Sometimes I look at Canal Plus in my spare time, more out of nostalgia for the blessed period 80 years where there were interesting things about this chain. Besides, we were not so many to look at the time, and in those 80's I still thought that I would later become the master Tanguy and did not think the economy other than the yawning chronic tedious jean-marc Sylvester, watch this channel was the mark of those "trendy" ...
[ What I do not hear you think, reader, that the modest author of this blog is more than Laverdure Tanguy. Anyway, I always prefer to Buck Danny Tanguy and Laverdure. Anyway, hard to the time for a small Burgundian to identify with a driver at Uncle Sam, while the squadron is based in Dijon storks. ]
.. Digression aside, then, at the Grand Journal de Canal Plus I happen to follow, I discovered the horse factor in French politics (we will see that this bold metaphor is not totally free), Olivier Besancenot, to who are asked to give its opinion on the recent cases of pay for various political figures on missions whose interest is not obvious a priori.
[ Do not count me say, reader, it is the mission paid handsomely Christine Boutin on the challenges of globalization ]
Here, this brave Oliver throws all go to the front of the camera one of NPA's main proposals: the remuneration of elected officers must be fixed according to the average income of the French population., currently 1800 euros.
[ I heard him say it live, but have not managed to find this proposal on the website of the NPA, particularly leafy must say. But I found there . If, reader, you find a more direct source and more explicit let me know! This will allow me at least to illustrate my lectures on the theory of social choice ... ]
I found this amusing proposal personally, if we adopt again the spectacle of the economist, and frankly in the end quite inconsistent with the political end that seems to be that of NPA to for which I have any kind of animosity I might add. However, as Audiard said, "must not take the children of god for wild ducks."
Indeed, what can match this proposal from a economic standpoint? Beyond the basic idea that politicians are like everyone else and should be paid like everyone else, make such a proposal certainly implies, among other things, we think that politicians have somehow an obligation of result. Indeed, if they do not improve the material situation of the population, their situation will not improve. You tell me that I read the proposal of the NPA in a manner that does not happen to be, and can be is this the case, but I have to be pragmatic and push the mind of a such as these to evaluate their ultimate consequences consequences.
Base changes in the level of elected officials on the welfare of the average population is a very specific vision of what economists call the social welfare function. In fact, without going further in larger theoretical debates or ethical be based on the average income is rather curious point of view of a party with a principle I think is equal situations or equal Opportunities at the very least, any person who has minimal bases of statistics can understand it without any problem. In fact, I guess I have two individuals and one has an income of 0 € and the other from 4000 €, while average income is 2,000 euros, assuming that the two individuals have the same weight in the social welfare point of view of the election. He then personally earns 2000 euros. If a tax of some kind (such as "niche"), it increased the income of the richest to 5000 euros a month, while his own salary increases to 500 euros, since the average income is 2500 euros. Basically, he has no particular incentive to increase the income of the poorest people in society.
Keynes said in the general theory that "The are men of action who think themselves perfectly freed from doctrinal influences are usually the slaves of some past economist, "and the current position of the NPA is a brilliant demonstration. The scheme proposes that remuneration of elected amounts de facto to give elected officials, the policy maker generally , a social welfare function that has a very specific form. This concept of social welfare function, given there are over 70 years by Bergson in 1938 and elaborated by Samuelson in 1947, must obey certain principles basic, in fact quite intuitifs.La social welfare function tells how a decision maker concerned public interest General takes into account the personal position of all individuals in society, that is to say how he relies on the individual utilities to determine the level of social welfare. (See this wikipedia article pretty much done) Many different designs of this function are possible (see this very good post here ), and this post only scratches a theoretical debate that is still being fed.
In particular, the social welfare function is called utilitarian or utilitarian or Benthamite (named Jeremy Bentham, English philosopher of the second half of the 18th century who founded the utilitarian doctrine that an individual "Always act so that it results in the greatest amount of happiness") if it takes the specific form given by the same Bentham, namely:
"The interest Then Of The community is - what? The Sum of The Interest Of The Who SEVERAL members composed it. " (Cited by Mueller (2003), Public Choice.
Clearly, social welfare is the sum of well-being of individuals in society. Obviously, with constant population, sum and average are indeed different concepts but the same results. The average income is the sum of earnings divided by a value n that it will be assumed constant, which represents the size of the population, that we increase the income of 1000 euros to the richest in my example above above means that we increase the total income of 1000 euros and it is good for society. From the standpoint of fairness, this way of thinking is rather special, since it implies a state of wealth distribution in which Robinson has everything and has nothing Friday is equivalent for the policy maker to a state of wealth distribution in which they are distributed equally to Friday and Robinson. In the chart below shows an indifference curve (that is to say a constant level of social utility for all possible levels of the usefulness of the two individuals in the society) for the decision maker public as part of this conception of social welfare:
It is quite surprising as a way of seeing things from the NPA. I rather naively expected that, even being revolutionaries, they suggest that elected officials are paid based on the minimum income of individuals in French society, a function given by the philosopher John Rawls Theory of Justice in 1974:
In this conception of social welfare, the level of well being is defined by the minimum utilities of all individuals in society, as Rawls justifies the famous "veil ignorance ", and not by any vision extremely charitable distribution income. Or aware of the difficulty of such a program, the NPA activists could offer a vision of social welfare at the Bernoulli-Nash social utility is e product of individual utilities:
The potential value of such a design is that, if Friday is not (its value is zero), then social welfare is zero, even if Robinson is infinitely rich. In addition, over the utilities of individuals are, the more the product is high.
I confess that I burst out laughing at the idea that Olivier Besancenot, probably without ie, invokes Jeremy Bentham as a companion to a hypothetical grand march toward a society in which capitalism would be a distant memory. From my perspective, it's like if Schwarzenegger justified his choice of career in film evoking the work of Eric Rohmer ...