Of all the shortcomings of the Italian economy, youth unemployment (40%) is the most worrying. The new Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, took up this issue through labor law reform since it was outdated and harmful. Will he succeed where Mario Monti failed? Yet what happened at Fiat’s may be hopeful.
unemployment
It is not forbidden to former socialist countries to reduce the weight of the state and drastically reduce taxes, especially on businesses. This was done in Sweden and Denmark, where unemployment is lower than in France .
France hosted in the November 15th week a summit dedicated to the “Fight Against Youth Unemployment.” This is an excellent initiative for a country where the 16-25 years-old population reached a 26.1 % unemployment rate. Yet, France should be doing what is being done elsewhere, especially in Germany, where the rate of youth unemployment is three times lower than in France: 7.7 %.
“The youth is the utmost priority of my mandate”. Thus spoke François Hollande on January 23, 2013, when wishing a happy new year 2013. “Happy” may not have been the right term, “subsidized” should have been better. Indeed, when saying that 500 000 young people below 25 years-old do not have a job, that 25% of them are unemployed, the French President does not think that entrepreneurship is the solution. On the contrary, for him the Government must spend more money to help create jobs. And President Hollande is generous with public money: no less than 5 billion euros will be wasted on inefficient job policies!
The IREF with “Contribuables Associés”, the largest French taxpayers association, published a study showing how fiscal pressure destroys employment. The main figures of the study reveal the Government lethal action on companies and jobs:
– 12.2 bn € of new corporate taxes
– Tax burden making a 0.5% GDP decrease
– 99.500 jobs destroyed in 2012, 160.000 scheduled t be destroyed in 2013
– 70.000 jobs destroyed because of tax burden increase in 2013
– 21.5% in big companies and 78.5% in middle and small business
Read the study in French: La Boîte à outil de François Hollande détruit l’emploi
By Nicolas Lecaussin
Can you imagine that unemployment has been “priority number one” for French politicians over the past 35 years! Left, right and center have all claimed that their first objective was to reduce unemployment, in particular among young people. Yet they have failed every time. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy regularly repeated that “the French social model has protected us from the crisis”.
The last statistics from the OECD are unequivocal: the unemployment rate in France is and has always been well above the average for the OECD countries and also above the average of countries from the euro zone. This is a proof that the State is not the solution for unemployment.