Believe in individual initiatives, in courage, in risk.
We ask our companies to restructure; we ask employees to work more for less money because there is overproduction, but then we're unable to defend them from cheaper Chinese imports. We are insane.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the contradictions in economic policies where companies are restructured and employees are overworked, yet they face competition from cheaper imports.
Emmanuel Macron expresses frustration at the economic paradoxes faced by countries that impose restructuring on their companies and expect employees to accept reduced wages while simultaneously failing to protect their industries from cheaper foreign imports. This situation reflects a broader insanity in economic management, as it places an unfair burden on workers and fails to address competitive pressures effectively.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about economic policies in a business seminar.
More from Emmanuel Macron
All quotes →Europe and the world are waiting for us to defend the spirit of the enlightenment everywhere.
A romantic or classical view of the French approach would have been to say, 'It's a French company; let no one attack it. Let's block any merger. But the reality is Alcatel-Lucent is not a French company; it's a global company. Its main markets are China and the U.S. Its ownership is foreign; most of its managers aren't French.
Popularity isn't my compass. Unless it can help one to act, to be understood... that's what counts.
Our mission... it will be difficult, it will take time, it will be demanding for all men and women... will be to act in such a way that French people of the Muslim faith are always more proud of being French than of being Muslim.
I will defend Europe; it is our civilisation which is at stake... I will work to rebuild ties between Europe and its citizens.
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Citigroup, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase should not be permitted to charge consumers 25- to 30-percent interest on their credit cards, especially while these banks received over $4 trillion in loans from the Federal Reserve.
This power becomes particularly irresistible when exercised by those who, because they hold and control money, are able also to govern credit and determine its allotment, for that reason supplying, so to speak, the lifeblood to the entire economic body, and grasping, as it were, in their hands the very soul of production, so that no one dare breathe against their will.
As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.
Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the public Treasury.
We can fight the global economy with a strong local economy.
Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' is not above sudden, disturbing, movements. Since its inception, capitalism has known slumps and recessions, bubble and froth; no one has yet dis-invented the business cycle, and probably no one will; and what Schumpeter famously called the 'gales of creative destruction' still roar mightily from time to time. To lament these things is ultimately to lament the bracing blast of freedom itself.