Sébastien Laye is an entrepreneur and associate researcher at the Thomas More Institute.
If the Prévert-style catalogs of economic measures are back during the presidential period, times have changed and since the abyssal hiatus in 2017 between Bruno Le Maire's 1000 pages of reforms (quickly forgotten when he took the reins of Bercy but under the Macronist leadership) and the absence of detailed measures claimed in Emmanuel Macron's project, it is the latter approach that now prevails, with the exception of the more detailed sequence of the LR Congress last fall.
It is clear that, with the help of the epidemic and geopolitical crisis, the economic themes (purchasing power, inflation, growth, employment) which nevertheless predominated in the expectations of the electorate, have been relegated to the background.
In this lethargic context, the former candidate of the disruption but who had always left us unsatisfied in terms of economic reforms, chose caution, relegating the economy behind education for example.
Thus, one could criticize the Macron Economy 2022 project for exactly what one could say of it in 2017: to err on the side of vagueness, often unachievable (are we not often in the presence of slogans rather than achievable reforms?), not taking into account the macroeconomic context or the evaluation of public policies (what works and what does not work in terms of reforms based on experiments).
Read alsoFrançois Bazin: “Emmanuel Macron could be the subject of a beautiful murderous portrait”
It is initially an announcement of reform which was telegraphed even before the presentation of the program, which is that of the pensions and the objective of the departure to 65 years.
It is necessary to recall - let us not be afraid of words - all the past positions of the candidate and his schizophrenia on this precise subject.
In 2017, he indicated that this type of parametric reforms (moving the retirement age or contributions), advocated by the right, was useless, antisocial and cruel: it made people dream with a point-based pension project.
Never applied as such in any country, this reform could not be carried out during the five-year term: five years later, Macron, faced with the imbalances of the pension funds, therefore returned to the "classic" reform but by proposing a version which renders it obsolete.
He proposes to spread the
increase in the starting age to…nine years!
Who can guarantee that his successor will continue the reform?
What will be the financial context of pension funds in five or ten years?
This reform makes sense if it is carried out in two or three years: it would balance the coffers (one year off brings in 10 billion) and have a real impact.
By spreading it over nine years, all the economists will explain to you that in reality the reform will not take place: above all it eludes the real subject, which is the necessary capitalization of part of our pensions, to save the pension system. but also to defend our industry and our savings.
Macron sins here by lack of inventiveness or ambition.
Who can guarantee that his successor will continue the reform?
What will be the financial context of pension funds in five or ten years?
This reform makes sense if it is carried out in two or three years: it would balance the coffers (one year off brings in 10 billion) and have a real impact.
By spreading it over nine years, all the economists will explain to you that in reality the reform will not take place: above all it eludes the real subject, which is the necessary capitalization of part of our pensions, to save the pension system. but also to defend our industry and our savings.
Macron sins here by lack of inventiveness or ambition.
Who can guarantee that his successor will continue the reform?
What will be the financial context of pension funds in five or ten years?
This reform makes sense if it is carried out in two or three years: it would balance the coffers (one year off brings in 10 billion) and have a real impact.
By spreading it over nine years, all the economists will explain to you that in reality the reform will not take place: above all it eludes the real subject, which is the necessary capitalization of part of our pensions, to save the pension system. but also to defend our industry and our savings.
Macron sins here by lack of inventiveness or ambition.
it would make it possible to balance the coffers (a year's lag brings in 10 billion) and have a real impact.
By spreading it over nine years, all the economists will explain to you that in reality the reform will not take place: above all it eludes the real subject, which is the necessary capitalization of part of our pensions, to save the pension system. but also to defend our industry and our savings.
Macron sins here by lack of inventiveness or ambition.
it would make it possible to balance the coffers (a year's lag brings in 10 billion) and have a real impact.
By spreading it over nine years, all the economists will explain to you that in reality the reform will not take place: above all it eludes the real subject, which is the necessary capitalization of part of our pensions, to save the pension system. but also to defend our industry and our savings.
Macron sins here by lack of inventiveness or ambition.
to save the pension system but also to defend our industry and our savings.
Macron sins here by lack of inventiveness or ambition.
to save the pension system but also to defend our industry and our savings.
Macron sins here by lack of inventiveness or ambition.
Emmanuel Macron has abandoned liberal software in favor of a conservative path: taxes during your lifetime will not go down, but your children will keep a larger share of the cake.
Sebastien Laye
We also find him completely against the grain (but more in tune with the most devoid of economic imagination of the conservative right?) on the reduction in inheritance tax.
There again, no big bang on the rights, we will speak of clientelism (retired electorate): but this is ideologically a real torpedo of the macronist software.
From 2014 to 2018, wanting to be liberal on the left, Emmanuel Macron castigated rents, while promoting the enrichment of entrepreneurs.
The message was that you could get rich during your life, accepting inequalities, but successions put all talents on the same level.
Emmanuel Macron abandoned this liberal software in favor of a conservative path: eventually, taxes during your lifetime will not go down, especially for entrepreneurs, but your children will keep a bigger slice of the pie.
If there is a revolution, it is here, in the very foundation of Macronist software.
This reform would have no place in the book
Revolutions
of 2017 by Emmanuel Macron.
On tax, he has also abandoned all ambition: if the ratio of compulsory levies / GDP has desperately remained anchored at 46% during the five-year term, nothing should change.
The state takes around 1115 billion euros per year.
Macron promises 15 billion cuts, or 1%... And what cuts?
The first, salutary, concerns the CVAE and part of the production taxes.
These are 75 billion, twice the average European level, and we promise to lower them by 7 billion: but this effort would have to be multiplied by 4 to have the slightest real impact!
The second tax cut, that of the TV license fee, is an insult to intelligence: where are the economic studies, the impact studies,
which show the negative biases of this fee?
What economic activity does it now hinder?
Emmanuel Macron promises like all the candidates to return to a deficit of 3% of GDP at the end of the five-year term (a year ago this objective was to be reached in 2024) and to finance his new reforms with 15 billion in savings via the pension reform (if it were less slow and spread out, he would have recovered 30), 15 billion in savings on local authorities (a great classic of the State, making others pay, it remains to be seen what concrete changes he will propose ), and the rest by growth (impossible to assess over the duration of the five-year term at this stage).
Read alsoDebt: The Mayor defends the government's strategy after the alert from the Court of Auditors
He also chose to revive an Arlesian in terms of reforms, the question of the RSA and its counterpart, speaking of 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. per week of activity.
Morally, a large part of the population will join him.
But no economist or lawyer would bet on the feasibility of this reform as it stands.
First, some departments have experimented with it, and the results have not been conclusive.
If there are activities to occupy someone 20 hours a week, they result in a job.
We are not there in the presence of hours of general interest for prisoners, which are moreover difficult to organize with our current law.
This is also our second remark on this pseudo-reform: "between 3 and 8 p.m." as the president said, it's 5.5 p.m.,
or in legal half-time working hours.
The model exists, and it must respect the minimum remuneration, our hourly minimum wage: either we end up with an RSA of 750 euros (against 430 euros today), or we tear up the social law.
More likely, we will never make this reform.
If the main macroeconomic lines are incoherent or chaotic, certain microeconomic approaches, without being revolutionary, are more convincing.
Sebastien Laye
If the major macroeconomic lines are incoherent or chaotic, certain microeconomic approaches, without being revolutionary, are more convincing;
aid to help with the leasing of electric vehicles, the reminder of the previously announced innovation plan, testify to real continuity in the energy transition and technology.
We also find the DNA of the 2017 campaign in terms of work, with the promise to overhaul unemployment insurance and Pôle Emploi, or the extension of time savings accounts: as if the work of the first five-year period had stopped on the way, between the crisis of the "Yellow Vests" and that of the Covid-19, and that it had to be resumed in the event of re-election.
Without unfortunately tackling the real issues, such as the 35-hour exit or too low salaries in the