debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
The biggest economic debate is between Keynesians (who want more government spending and lower interest rates in order to fuel demand) and supply-side “austerics” (who want lower taxes on the wealthy and on corporations to boost incentives to hire and invest, and who see government deficits crowding out private investment). But both approaches have problems. [...]
A recent ECB household-wealth survey was interpreted by the media as evidence that poor Germans shouldn’t have to pay for southern Europe. This column takes a look at the numbers. Whilst it’s true that median German households are poor compared to their southern European counterparts, Germany itself is wealthy. Importantly, this wealth is very unequally [...]
A very interesting video on the link between inequality and the origin of the financial crisis on The Real News. This is in line with recent research in Europe.
Are we now living in a German Europe? In an interview with EUROPP editors Stuart A Brown and Chris Gilson, Ulrich Beck discusses German dominance of the European Union, the divisive effects of austerity policies, and the relevance of his concept of the ‘risk society’ to the current problems being experienced in the Eurozone. How has Germany [...]
Inequality is often conceived of as the gap between the earnings of the richest members of society and those of the poorest. Göran Therborn argues, however, that beyond financial figures there are far greater inequities which affect modern society. Chief among these is inequality in life expectancy. He notes that there are striking differences in the health [...]
A most recent study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at the United Nations University reports that the richest 1% of adult humans alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the total world wealth. The bottom half of the [...]
It is generally agreed that the crisis of 2008-2009 was caused by excessive bank lending, and that the failure to recover adequately from it stems from banks’ refusal to lend, owing to their “broken” balance sheets. A typical story, much favored by followers of Friedrich von Hayek and the Austrian School of economics, goes like [...]
With the election behind us I had hoped we’d get beyond games of chicken. No such luck. But first you need to understand that the game of chicken isn’t about how much or when we cut the budget deficit. Or even whether the upcoming “fiscal cliff” poses a danger to the economy. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office [...]
Watch Paul de Beer of the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) discuss the expansion of public services to reduce inequality in the era of austerity. This talk was recorded at the conference ‘From (un)economic growth to future well-being’ organised by the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) and the European Public Service Union (EPSU) in [...]
Most people around the world will not be able to vote in the United States’s upcoming presidential election, even though they have a great deal at stake in the result. Overwhelmingly, non-US citizens favor Barack Obama’s re-election over a victory for his challenger, Mitt Romney. There are good reasons for this. In terms of the [...]
Pre-distribution may be a new word but it is a route into exploring some far older ideas that lie at the heart of progressive debate. Jacob Hacker, the US academic credited with inventing the concept of pre-distribution, says it is “to focus on market reforms that encourage a more equal distribution of economic power and rewards [...]
Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz discussed their respective books on the current economic problems and inequality at an event organised by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET). For the everybody who was unable to attend the event they fortunately uploaded a YouTube video of the full event.
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