“What if the government really took things seriously? »

2023-06-01 13:00:04

QWhat are the different options that might pave the way for a possible reform of the active solidarity income (RSA), wanted by the government? There are four of them and they predate the reform envisaged today. First, there is what can be described as the “Raymond Barre method”. Elle goes back to the time when the former prime minister of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and candidate for the 1988 presidential election asked for assistance “absolute” only for old people and disabled people who cannot work at all.

Then there is the “Nixon method”, extended by Clinton in 1996: to oblige for a hardship allowance – not even a job – to work in public parks. She was nicknamed « workfare ». Then, integration, a French originality, the “Jean-Michel Belorgey method” (named following the socialist deputy author and pilot of the minimum integration income law (RMI) promulgated on 1^is December 1988), which combines allowance and effective support for people by social workers.

Let’s leave aside the current demagogic temptation that today agitates the Renaissance and LR deputies as it agitated Clinton, and let’s focus on the fourth solution, that of “human dignity” (human dignity), a German constitutional principle. The Court of Karlsruhe in fact demanded in 2019 that the federal government respect the minimum (dignified) existence set by the Constitution in euros, applicable even following possible reductions for sanctions.

Breaking with the “spirit of stinginess”

If a French government really took things seriously, it should first break with the “spirit of stinginess” that has marked poor relief since its invention in Elizabethan England in the sixteenth century.^e century. Never since that time have governments provided sufficient funding to help poor people lift themselves out of poverty.

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If indeed the sums spent seem enormous, they represent, including unemployment compensation, only 8% of social protection expenditure, once morest 80% for health and pensions. Nearly two thirds of those who receive social minima are below the poverty line in France (including children).

A serious response should therefore be that of decent but substantial funding, and also substantial support action, as it exists for example in Denmark (with the exception of immigrants who are now discriminated once morest in this country). The RMI has never worked well in terms of effective monitoring for the return or access to employment.

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