Tribune. Between 1974 and 2017, the industry’s share of total employment fell from 24.4% to 10.3%. Can we continue to watch our employment basins weaken? For the sake of national sovereignty and international scale, can France be emptied of its know-how and technologies in order to become a pure country of services? Can we let our trade deficit plunge? At almost 85 billion euros, the 2021 one blows up the 2011 record mainly due to a deficit in trade in industrial goods.
For the economist Michel Aglietta, there is no doubt that the return to planning is the solution to respond in particular to the environmental challenge: in this matter, it is indeed impossible to bet on proactive behavior on the part of economic agents.
For Guillaume Kasbarian, member of parliament for La République en marche and chairman of the National Assembly’s commission of inquiry on deindustrialization, the problem is first of all that of taxation and the cost of work. In the foreword to the report, he sets out, in parallel with those of the rapporteur, his own proposals, which will in no way regulate the mechanisms at work and will continue to weaken the social safety net of workers in the long run.
Among his proposals, the continuation of the reduction in production taxes was confirmed in early January by Bruno Le Maire, the minister of the economy, thus responding to the requests of Medef. It also includes the expansion of the reduction of employer contributions, a reduced pension contribution rate and hiring bonuses for seniors without conditionality for multiple companies benefiting from the public purse through, in particular, the tax credit for competitiveness and employment (CICE) or the research tax credit (CIR).
Lower taxes, reduce revenue
The reduction of production taxes was already the flagship measure of the France Stimulus plan of September 2020, during the first wave of aid during the health crisis. Under the Institute of Public Policy, this one is picked up by ” mid-sized companies [entreprises de taille intermédiaire] and large companies (…), capital intensive, and having suffered little from the health crisis. The tax cuts are thus twice as high for the tenth of companies least affected as for the tenth most affected ” with the result of record dividends for 2021.
In 2021, the 120 companies in the SBF 120 stock index, among the 200 largest French companies, paid 52 billion in dividends despite the pandemic context and the many sectors temporarily shut down. The CAC 40 giants alone have made 137 billion euros in profit, a level never before reached.
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