Political analysts and pollsters are themselves surprised: in the campaign that is starting, the theme of inequalities is strangely absent. Hidden behind that of purchasing power, which inflation has propelled to the top of the concerns of the French, it arouses at this stage much less interest. As if the Covid crisis had erased that of the “yellow vests”, which had nevertheless brought this question to the fore. “ The pandemic has frozen the world of French concerns ”, summarizes Frédéric Dabi, managing director of the IFOP institute.
Inequalities have not, however, disappeared in France. According to the INSEE report on inequalities in living standards and poverty between 2008 and 2018, they have even increased for ten years (excluding Covid), although the socio-fiscal system corrects this increase, ultimately making Hexgaone one of the good students of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) .
The tax tool, traditionally used to deal with the issue of income and wealth inequalities, has become difficult to use
The pandemic has also widened the inequalities of wealth: “State aid has protected the income of working people with partial unemployment, but wealth inequalities, with the good performance of the stock market, have exploded, summarizes Ludovic Subran, economist for the German insurer Allianz. However, the reform of the taxation of capital has worsened these inequalities. “
But the presidential candidates do not seize it, or very little, even on the left. Evidenced by the proposed response to the fuel boom earlier this month. “The rise in the price of gasoline could arise through the prism of inequalities, underlines Chloé Morin, political scientist associated with the Jean-Jaurès Foundation. But Anne Hidalgo [la candidate socialiste] proposed a reduction in VAT on fuels, this is not at all the right angle! “, VAT being regularly denounced as an unequal tax because it is not progressive and paid by all. Another example: the question of inheritance taxation, which no candidate dares to ask, remarks Jérôme Fourquet, director of the opinion department at the FIFG.
“The PS is a big tax burnt”
It is, however, a left-wing marker and one of the subjects most often mentioned in the fight against inequalities in heritage, including by the Blanchard-Tirole report commissioned by the Elysée in 2020. “In the collective imagination, taxing inheritance is sin, decrypted–he does. Even if 80% of inheritances are not taxed, it is seen as the state which taxes everything. Some battles are lost for lack of being fought by the left. “
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