 million working people to 34 million to reach our true GDP potential.
And if we want to be even richer, we can also increase the number of hours worked by those who work.
Sébastien Laye and Didier Long
Of course, part of these 2,500 euros net of tax would in reality be taken in the form of taxes to better finance the sovereign state, to equip our army, a larger army, to have a justice that would have 100 to 150,000 places prison and judges with the means to work, refinance our foreign affairs, our police, upgrade the salaries of teachers as well as their careers, fund research with great ambitions, etc ...
The French would get better housing, eat better, look after themselves better, could buy a car before the previous one becomes a rolling hazard, and even an electric vehicle to make the energy transition, they would heat themselves better, they could better finance insulation heat from their homes, they could pay for their children's higher education.
France would remain France but the French would be as prosperous as they are in Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, etc ...
As we can see, the solution to France's problems lies in increasing the total number of hours worked.
This means getting out of the straitjacket of 35 hours for those who are already working, but also encouraging an increase in the number of those who are working.
Everything comes back to it, and everything goes: we must go from 27 million working people to 34 million to reach our true GDP potential.
And if we want to be even richer, we can also increase the number of hours worked by those who work.
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Everything else is pure demagoguery.
We have already explained in a series of three articles to Figarovox in the summer of 2019 and in a note to the Thomas More Institute at the end of November 2019 what macroeconomic policy would be adapted to Europe and to France in particular (but also to Italy and Spain for example) and which will gradually lead to an increase in the size of the economy over 5 to 10 years so that companies can create themselves, with the free play of entrepreneurial freedom , competition and the market, the 8 million additional jobs needed to turn around France within 10 years, as well as the 10 million jobs that are lacking in Italy.
Whatever path is chosen to implement this policy, this goes through the increase in the profitability of companies in France, the end of the 35-hour period and stricter control of public spending and, which would be desirable, a more stringent policy. expansionist in European countries with strong trade surpluses.