The author compares tax revenues and public spending between the countries of the European Union. She notes that French public spending is the highest high in relation to GDP, but that their efficiency is one of the lowest in Europe. She argues that the use of the private sector for certain types of expenditure is inefficient: “We lose out twice: individually, because paying individually costs more than putting it in a common pot; collectively, because investing less in education, the environment, and transport means reducing our long-term prospects.” She proposes a set of concrete measures aimed at to improve the productivity and quality of public services, as well as to boosting collective spending on environmental protection, improving education and developing infrastructure (shops, factories, public services, public transport, roads). It also recommends stimulating job creation and skills development through a set of fiscal and social measures to stimulate job creation and skills development. She favours the implementation of a reasoned policy more focused on supply than on demand.
The author also criticises the excessive concentration of French wealth, which is largely unproductive. The long-term rise in stock market prices term and property capital gains promote the accumulation of capital following a systematic and recurring process. With the ageing of the population, there are more rentiers than entrepreneurs, more heirs than creators, and more inactive than active people. This is why the author proposes to establish a virtuous process of a social, regulatory, financial and fiscal nature, helping to boost investment, employment and growth, as well as social mobility.
Anne-Laure Delatte is Director of Research
at the CNRS, attached to Paris Dauphine University and a Fellow at the Center for Economic
Policy Research.
Article written by Jean-Jacques Pluchart