How to use the one thousand billion francs spent on unemployment

The association "A job for everybody" suggests ideas for significantly reducing the numbers of unemployed. The book which it has published, Chômage ; nous accusons ! (Unemployment : who is guilty ?) is a résumé of a report which was presented to the authorities. Jacques Nikonoff presents two aspects of this report. Firstly, the cost of unemployment, which is more than one thousand billion Francs resulting both from expenditure and missed opportunities to earn; and secondly, the way in which it would be possible to transform this cost into employment investment. Convinced that a very large part of the expenditure could be redistributed, he suggests that it could be used to credit a fund aimed to finance jobs, and this fund could be managed jointly by state representatives, employers and trade unions. It would also be funded by advances from the Treasury, approved by the state, on income of which it would have been deprived had people stayed unemployed. This proposition naturally raises a number of fundamental economic and political questions.