Interesting example of how neoliberal strategies of extending the reach of financial instruments seems to inevitably come for the lower and middle classes’ (or broad working class’s) savings.

I haven’t had the time to look at the proposals in any detail, but in essence, it seems that he’s just restating the classic economic logic that the source of investment is savings, and so if there is a mismatch between them, this will cause a negative output gap in growth, both due to demand and suppl-side factors. It is also obviously motivated by the concerns of mainstream economists that the lagging productivity (in particular of labor, because labour is the source of all value and how they form a common unit of value and productivity measurement, as Marx understood) is a serious issue and that AI is the way to deal with it. Also interesting the classic decrepit European realization that they are falling behind the US and China (and Russia, for that matter) on these fronts. Though it is strange how that ignores other key factors determining investment, like expected returns and interest rates (which are rising). Also, if private businesses are already unwilling to invest because they know that savings and income are too low, and people not willing enough to engage in borrowing sprees, to make their expected returns on investment profitable, then how would an investment fund financed with savings deal with this issue? He might argue that more efficient capital markets and new investment vehicles leverage savings might deal with that, but it is again not clear to me that the private sector is going to be that motivated. Most of the interest of private firms so far in AI has been either in superficial labor-saving areas like branding, website design, and potentially in more efficient systems of labor surveillance, monitoring, control and time-management, as opposed to any real tremendous gains in real labor productivity, though the future is ofc an unknown country. It also seems to ignore the naturally monopolistic tendencies of a sector like investment in advanced AI software and hardware, which would not suggest to me that the Europeans can easily compete with the US or China, who have a head-start in terms of concentration, advantages of scale and greater levels of government support.

Funny also how none of the French liberals are asking which social group’s savings are going to bear the brunt of this. There is ofc no mention of the trillions in the bourgeoisie’s offshore bank accounts. Given the high rates of taxes (at least perceived) in France already it’s not clear how this would be popular with anybody.