#certainly #raise #taxes #Bruno #Colmant
On LN24 and LN Radio, Bruno Colmant, author and economist, was the guest of “Café sansfilter” this Monday, May 6.
Today’s show began with a question on the major current economic challenges in Belgium. For Bruno Colmant, the most important remain growth and the social state: ‘“It is important to maintain the social state in a context of aging of the population but also to find growth which, itself, will be thwarted by the aging of the population. The equation is going to be a little difficult.”
However, the economist qualifies by stating that Belgium is a prosperous country, which is fortunate to be located between its economic partners. Belgium has maintained “a good social state which has ensured cohesion” during the recent health and financial crises.
If we focus on economic issues from a regional point of view, we can see that Wallonia is one of the regions in Europe where the employment rate is the lowest. For Bruno Colmant it is not easy to reverse this trend: “The reality of Wallonia is first of all that it is plural, the north is doing well but the south a little less so. It’s all a question of employability and employment rates. It will take twenty years to convince young people to want a future, to make people employable. This comes through education.”
Conversely, Flanders has one of the best employment rates in Europe. The economist believes that we must remain nuanced in the way in which Wallonia could draw inspiration from it. “Limiting unemployment benefits in a brutal way means that we will put people in the CPAS. We know well that the real problem is getting the unemployed back to work, not punishing them. We can, however, make the maintenance of allowances conditional on ongoing training to which beneficiaries must comply. This will involve moral and psychological help.”
Pension is an important economic issue in Belgium. For Bruno Colmant, “pensions are intergenerational solidarity. It will increase but we knew that since demographics are a perfectly predictable variable. We must maintain a social state because, if at some point we remove social protection, this will lead to a complete break in the cycle between the active and the inactive.
Following these economic observations, one could wonder if Belgium has the backbone strong enough to face these challenges with European budgetary rules returning. We are, in fact, talking about a clean-up of 30 billion euros over the next few years. Bruno Colmant considers this “absolutely catastrophic because it went unnoticed. The European Parliament has just voted on constraints in terms of deficit and public debt. The parties which say that we must reduce the deficit and taxes are the same as those which will have to say ‘we will reduce social spending even further’. We will certainly have to constrain certain social spending but also probably raise certain taxes. I know that we are the most taxed country in Europe but I think that this will be imposed”.
If we introduce new taxes, which ones will they be? Bruno Colmant believes that in terms of professional income “we are too quickly considered and taxed as rich since we are quickly taxed at 50%. There will certainly be a moral question that will arise about the taxation of wealth. We must not forget that the American tax, for example, has increased threefold but while giving advantages to entrepreneurs, to those who put capital at risk in companies.”
