How can we move to a “well-being economy”?

Today, it is necessary to move from a GDP economy (where production and consumption are maximised) to a well-being economy (where the various mechanisms that affect collective well-being are taken into account: climate, working conditions, quality of jobs, health, etc.). This means moving from economic policies aimed at obtaining the lowest possible prices for consumers (in order to maximise consumption) to an economy where the various externalities (climate, jobs, working conditions, etc.) are internalised. This transformation will result in a series of price increases: higher energy prices (due to the rise in the price of CO 2 and the higher price of renewable energies), products imported from emerging countries, services that require low-skilled labour, etc. It will therefore be necessary to prevent these price increases from reducing the purchasing power of low-income households, which will require public transfer payments to these households, and therefore financing these public transfers through taxation. And since household income will have to be boosted, this will mainly involve higher taxation of capital and capital income, leading to a fall in the return on equity for capital owners. It would of course be optimal to concentrate these tax increases on the taxation of rents: real estate rent, rent linked to the existence of companies with dominant positions, rents due at the abnormally low level of certain wages.