2024-01-25 08:01:36
In France, the government has promised to ease the difficulties of the middle class with a massive tax cut. Will this be enough to comfort this electorate which has returned to the center of the President of the Republic’s concerns? Not sure, according to the note from the Montaigne Institute published this week.
This study from the Montaigne Institute (and think tank of liberal inspiration), seeks to better understand this category readily cited but whose definition remains vague. For its author, Lisa Thomas-Darbois, the lowest common denominator among its members remains income. The middle class therefore includes the French people who are closest to the median income before tax, which today is 2,260 euros.
Those who earn between 1,440 and 3,100 euros belong to the middle class. This concerns a wide range: half of French people over 15 years old. 20% are richer and 30% poorer. But if we survey the French, it’s much more: 63% identify with this category. To be part of it is to be endowed with this social status supposed to ensure the future. A promise that is increasingly difficult to keep. Members of the middle class are haunted by the fear of downgrading.
Decline in purchasing power
The French middle class, “ it’s the France of the blind spot “, according to President Macron. French people, he specified during his vows, “ who earn too much to be helped and who are not rich enough to live well “. The study confirms this. These French people contribute largely to tax revenues, to the tune of 100 billion euros, without receiving any return from the protective State. Middle-class households, for example, suffered from inflation without benefiting from the shields put in place by the government.
Belonging to the middle class also means having financial, real estate and cultural capital that the poorest categories lack. However, this advantage is in the process of being eroded, underlines the Montaigne Institute. Real estate purchasing power has fallen by 50% compared to the end of the 20th century. And to ensure children have a better future or at least equivalent to that of a member of the middle class, we must spend more and more. In housing if you are looking to have access to a good school or in tuition fees if the option chosen is to go to the private sector.
Tax relief
Will the tax gift promised by the president relieve these households? The two billion in tax relief announced for 2025 is a lot for the State. Reduced to the tens of millions of taxpayers who can claim it, it will only be a few hundred euros, not enough to change your life. To restore the moral contract between this middle class and the State, it is not necessarily on income that we must act, but on the nerve centers of the crisis, recommends the Montaigne Institute. Like housing with home ownership becoming out of reach since interest rates soared. School or even aid for the energy transition which escapes this category. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal will specify the avenues it envisages to reconquer this population. Often described as the soft underbelly of society, the middle class is also historically a driving force for adherence to society’s values.
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