2023-10-30 07:26:00
Faced with the imminent arrival of the cold winter, chilly Belgium is starting to worry regarding rising energy prices. Economist Bruno Colmant has difficulty responding to this concern. Recalling that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is already increasing prices, the professor calls on the population to get used to this increase: “We are going to experience 10 years of energy transition. We will more or less abandon fossil fuels, renewable energy is not yet ready, nuclear energy is not enough. Structurally we are going to have rare and therefore expensive energy, we must get used to spending more on energy than in the past.”
Furthermore, Bruno Colmant recalls that Belgium is a country which “consumes more energy than other countries”.
Inflation forecast for 2024 therefore risks impacting Belgians’ portfolios. A considerable barrier remains the indexation of salaries but some are raising the idea of giving it up. For Bruno Colmant, this is not a solution: “The idea imagined would be to limit the indexation of certain salaries, beyond 4000 for example. We have to keep it because it might put people in poverty if we stopped,” he insists.
“Inflation is still not completely under control”
Then discussing his book, “Belgium tomorrow”, which comes out in bookstores on Tuesday, the economist evokes the problem of particracy in Belgium, invoking a weak link between citizen voting and political representation. “After the citizen vote, some give themselves the right to elect ministers without going through parliament, which should elect a government with the support of citizens,” laments the professor.
For the expert, Belgium, this “floating country which had to build itself from within”, should review the national narrative so that “what we criticize in the country, such as compromise, becomes a strength”. For Bruno Colmant, three important reforms were not made with this principle of compromise. “The next government will be decisive in terms of ideology and political choice,” he explains.
Vivaldi’s untraceable tax reform is not regarding to be found…
Concerning ideology, the professor believes that “extreme votes are perhaps the response to the paralysis that the country is experiencing”. “Creating a sanitary cordon that will exclude a third of parliamentarians does not seem to me to be the right approach. We absolutely must reform the State,” says Bruno Colmant.
Returning to Vivaldi’s results such as the 53% taxation of salaries, Bruno Colmant believes that it will be very difficult to get out of it. “We might reduce state spending but then we reduce the social spending that we need. We will have to increase taxes and one day realize that we must increase the state’s debt.”
Taxing workers less, a solution then according to the professor? “We should have organic taxation, to allow additional deductions when workers are young and to tax older people a little more.”
Faced with this tense job market, Bruno Colmant also discusses the difficulties that we will encounter with the development of artificial intelligence. “It’s going to be a gigantic upheaval that no one understands. This is a huge underestimated problem, we are all going to have to constantly reform and reinvent ourselves. It’s going to be an obligation and people who don’t comply will end up dropping out.”
Artificial intelligence: “The profession of developer will be accessible to many more profiles”
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