the debate between Laurent Wauquiez (Republican Right) and Thomas Porcher, member of the Dismayed Economists

This text corresponds to part of the transcription of the debate above. Click on the video to watch it in full.

Caroline Roux: Thomas Porcher, you are an economist, professor at the Paris School of Business and member of Les Economistes atterrés. Good evening, thank you for being with us this evening. I imagine you listened carefully. Perhaps you want to come back to this word that we talked about together this evening, “assistantship”?

Thomas Porcher: I do not at all agree with the observation that has been made on the fact that social benefits would allow you to earn more money than if you work.

Laurent Wauquiez: Sorry, what I’m saying is that there is not enough of a gap in our country between what we can earn with social assistance and what we earn through work. I am very precise.

Thomas Porcher: In all configurations, when you work, including when you work part-time at minimum wage, you have a disposable income, in the end, which is much higher than if you did not work. Because you know that on salaries and low salaries, there are benefits that are also added. So you can do all the configurations: single person, single parent with one child, two children, couple, all the time, including part-time at minimum wage, including quarter-time at minimum wage, we earn more in disposable income when we work, than when we don’t work.

Laurent Wauquiez: I will answer you on this subject. There are two elements. First, one, it’s not accurate. Moreover, your colleagues Denis Anne and Yannick L’Horty have shown very well that in a certain number of municipalities, such as Paris, for example, the level of municipal aid is so high that there are configurations where we can lose.

Thomas Porcher: They said that it was quite exceptional, indeed, the case of Paris. But when you go to the ADRES website, you can check it, it’s very clear.

Laurent Wauquiez: The second thing is that when you go to work, you go 30 kilometers from home, you sometimes work 3/8 shifts in jobs that can be demanding. And in our country, we say: “But be happy, you will earn 150, 200 euros more than if you stay at home.” I don’t agree with that.

Thomas Porcher: No, you have additional benefits which make your disposable income higher.

Laurent Wauquiez: The gap, as you know well, can sometimes be a very small gap, because what we don’t take into account is that when you work, you have costs. For example, you need to organize childcare for your children. You need to be able to organize your family. You can have, for example, at home, in Haute-Loire, people work approximately 30 km from home on average. You have to have the car, ensure a full tank of gas, maintenance costs, insurance. So all of these are costs.

Thomas Porcher: Yes, but they earn more. You recognize it. They have more disposable income, except in the cases you cited. They are very rare. Moreover, Mr. L’Horty said in his study that they are very rare.

Laurent Wauquiez: What I’m saying is that I want there to be more of a gap so that it’s more motivating and more rewarding to work.

Thomas Porcher: We really need to keep in mind that social benefits are not a way out of poverty. They make it possible to reduce poverty, to ensure that it is a little lower. But we cannot escape poverty. We escape poverty when we start to have a fixed minimum wage. Aid benefits are the starting point for getting out of poverty. Otherwise, we remain below poverty. Certainly, our services allow us to have a much lower intensity of poverty than in our neighboring countries, but they do not allow us to escape poverty. So we must not fuel this image of this person who would stay at home and receive benefits, who would not work and who would have a good life. This is false.

Including your unified allowance at 70% of the minimum wage: in reality, this is already the case for the majority of people. I mean, when we look at people per consumption unit, that we take the whole family, even someone who has two children, in a couple, unemployed, and who will receive approximately the 2,000 euros in benefits that you say, when we give them per consumption unit, they are below the poverty line, they are below 70% of the minimum wage.

This text corresponds to part of the transcription of the debate above. Click on the video to watch it in full.