“It's clownish”, “it's not serious”… economist Nicolas Bouzou criticizes the Popular Front's tax program

Nicolas Bouzou estime que le Front populaire ne livre pas un programme de gouvernement. MAXPPP – Lionel Guericolas

L’économiste et essayiste, plutôt classé à droite, décrypte les premières annonces de l’union de la gauche qui prévoit d’importantes dépenses en taxant les plus riches. Et il n’est pas tendre…

What do you think of the United Left's program?

I expected that. I was making leaps with the National Rally program which would very significantly increase the deficits, with this one, we are reaching heights. We should ultimately move towards a forced mobilization of French savings. It wouldn't be so bad that we could possibly smile about it.

The minimum wage at 1 600 €, what do you think ?

There are two problems. The first is that the cost of labor, in certain companies, is higher than profitability, so this will automatically destroy jobs. The second effect is the "smicardization" of the salary scale. The share of people on the minimum wage will increase, this will reduce the country's wage dynamic.

The price freeze on food and energy?

Orban's Hungary tried it a year and a half ago and it had the effect of creating shortages. Because if you block prices at levels that are insufficient for producers, you reduce supply. But everyone knows it and if it was a good idea everyone would do it.

Fiscally, it's about making the rich pay?

The Macron government's tax policy is the right one. By removing the financial part of the ISF and flat tax, France has not become a tax haven. It is just an average country among OECD countries in terms of capital taxation. Now, with these measures, this would put us back in the category of countries that tax the most at a time when this is not good for businesses.

Will the Popular Front be able to finance its program with this ?

In my opinion, this is a fiscal policy that does not work and even if it were possible, it would not be commensurate with the expenditure. The ISF you can recover 4 billion euros per year, the various increases will perhaps bring back 10 billion more… This will not even be enough to finance the repeal of the pension reform which will cost several tens of billions of euros. And if we return to retirement at 60, it’s a cost of 100 billion euros. The 10% increase in civil servants' salaries is 20 billion, the minimum wage at 16,000 euros is 3 billion ;hellip; We are no longer in the same orders of magnitude. You will have an explosion in the public deficit. It’s clownish.

For you this is neither serious nor credible…

We can make a left-wing program, I'm not left-wing but I find it legitimate and a social-democratic program could be useful for the country, including tax increases, the reestablishment of the ISF. This can be done seriously and rigorously. But this is not a government program…hellip; It’s a leaflet made to fool people, it’s neither done nor done. It’s not serious.

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