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AB 2000 studies

Alain Boublil Blog

 

France : the Patapolitics era

In 1897, the French writer Alfred Jarry invented a concept: the Pataphysics, which inspired the surrealists. It was the science of imaginary solutions. The campaign for the next presidential election, in France, these days, would justify creating a new one, Patapolitics, the science of imaginary political solutions, which are mentioned in the programs of some candidates. They are promoting completely inappropriate answers to the problems France has to cope with, but they are presented as solutions, capable to make people dreaming.

In this competition, the winner is, without any hesitation, Marine Le Pen with her project to abandon euro. It would have disastrous consequences without giving to the objectives she pursues any chance to be fulfilled. French people would rush to their bank agencies and to automatic teller machines to withdraw a maximum of cash. Why leaving there their savings? Deposits would be converted in “new francs” whose value would be at least 20% inferior to its equivalent in euro. Then, banks should close their desks and the State would have to limit withdrawals. France would live the same experience than Greece in 2012. Companies, which have contracted loans denominated in euro would be forced to repay them with a devaluated currency, which would put in trouble many of them, with EDF on the front line. Its debt is near 60 billion euro. The company, as a sole option, would have to rise electricity prices. The biggest loser would be the State. Financial markets are already worrying about and the interest rate spread with Germany is increasing. A 34 billion euro loan is due to arrive at maturity next October. To repay it with “new francs”, whatever its rate would be at that time, equivalent to a default, like Argentina in 2001. It will be the same for the coupons the State, the local authorities and social institutions pay on their 2000 billion euro debt. On top of that, the devaluation would generate a rise of imported products, from gasoline to shoes. We would enter into the Brazilian model.

Among other imaginary solutions, Marine Le Pen is closely followed by Jean Luc Mélenchon who proposes to close all our nuclear plants. It is possible to come back to wood burning but the emissions of particles are not very ecological. So, the answer is renewable energies. But they don’t provide energy when we need it. When it is cold, they is few wind and during winter, there is not enough light since night is coming too early to have full production of solar panels. Production and consumption energy figures for the 2016 4th quarter are reminding us to reality. It was colder than usual and several nuclear plants were not operating due to maintenance and checking operations. It allows us to assess if it is possible to do without nuclear energy. The result is without any doubt: renewable energies have not been able to satisfy demand. Wind turbines production fell by 20% and if solar panels production increased (+ 10%), their production was insignificant (0.8%), despite the massive subventions they receive for ten years. The result was a stoppage of electricity exports and the use of all our coal and gas power stations: thermal power production jumped by 47% during that quarter and imports of thermal coal and natural gas will increase due to the necessity to replenish stocks. Power production nuclear share fell to 71%, against 80%, its usual level during this period of the year. The project to reduce it to 50% would generate a CO2 emission boom and an unbearable increase of our trade deficit, which is already very heavy. Regarding the project consisting in closing all nuclear power plants, it is unthinkable even on the long term. Renewable energies, self-producing or not, will never provide a safe level of electricity comparable with what we have today. This policy is absurd and impossible to put into practice, except if we turn off the lights…

Another imaginary solution is the François Fillon choice to break with the working time diminution secular trend. It is easy to propose but it will increase unemployment instead of reducing it. To abolish the legal duration of working time and to encourage companies to compel employees to work during a longer period of time will mechanically reduce the number of jobs. But innovation, and who could pretend it will slow, has always the same consequence: to reduce workforce. The day before yesterday, it was agriculture, with tractors, yesterday, it was industry with machine-tools and robots, and tomorrow with 3D printing machines which will permit to produce made to measure products with the same cost that those made on production lines. The next wave has targeted services: on-line banks, automatic teller machines, payments without contact, issuance of airline tickets through internet and automatic control at the airports, and tomorrow, why not, driverless cars. The list is long of the imagined solutions to do without a workforce. To pretend that these innovations will create in the future as many jobs as they will destroy is as stupid as to have thought, in the past that the agricultural machine industry was able to hire enough people to compensate those who lost their jobs in the country. But the Fillon imaginary solution has one original aspect: it is punitive.

At the opposite, Benoît Hamon proposes another quite imaginary solution but which makes people dream, the universal revenue. Everybody will have the right to get it, without any link with a past, present or future activity. It exists, as a social transfer, and to reduce poverty, several benefits, granted to people under conditions. It is possible to merge them but it is not as simple because these benefits are given according to different situations. The underlying idea of the universal revenue is that its distribution is automatic and so, independent from the fact that its benefactors exercise, or not, a productive activity and contribute to public charges. There are no more links between the accomplished work and a benefit offered by the community. In other words, to work doesn’t count anymore. We are carried, thanks to the magic of the election, in Eden garden. We are promised the paradise. At this level, the debate about the utopian character of this proposal, and especially about its cost and the impossibility to finance it, is second to its originator vision about work. It seems he doesn’t understand that it is possible to blossom in working and to get a legitimate proud from what is undertaken or created through working. Regarding its cost, evaluated between 200 and 400 billion euro, it is impossible to finance it due to the level of public deficits and fiscal pressure. It is, as the three others an imaginary solution, part of Patapolitics.

Emmanuel Macron has not yet formulated his precise program. So it is too early to have a judgment on it but it is not impossible he fell in the same shortcoming, due to the media pressure which encourages candidates to talk nonsense without generating a real debate.              

 

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