OLIVENNES Denis, La France doit travailler plus… et les français être mieux payés, Eds Albin Michel, 2025, 152 pages.

The latest book by Denis Olivennes has a specific and urgent objective, which he summarizes in its title: How to increase the productive power of France and better remunerate work?. He believes that the French are victims of “outdated software”: “spending and taxing more while working less”. He engages in a classical analysis of the factors of the “Great Decline” of France, comparing its main economic indicators to European standards, and in particular to those of Germany.  He deplores the propensity of the French to increasingly prefer leisure to work and to maintain a “culture of conflict” based on slogans such as “tax the rich” and “the praise of laziness”. He also denounces the tendency of elected officials to adopt populist and electoral postures and their propensity to prefer “taxing the rich” to reducing public spending.

Beyond this commonplace observation shared by most economists and sociologists, the author makes three main proposals to restore the value of work: stabilize public debt through budgetary savings and not through new taxes on businesses and consumers; promote work by revaluing it through a reduction in social security contributions and taxes; increase labor productivity through a “Work Shield” based on a faster diffusion of innovation, better training, favorable conditions for returning to work after unemployment, and an extension of the retirement age. He also advocates an intergenerational transfer of resources from retirees to the working population, by “shifting the tax base from work to land and environmental protection”.

The author draws his sources from the best scientific and professional articles. His strength of conviction and his “common sense” reasoning are served by a direct and didactic style.

Denis Olivennes (a graduate of the Ecole Normale and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration) is president of a press, publishing and television group. He is the author of numerous articles and books.

Notes by J-J.Pluchart