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Tribute to Sebastian. November 7, 2009

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Against decommissioning: the "transclassement? Surviving the crisis

I love Alternatives Economiques: without agreeing with everything writing in this month, far away, it always presents some interesting debates and serious analysis on topics of interest.

is the case of debate on decommissioning , led by Eric Maurin's book on the subject. However, beyond the technical debate and my admiration for the work of Eric Maurin, doubt assails me: is this a good debate?

Indeed, the debate focused on the transition from one class to a class called "higher", is to pose as an implicit assumption that the classroom is an appropriate standard and that it is possible to rank them. It is assumed a priori that successful life is to end in a "better" social class than their parents. It is highly questionable. For example, some studies on happiness show by example that a graduate with a CAP bakery has more chance of being happy that a high school graduate - the first being happy when he succeeds in getting his account ( This is an accessible dream), the second could be considered to have failed if it does not end the CEO of a company's CAC40 (which is harder).


Moreover, economic conditions make this hope mathematically impossible for all (although it remains possible for some): when economic growth is slower than demography, economic disruption in the presence of strong growth relative to a "linear" (growth in emerging markets, raw material costs, concerns environnemtales ...), model social progress that has prevailed during the "30 glorious years" is probably not relevant, especially because the economy for years to come will probably not be the 60s. The growth of the 60s was a growing development and catching up. That of future growth is innovation and adaptation challenges new. An economy in which agriculture was emptied and that the middle class was being created could hold the promise of "development" class. Make the same promise in 2009 would hope that all the French earn more than the average ...

Current generations will have more debt, a priori less growth (although nothing is written - they can fight against this trend by a burst of innovation), and the challenges of managing scarce resources that were not their parents. Faced with these developments we can try to restore stability status, or on a mode "the Nordic" which is also for which I pleaded with Jacques Attali seek to facilitate trans classification. Ie erase the notion of class in facilitating the transition from one role to another, ensuring the security of essential (income, interest and availability of work, sense of purpose ...) by dropping concepts accessories, such as vision class type "30 glorious years" ...

Brief us focus on decommissioning, we forget two things. First, that happiness is linked to the standards of happiness (as is the case in the example of the baker and graduate above), and that these standards are "self-defined (ie defined by a group to itself): put the debate of a possible return to standards not tenable, that prepare future disappointments. Then the real debate lies elsewhere: it is a happy life. Although this debate joined some of the elements covered by the "theory of decommissioning" (education, income, inequality ,...), and the possibility to change their activity is part of the degrees of freedom important to everyone, this second debate is broader than the first. And it does not preclude a son of an engineer may be more fortunate than his father by choosing to be a teacher. Or employed apparently "downgraded", but that allows him to find happiness outside of a predefined framework, write, create his business or to devote himself to humanitarian causes.

This was the case for a modest employee of the Patent Office in Bern (despite a degree from Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne) in 1902, named Albert Einstein. It is quite possible that even if he never subsequently published article titles, it would have been happier as an employee pursuing his research on his free time, better pay as an engineer but do not have the time needed to what really fascinated him ...

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Read: "Surviving the Crisis", the latest book by Jacques Attali

As always, innovative ideas - in this book he traces a very interesting analysis and provides a "mode of employment "on how to organize to avoid social or economic crises.

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The National Strategy for Research and Innovation 2009

The Ministry of Research has just published the report " National Strategy for Research and Innovation 2009" from a wide foresight exercise.

It shows three priorities:

1. health, welfare, Food and Biotechnology
2. environment and environmental technologies (incl. nuclear)
3. information technology and communication as well as nano
   

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Gross National Happiness: indicator facebook

As we learn Slate, Facebook extent, through the change of status of hundreds of thousands of its members, the state of happiness - or misfortune - of its users. Certainly they are not necessarily representative of the U.S. population, but the results are extremely interesting as they provide a statistical daily on American happiness.

And what do we see?

1 - festivals that bring together families and friends (thankgiving, Noel ,...) topped

2 - Valentine weighs less than a third Thanksgiving - perhaps because it concerns only part of the population?

3 - Superbowl weighs very little, while it is one of the most popular televised events in the United States.

4 - national holidays like July 4 have an effect, but much lower than those in smaller circle celebrate (Thanksgiving)

So if you want to make happy, make a feast in a relatively small circle and without television. Appointment April 8, 2010!

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Suicides at France Telecom: is it better elsewhere?


(writing in progress, draft)

Suicides at France Telecom, a sign of the weakness of its employees under the terms of Christophe Barbier ?

I sincerely believe that the problem is elsewhere, and refers to a problem I already had occasion to comment : the contradiction between a France that was immersed in the competition (market opening in Europe and global competition for openings ,...) sector monopoly and its social system, which is quite generous relative to the average of developed countries, but whose generosity is focused on defending the statutes, rather than accompany the transitions.

For our social system, although evolving, is largely influenced by compensation status past (allowance as% of final salary, job search more focused on the present than on the qualification that it would be useful to develop for the future, no guidance system worthy of the name, managed by industry training which means that large sectors of the past have essentially means any and emerging sectors) rather than transitions useful preparation (skills assessment, training, guidance, creation business, anticipate change ,...). The public is not left, instead of marking a body system where the status is acquired for the lives of 25 years by academic ability. But

competition produces efficiency precisely by reducing rents, and thus upsetting the statutes. It will stress the need to recognize and support - what John Hicks summarized in the phrase "The best of all monopoly profits Is A Quiet Life" (which also means that the biggest drawback of Competition is a stressful life). And those who suffer most are those who, starting from a situation of status (ie the case in former monopolies) face the need to manage a career transition (change of position, profession or business) without having the "social capital" - including friends or training that can " bounce "- or be accompanied (pole job does not help, or whatever, people with jobs at risk, unnecessary, or place holder in a position of unbearable stress). And it has nothing to do with a supposed weakness of the public official: it covers some agents of France Telecom, but also the textile workers of 50 years in northern France, a wine of Beaujolais threatened by competition of foreign wine or a young journalism student faces the effects on employment in his trade as the Internet wave.

In these conditions, one can imagine three "worlds" possible: a world of caste, status and low economic performance (which is also reflected in a lower quality of health care system, a greatest poverty, ... ) but also of injustice "latent" (inability of a brilliant young to make a career if not of good status or good "body", more linked to professional success who knows that what we can do, crony capitalism ...). A second state

the "world" as possible, and that the current situation in France, combines openness to competition and lack of support system wide enough (regarding those who lost their jobs but also those who do have not yet, trainees and those in a job that they want to get out). It has the advantages of competition for most mobile (educated or "good families" who can reap the benefits of globalization while avoiding the risks, or who are in their "network" to anticipate and levers accompany their professional transitions) and disadvantages for those who are less so (unless someone educated or highly specialized in a business subject to competition, and do not have the networks to "bounce"). He has, for the more modest, injustices "latent" status of a world of violence with "dynamic" of a competitive world (sudden loss of employment without opportunity to prepare a result, job changes not allowed , unanticipated, disqualification because of lack of qualification in the trades "carriers" or redirect it ...). Best placed, on the contrary, the benefits of purchasing power of a world in competition with the peace of a world of caste.

The third possibility is that of a more productive and more "dynamic", accompanied by a social system that reduces violence status changes and the questioning of annuities. This is the one that describes brilliantly John Sutton.

Or is the responsibility? First, for organizing the opening to competition (market liberalization, open markets, competition within Europe) - which was a good thing - without at the same time developed the necessary social support for these developments. Political leaders such as Jacques Delors has repeatedly denounced the risks induced by this lack of "social pillar" in the European construction and opening its markets , but the phenomenon is broader.

The responsibility is then to have been slow to react to this lack. In defense of the powers that have followed, supporting the idea that "human" is an essential part of our social system is relatively recent - it dates from a few years. Before that, the "experts" offered at left, a development of social law (working time, the fight against stress) and to the right, liberalization (opening up the market placement of the unemployed, reducing the complexity of the law). To some extent, these proposals were, at least in part, a utility. But she never touched the heart of the problem and how to make decisions that will better orient, train and support people affected for restructuring in all its forms. From this point of view, the cause is the lack of reflection and "research and development" policy ideas: politicians, government, researchers and parties bear the responsibility ... Again, responsibility is diffuse - there account including party leaders who have drained their "intellectuals" to strength to exploit, not to listen or discourage those who would have liked to spend time with the "r & d policy.

The cause is also the level of centralization of our country: in fact the attenuation of stress related to competition called operational responses, close to the people and their problems, where experts - economists and officials - looking for recipes the only visible problems in their ivory tower statistic (which does not measure the malaise at work, nor happiness elsewhere), and solutions that can be expressed by the requirements expressed by them, and carried by agents of those lands that nobody asked to think ... Somehow, many economists are the spiritual children of planners, with the efficiency that we know.

To return to the subject of this article, it is obviously true that the welfare state made people weak. Now is the pressure level associated with the evolution of competition that induces sometimes intolerable pressures (the careful reader will note the place of countries as "soft" vis-à-vis their employees than the United States). The solution lies in supporting transitions, rather than the "mental capacity" of personal considered too weak! Speaking of weakness in these cases is as relevant as to propose the cake for those who lack bread: it does not help find a solution, besides being insulting - although this is probably a blunder that could have been avoided by adjusting the strength of assertions to the sensitivity and complexity of the situation ...

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Aligning executive pay interest on the long term?

(version in progress)

Behind the debate over the amount of the salaries of bosses and traders (which I will not go into here), lies the question of alignment of financial interest leaders with long-term interest.

There are three main types of tools for this:

- the market value of the company. We can give shares or equity derivatives, ie linking the financial interests of executives with stock price. The advantage of these tools is their simplicity (no complicated calculation to do what the leader has earned: just give him a percentage of the company, or options entitling him to a share of the company ). The disadvantage is that the interest of long-term business that is reflected in an imperfect share prices: they are highly variable, can be manipulated (a statement leader optimistic on the eve of its exercise of the option can save him millions) and do not reflect only the objective value of the company

- the company's profits. We can then give the officer not of actions but a non-negotiable (ie which can not be resold) dividends - which led to the financial interest of the leader is not the value action anticipated by the markets (which is a concept manipulated, volatile and limited by the ability of markets to accept a strategy), but the level anticipated by the leader of income of 15 years (which will lead him to actual project cost, rather than the market, with its mistakes, its bubbles and its difficulty understanding a complex strategy , atypical or bold, can be considered as such at any given time).

Thus the leaders of "partnerships" (such as Goldman Sachs or some law firms before the IPO) or shareholders "family" of unlisted companies are paid. A variant of this method of compensation is to compensate the action of an officer not directly cashable bonus, but additional pension rights, whose value depends the state of the company in 10 or 20 years. The advantage of this solution is that it does not resort to markets (and thus allows the officer to bring the relevant decisions but not easily understood by the markets, and prevents him from succumbing to fads and bubbles in the markets for more income to 10 or 20 years), the disadvantage is that this "tool" of a new genre does not enjoy the exemptions to which particular social stock options entitle.

- a discretionary bonus. Indeed, shareholders may still decide that the income will be directing a formula they can freely define. The bonus may be annual (if traders or vendors working on commission) or MAP (but difficult to implement in international groups because it involves tracking employees paid for their bonuses linked to their activity in their previous posts). The main drawback of this formula is part of a manager's ability to manipulate the terms on which it is held (it mastery in part on the thermometer where it will be considered) and, secondly, the that a specific formula, stock option, has a tax and social benefit as it is difficult to consider other routes.

The annual bonus is adapted to employees whose contribution is measurable on an annual basis (income trading, sales target, number of pieces made ,...), so that incentives are better suited to multi-year people whose contribution is difficult to measure by objective precise, or those for which they were waiting just find ways to increase corporate value.



For reasons of fairness and fiscal coherence, it would be difficult to make the third option (currently disadvantaged in comparison to stock options who fail to pay particular no employer social contributions) more attractive. Indeed, tax free bonus lead that companies are gradually transforming the fixed salaries as a bonus to reduce their taxes. We could discuss the merits of taxing wages (I personally think it's a bad tax base) - but from the moment you decide to tax it necessary to be consistent and taxing everyone fairly.

However, at a time when everyone is denouncing the excesses of the market, we might seriously question whether the tools much more favorable to the interests of long-term business that stock options could not be studied . In particular, the idea that leaders are rewarded for their performance in non-marketable securities rather than through stock-option deserves to be taken into account ...

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First conclusions of the Commission "Stiglitz"

The Committee "Stiglitz" will make its report shortly, but the press already has the first elements.

Waiting to read the report, but taken from the press and the first known elements make me think well. In short: a good indicator of controlling a country is not the GDP (which measures the intensity of economic activity, without looking at what it contributes, or whether this activity makes them realize that the happier) but rather a broader set of indicators that measure the "useful products" of this activity (improving health, education, social cohesion ,...) and deduce the "nuisance" (pollution, noise, stress ,...). You can have many effects shoestring , and the opposite may be true .

In fact, run a country by focusing on GDP returns to drive a car by looking only at the speedometer , without looking at the point of arrival, accidents or consumption of gasoline. Research Interest General calls instead to focus on everything else (Kennedy said, "GDP measures everything except what is really important").

It is hindered in two difficulties. The first is the complexity of democratic debate, because you must not follow a single figure (GDP), but dozens of indicators (physical and mental health, integration, happiness, sense of security ,...), and how they change at any time and any place. The second difficulty is the existence or not of measurement tools (we easily measure the money that circulates in an economy, more difficult to happiness, public or secret, citizens). Now it is easier to manage what is measured - which often leads organizations to focus not on what is most important, but what is measured most easily ...

total, and the metaphor of driving, a driver who does not look that speed does not need much experience or think about the path or point of arrival. The solution is not, in my opinion, fall into of anarcho-nihilism .

What to flight of a country is able to put a face discussions, in their subtlety and complexity (like the one launched par la commission Stiglitz), et d'avoir une vision, de l'expérience, de la technique et beaucoup de doigté ...

Le mot de la fin appartient à John Kay, dans sa chronique du Financial Times, qui dit "In Peter Weir’s film Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams portrays a charismatic teacher obliged to teach from a text by J. Evans Pritchard. Mr Pritchard explains that “if a poem’s score for perfection is plotted along the horizontal of a graph, and its importance is plotted on the vertical, then calculating the total area of the poem yields the measure of its greatness”. Williams tells his pupils to tear these pages from the book, and goes on to inspire them with a genuine love of literature. We should "approach" bogus quantification In The Same Way. "

NB: The report is finally out. can download it here.

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release Bookstore "Sense of Things"

The Meaning of Things fate next Wednesday in bookstores. It is available for pre -order at online booksellers ...