The Cercle des Economistes signs its latest work under a title borrowed from the populist press, its attempts to answer the main economic and social questions that the French are asking to each other’s in these troubled times. The book brings together the best specialists in the fields covered: the fragmentation of the world economy; the questions of debt and the French employment rate; labor immigration; public money financing culture. In each chapter, the authors emphasize the importance of the questions asked, analyze – or rather criticize – the answers generally given to these questions by political circles and the media, and then, drawing on the best sources, engage in useful “reasoned returns to facts” and “deconstructions of myths”, to finally formulate concrete proposals to revamp the fundamentals of the country. The reader of the book will note that in economic and social matters, elected officials and the media too often engage in abusive simplifications, the propagation of counter-truths and clever simulations, in order to defend ideologies and justify programs with improbable effects. The reader will find that the unemployment rates of “the young and the old” are abnormally higher than those of other Western countries, and that more than 600,000 French seniors are virtually without resources. The reader will also learn that the actual working hours of French workers of working age is close to the European average, that the expulsion of “working immigrants” would ruin the construction, catering, and domestic services sectors. They will be surprised to learn that the responsibility for France’s public over-indebtedness is more attributable to right-wing policies (favorable to tax cuts) than to the left (oriented towards corporate taxation). They will learn that economic growth can be combined with a search for happiness without indulging in laziness, and that the promotion of culture involves both public and private fundings. After reading the book, the reader will remain skeptical about the chances of sorting out the country’s fundamentals in the short or medium terms.
The 16 authors are teacher-researchers and leaders of institutions, members of the Cercle des Economistes.
J-J. Pluchart