debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
As evidence mounts that income inequality is increasing in many parts of the world, the problem has received growing attention from academics and policymakers. In the United States, for example, the income share of the top 1% of the population has more than doubled since the late 1970’s, from about 8% of annual GDP to [...]
The supposedly universal decline in the power of trade unions is often ascribed to unavoidable or desirable trends such as technological progress or globalisation. In a short, clear and well-argued paper John Schmitt and Alexandra Mitukiewicz from the CEPR in Washington DC point out, first, that (de)unionisation trends have been very different across the OECD [...]
The protest movement that began in Tunisia in January, subsequently spreading to Egypt, and then to Spain, has now become global, with the protests engulfing Wall Street and cities across America. Globalization and modern technology now enables social movements to transcend borders as rapidly as ideas can. And social protest has found fertile ground everywhere: [...]
The protest movements that have flared up across the West, from Chile to Germany, have remained curiously undefined and under-analyzed. Some speak of them as the greatest global mobilization since 1968 – when enragés in very different countries coalesced around similar concerns. But others insist that there is nothing new here. The Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev, [...]
‘9/11’ is a term known across the world. The notion of the ‘war on terror’ reached across continents. ‘Sub-prime markets’ was a concept of the few before it became widely understood as a trigger of the global financial crisis. Weather patterns in southern Africa used to be understood as an act of God; they are [...]
As the economic slump that began in 2007 persists, the question on everyone’s minds is obvious: Why? Unless we have a better understanding of the causes of the crisis, we can’t implement an effective recovery strategy. And, so far, we have neither. We were told that this was a financial crisis, so governments on both [...]
We live in an era in which the most important forces affecting every economy are global, not local. What happens “abroad” – in China, India, and elsewhere – powerfully affects even an economy as large as the United States. Economic globalization has, of course, produced some large benefits for the world, including the rapid spread [...]
Slowly, word is getting round – even in Germany – that the financial crisis could destroy the European unification project in its entirety, because it demonstrates, quite relentlessly, the weaknesses of the eurozone and its construction. Those weaknesses are less financial or economic than political. The Maastricht Treaty established a monetary union, but the political [...]
One is tempted to say: social inventions or re-inventions (as the newly invented/discovered possibility of restoring to the city square the ancient role of the agora on which rules and rulers were made and unmade) tend to spread “as forest fire”. One would say that, if not for the fact that globalization has finally invalidated [...]
When the Modest Proposal argued, a year ago, in favour of a debt management system, for the eurozone as a whole, with the ECB at its centre, the general response was that it was a good idea containing a major flaw: the suggestion that the ECB issues its own eurobonds (for the purposes of financing [...]
For more than a half-century, the US dollar has been not only America’s currency, but the world’s as well. It has been the dominant unit used in cross-border transactions and the principal asset held as reserves by central banks and governments. But, already before the recent debt-ceiling imbroglio, the dollar had begun to lose its [...]
These are dangerous economic times. The Keynesian framework within which the policy response to the Great Recession was forged in 2009 is no longer adequate. The OECD may have reached the limits of crude fiscal stimulus and monetary expansion. Fiscal credibility has eroded: the financial brink on which Spain and Italy now teeter has seen [...]
SocialEurope Journal: SEJ Article: A Breakthrough Opportunity for Global Health http://t.co/VYXi6Wag SocialEurope Journal: SEJ Article: When Neo-Liberals drop their Mask http://t.co/saAJbUZH SocialEurope Journal: SEJ Article: At least nine EU countries in recession: stimulus urgently needed http://t.co/oNN0v98l SocialEurope Journal: SEJ Article: European Monetary Union: Doomed to fail or just another Stepping Stone? http://t.co/pMuqDvkA SocialEurope Journal: SEJ Article: Creating Jobs in recession-hit Communities in Europe: Why Microcredit will not help http://t.co/zJb4XxJl SocialEurope Journal: SEJ Article: German State Elections send Merkel an Economic Message http://t.co/yVG4Xr5n SocialEurope Journal: SEJ Article: Two dangerous Myths about a 'Grexit' http://t.co/vOhdnVIp SocialEurope Journal: SEJ Article: Finding a Way out of the Crisis – Growth and Employment in Europe http://t.co/Q8JhRRSg 
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