“The Zucman tax was to be able to then reduce the growth of French social benefits”, believes business manager Nicolas Dufourcq

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

Myriam Encaoua : This Friday, October 31, was a very special day with concessions made by the Prime Minister, particularly on the Social Security budget, in favor of reversing the freezing of a certain number of benefits. This is at the heart of your work. The Zuckman tax was also rejected. How do you look at what has already happened? Do you think deep down, well, he’s playing the game of compromise? And is it becoming more possible or, on the contrary, are you dismayed because we are still very far from meeting the deficits?

Nicolas Dufourcq : I consider that we are doing with the Assembly that the French elected. It is an assembly which is divided and which must reach compromises. So, we are experiencing a stage in a very long series which is the history of French pensions, which began with the law of 1982, where the retirement age was raised from 65 to 60, from which we have still not emerged, unlike all European countries. And none of this prevents the GPS point of the evolution of the French retirement system from being that we will return to retirement at 65 years old. We cannot continue to gain quarters of life expectancy every year, in France as everywhere in Europe, and imagine that we could protect the sliders of a pay-as-you-go pension plan without moving anything. This can’t work.

The nation continues to think of itself as if it had 10 million retirees, it has 18 million, it will have 20. In 2050, it will have 200,000 centenarians. In 2040, there will be 1 in 6 French people aged 75 and over. How do you expect us to continue to think as if we were still in the 70s? In any case, the GPS point is clear, it is not going to move. Now, there is a parliamentary episode which is linked to other angers which we could list, which are not the subject of my book.

Myriam Encaoua : To stay on the news of the day, the big news is also that there will be no Zuckman tax. You said she was a communist. You also saw that Jordan Bardella has resumed. He also says she is a communist. How was she a communist?

Because it is a levy of 2% on the total assets of an entrepreneur who has sweated 100 reals all his life to build it up. And so this is something that is directly contrary to a number of articles in the Declaration of Human Rights on the inalienable and sacred side of property.

Myriam Encaoua: There is a misunderstanding about professional heritage. Nobody knows exactly what it is. If we consider that these are the shares, since that is what professional assets are. Why is taxing these actions inconceivable? This is what Gabriel Zucman proposes.

But it is inconceivable because it represents sums which require these shares to be sold regularly to pay the tax. But above all, it is totally politically illegitimate. How can you want to undertake business in a country which is now a country of old people, where we will still have to do everything so that active, dynamic people pull the country along, a country much heavier than before, by telling them, when you succeed, we will take from you every year, every year, 2% of the value.

I think that the Zucman tax was a kind of glass of whiskey taken dry in order to then carry out the dentist’s operation consisting of reducing the growth of French social benefits.

Click on the video to watch the interview in full.