The author is a “man in a hurry” in the sense of Paul Moran. He practices the art of understatement and prefers numbers to speeches. The clarity of his ideas quickly convinces the reader of the inevitable decline of France, which is falling in most international rankings (it went from 7th to 13th in GDP per capita in just twenty years). After a few pages, the reader knows that he is or will be a victim of multiple shortages, doctors in hospitals and the countryside, teachers in schools, colleges and high schools, police and judges, local traders in rural areas, skilled craftsmen, politicians concerned about the welfare of future generations… Shortages are already affecting some of the necessary resources in the pharmaceutical, digital, automotive value chains… The threat of more or less severe shortages looms over most sectors of activity in a situation of international dependence. The process of decline, measured in particular by the level of external debt, is all the more worrying as it seems to become uncontrollable due to the cumulative effects of its determinants.
The author questions the factors that have led France to such a handicap. He attributes it to the aging of its population, its assistantship, its bureaucratization, and its increasingly chaotic political governance. He analyzes the scope of the solutions generally advanced to rectify – at least stabilize – this difficult to control situation. He shows the limits of a reduction in public spending and social assistance, a surtax on the rich and/or retirees. He advocates a form of cultural revolution, based on “additional levers of attraction of work” of a financial, fiscal, social, and cultural nature: better pay and relief of social charges on overtime, simplification of access procedures to work and job mobility, priority given to efficiency over effectiveness, meaning given to work (especially practical) in training courses, promotion of well-being at work, placement of work at the center of personal projects, building models of the artisans of Notre Dame and the organizers of the Olympic Games…
The book’s interest is twofold: it highlights the seriousness of the threat of shortages weighing on the French; it shows – if not demonstrates – that there is no other way out than the fulfillment of each French person through work.
Régis de LAROULLIERE (Normalian mathematics, associate actuary and ENA graduate) was the director of Crédit Foncier and the Médéric group. He is one of the founders of CRAPS (the social protection think tank).
Jean-Jacques Pluchart