“Raising the retirement age to 65 will put even more people out of work”critical Thursday, March 17 on franceinfo Aurélie Trouvé, president of the Parliament of the Popular Union, campaign organ of La France insoumise, in reaction to the announcement of the program for the presidential election of April 2022 that outgoing President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron presented at a press conference in Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis) this Thursday.
franceinfo: Full employment within five years and a minimum pension increased to 1,100 euros, these are the wishes of Emmanuel Macron who unveiled his project this Thursday. Are you satisfied with these proposals?
Aurelie Found : The problem is the balance sheet of his five-year term. You should know that the number of people registered with Pôle Emploi, the number of unemployed has, contrary to what he says, increased over the past two years. What he is proposing to us is to raise the retirement age to 65, this will put even more people out of work. On the contrary, we propose a retirement at 60 years of age. First of all, it’s completely fundable and above all, it makes it possible to better share the work, to generate employment for the youngest. We are proposing a revaluation of the minimum wage to 1,400 euros net and we are proposing a guarantee of autonomy at 1,000 euros for everyone, including young people, which will really make it possible to increase purchasing power. But for that, it is also necessary to bring in public money. However, Emmanuel Macron has constantly reduced public revenue, in particular because he makes the richest pay less and less.
The French Observatory of Economic Conditions has studied the question and assures us that, on the contrary, purchasing power has increased over the past five years. Do you contradict him?
As an economist, I prefer to look at gross disposable income per unit of adjusted consumption, which is the best indicator of purchasing power income. It decreased in 2020 and 2021.
Does Emmanuel Macron’s program seem to you adapted to the health and economic crisis that we have gone through and to the one that we are going to go through because of the war in Ukraine?
The problem is that he absolutely does not offer us a “resilience plan”, neither for this shock, nor for those to come. For the current shock, what he is offering us is a reduction of 15 euro cents to deal with rising fuel prices. This is absolutely insufficient compared to the increases that have taken place before and those to come. It’s going to be another bite in purchasing power and he’s absolutely not attacking the extremely large profits of the oil giants, notably Total, who are benefiting from this increase in fuel prices. I recall that Total made 15 billion in profits last year – this is the historic record for the CAC 40 – including 7 billion paid to shareholders. What does Emmanuel Macron propose in relation to these multinationals? Nothing at all.
And you, what do you propose to rebellious France?
We propose a blocking of the prices of basic necessities, including fuels and in particular unleaded 95 at 1.40 euros. This was the level in January 2021. By freezing these prices, we will eat away at the profits of these multinationals.