The responsibility of employers today

The original meaning of the term versus is not "against" but "towards" or "reversely". And it must be understood this way when we talk about boomers vs. millennials, active workers vs. pensioners, young people vs. elderly people.The leitmotif of opposing groups is, of course, to foster controversy. But if we limit ourselves to that, we contribute nothing to the debate: one against another, imbalance, struggle, zero-sum. In the case of young people versus the elderly, the debate stems from the breakdown of a supposed generational pact whereby older people gained priority in public policies, because their parents had suffered the war, border closures, and cultural poverty, and young people would translate their better education into productivity and have better private salaries. But this has not happened. And while social spending policies remain immovable in certain age groups (pensions, healthcare spending —greatly marked by proximity to death—, pressure to improve care for the dependent, subsidies for tourism in the silver age...), our labor market neither recognizes the training premium nor favors stable employment. We increasingly have more permanent-discontinuous workers, more young people in precarious situations, more absentees, more demotivated individuals, and more working poor. The welfare balances have been broken. The stereotype has nuances, yes, but let's accept it for now.In this context, we start from the snapshot of respecting the status quo (who dares to significantly touch pensions or universalist healthcare in a democratic and short-termist political society?), but we must look at the more dangerous picture, which is the photofinish that the race of current demographic aging is leading us to. The projection of current pensions towards 2050 would by itself add an expense equivalent to 3.5 points of GDP, and a public health expense of 1.5 points (two-thirds, it is estimated, attributable to the elderly), while the reduction of expenses for young people would subtract, but little, from the increase in expenses, only 0.8 points. If we add to this the public deficit we are carrying, which is 3 points of GDP, we can visualize the magnitude of the tragedy.

And so three possible scenarios open up. One, do nothing and transfer the impact of aging into more public debt: it would grow by almost 26% on the already high current figure. A bad turn of events for young people, who will have to bear the financial burden of the debt with what the State collects from their work, and this (remember the constitutional amendment introduced at Merkel's request) with absolute priority before the State can decide its own policies. In this case, the financial cost will rise and fall with interest rates and the risk premium, and will hinder family emancipation, reduce the net purchasing power of workers and follow the movement of the cost of rent in the housing market. And it will harm those who are already indebted depending on the variations of Euribor. Second scenario: if the debt is contained (I'm not even saying it decreases), the alternative would be to maintain existing spending for young people (not increase it, which is what would be needed) on educational, employment, training policies, etc., and open up additional space to cover the effects of demographic change. This would imply up to eleven additional points of fiscal pressure. If we are at 45%, adding the points mentioned before, we would reach close to 60% of GDP: to put it simply, paying this volume of taxes would be as if we all worked for the State for two-thirds of our working days, an outrage in a context of globalization, competitiveness, and conservative political scenarios.However, if conservatives assert their creed, neither the increase in debt nor taxes are on the table (they promise reductions!). Thus, the third scenario consists of a kind of substitution between expenditure items to cover those that are rising. Social expenditure that is more dilatable over time (investments, training, research...) would suffer, and thus practically 24% of the current public policy oriented towards the youngest would be subtracted. Possibly, pressures from the redirected areas would be centrifuged towards an alternative of public-private management of uncertain financial content.What is to be done, then? Recovering generational balances today involves reconstructing the productive model, recovering what is expected from the labor market. This is today the responsibility of the business world versus the young. How? By reinforcing the remuneration of work so that the market does its job, with "good employers" who create "good" jobs. We need entrepreneurs who do not project their surpluses on the basis of subsidies "or" low wages, "without productivity improvements" and opting "for the easiest business routes. We will not achieve a rebalancing "of" well-being, nor "even" by spending more public money if the labor market and the good entrepreneurs we have do not fulfill the task "towards"society of contributing to progress by improving the productive economy.