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Therefore, it follows that an unreasonable increasing in labor costs would be detrimental to employment. We can criticize these assertions in two ways: firstly, things do not work like that in practice, secondly, decreases in labor costs have negative effects on employment that may outweigh any positive effects.

1. The competitiveness argument does not work

For about 20 years, the share of wages in GDP has decreased almost everywhere in Europe. This means that real wages have increased more slowly than the productivity of labor. Therefore, the unit cost of labor has decreased and "cost competitiveness" has increased. But this increase has only partly been used to increase real competitiveness because prices have not decreased in the same proportion, which means that companies' margins have increased. In other words, the decrease in labor costs has not led to a decrease in prices but an increase in profits.

Neither has this increase in profits resulted in an increase in the levels of investments. This is a very striking aspect of the period, which is good measure of its financial nature: the restraint of wage costs has fed financial profits and not invested profits. Quite obviously, the competition form low-wage countries is very strong in some sectors, such as textiles and domestic appliances, but has a relatively secondary effect on the whole of production. Furthermore, the relocated jobs are in part compensated by the surplus of exports, in particular capital goods, to the low-wage countries, even if the labor content is not the same.

As far as attractiveness to capital is concerned, we must not forget globalization and we must take an overall view. This reveals a strong trend towards transnational integration of capital: French outward investment abroad, on the one hand, and foreign inward investment in France on the other, are increasing much faster than domestic investment. Therefore, the notion that France is becoming less attractive is a myth. As for French outward investment abroad, only a marginal amount goes to low-wage countries.

2. The perverse effects of competitiveness at any price

Not all the effects of decreased wages are beneficial. True, capitalism needs high profits but it also needs demand. Yet, trying to gain competitiveness by decreasing wages depresses demand. Furthermore, the effect is multiplied when all the countries in an integrated economic area, like Europe, pursue this type of policy in a co-ordinated manner.

The best example - it's really a counter-example - of this assertion is the "upturn" period from 1997-2000, when 10 million jobs were created in the European Union. These jobs were created (after a long period during which employment stagnated and unemployment increased) not as a result of increased competitiveness but on the contrary due to a slight relaxing of neo-liberal strictures.

True, there were gains in competitiveness but these were solely due to the appreciation of the dollar in relation to European currencies. Until then, on the contrary, it seemed as if the wage freeze had to compensate for policies of overvaluing currencies which were not very good for competitiveness but were very effective in holding down wages.

In reality, the recovery was sustained by the almost parallel progress, at long last, of wages and GDP. The jobs created fed into the dynamic and incidentally absorbed a large part of the social security and budget deficit (this was called the "kitty effect"). This virtuous circle was also supported by the reduction in the working week in France, where 2 million jobs were created in 4 or 5 years, a record figure.

Neo-liberal policies, increasingly closely co-ordinated at European level, have led to a reversal of those economic conditions and a new de facto wage freeze. The endless search for competitiveness produces periodic recessions because the frozen wages of some people are the empty order books of others. Every one is competitive but in a recession.

Finally, the frantic search for competitiveness based on low wages is an illusion: we can never compete with low-wage countries on this basis. Furthermore, such a policy is in contradiction with competitiveness based on other factors than price, such as skilled work, quality and the incorporation of new technologies. We must choose between the knowledge based economy policy and that based around competitiveness.

Above all, we should never let ourselves be impressed by those who invoke the supposed laws of the economy. If the neo-liberals had really mastered them we'd know about it by now. After two decades of very strict "wage restraint" we should be seeing jobs created everywhere and the start of a return to full employment. But we would be wrong to think that this is really the objective in view. It is really simply to preserve the advantages of a share in revenues that is extraordinarily favorable to the owners of capital.

There is a very simple way of increasing the celebrated competitiveness, it consists of reducing financial profits and reallocating them to wages and pensions. Not only is this fairer in social terms, it is also more efficient economically (supporting demand), on condition however that you take employment as the criterion of efficiency.

3. The bluff of the flight of capital (and the brain drain)

We are told that too high taxes lead to the flight of capital and a brain drain. If we want to describe current reality, this picture is a pure optical illusion. France is not as repulsive as the advocate of zero taxes make out. A very recent report on the subject confirms this, as have numerous other studies.

But this is not simply a bluff, because what is at issue is the right to a share of the value created. If any of these advantages are called into question a little forcefully, retaliatory measure will obviously be taken, in the form of relocations, export of capital or tax evasion. Capital's mobility, carefully prepared by deregulation, is its great advantage over labor. Nevertheless, there are limits to these retaliatory measures: leaving a country is also loosing a market, you can (more or less easily) export capital but you cannot move the real productive forces as easily: the people, know-how, machines and networks, etc.

As in the case of the Tobin tax, the extension of new methods for dividing up revenue to the European level is the condition of their viability. But there remain a degree of confrontation that the technical mechanisms for controlling exchanges and moving capital can reduce but never eliminate. This is all the more true in that the competitiveness imperative is never self-limiting and that each concession gives rise to a new regressive pressure. In the case of pensions, the basic issue is to find out if the share allocated to pension will increase with the number of pensioners or if the owners of capital will impose a fixed budget, in other words pensions will decrease. A study commissioned by the Pensions Policy Council (COR) from an independent economic institute, the OFCE, shows that an increase in the share of wages compensated by a decrease in financial revenues is neutral from the point of view of growth and employment. True, the political feasibility of this operation is another affair, but the decision should not be based on an economic bluff.

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