"4000 € par mois, c'est classe moyenne" : François Bayrou s'explique

Brut America

"4000 euros par mois, pour moi, c'est classe moyenne."  Ses propos ont fait polémique. Brut a contacté @bayrou pour qu'il s'explique. Voici sa réponse.

Transcript

00:00How rich are we?

00:01Well, it depends. If we're talking about assets...

00:04François Hollande said it was 4,000 euros a month.

00:06Excuse me?

00:07François Hollande said it was 4,000 euros a month.

00:084,000 euros a month, for me, is middle class.

00:17We are in the framework of the RTL show, which is called The Grand Jury,

00:21and there is a discussion, of course,

00:24about whether we should make the rich pay for the crisis.

00:28And from there, another question arises,

00:32which is, from when are we rich in France?

00:35And journalists remind me of François Hollande's statement,

00:40which I found stupid at the time, and I still think it today,

00:44which was that we are rich from 4,000 euros in income.

00:49Which is, for me, without meaning.

00:544,000 euros in income, for me, is a middle class home.

00:59And I find it, a couple of nurses at the hospital,

01:05together, they earn between 4,500 and 5,000 euros.

01:11A couple of retired teachers,

01:14the average pension of a teacher is 2,600 euros a month,

01:18so a couple of retired teachers earn a little over 5,000 euros a month.

01:25And a staff member of one of the most important companies in our region,

01:32but a staff member in charge of services,

01:35earns 3,500, 4,000 or 4,500 and sometimes more.

01:41So, am I going to say that nurses are rich,

01:49that retired teachers are rich,

01:52and that the staff members of one of the companies in the region are rich?

01:56It's absolutely stupid.

01:59It's very hurtful for them.

02:03A 4,000-euro home, it's not rich.

02:06A single person, even at 4,000 euros,

02:08considering the Paris region,

02:10you can't go crazy.

02:12And so, this way of constantly stigmatizing those

02:16who manage to climb a little in the scale of income,

02:20I think it's a weakness.

02:22And it's very revealing to have seen a controversy of this kind.

02:26And for you, yesterday, when you said 4,000 euros,

02:29you thought of a couple or a single person?

02:32Excuse me for saying this.

02:36For a tax home, it's the same thing,

02:38whether you are a couple or a single person.

02:43For the tax home, it's the home that we tax.

02:49For me, a home, a couple, with an income of 4,000 euros,

02:54it's not rich.

02:56And it's hurtful to be able to say that.

02:59This way of, I don't know, stigmatizing...

03:02So, I know very well that there are low wages

03:05in public services, in a community like ours,

03:09when you are categorized, or even categorized,

03:12and you have low incomes.

03:17And in France, instead of stigmatizing those

03:20who climb a little in the scale of wages,

03:23we should wonder why we have such low wages in our country.

03:27Because we don't have the productive apparatus

03:31that allows us to bring income into the country,

03:35to have the need to hire,

03:37and if we needed to hire, to increase the salary.

03:40You can see that there is something

03:42that is revealing of a French weakness.

03:44And this kind of French obsession

03:48that consists of stigmatizing people

03:51who succeed a little better than others,

03:54who succeed materially a little better than others,

03:57and I don't confuse material success with all the others,

04:00but this stigmatization...

04:02Because rich means privileged,

04:05in the mouth of those who use this word.

04:08And so, I find this extremely weakening for our country.

04:12For me, a balanced society,

04:14it should be a society where we can get into work,

04:17even quite low in the scale of wages,

04:20and then go up, progress,

04:22to realize a part of what we expect,

04:26of what we dream.

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