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George Tyler


George Tyler is a former US deputy Treasury assistant secretary and senior official at the World Bank. He is the author of What Went Wrong: How the 1% Hijacked the American Middle Class … And What Other Nations Got Right.

George Tyler

Getting to zero—what’s the beef?

George Tyler 3rd December 2021

Most livestock land will have to be repurposed as carbon sinks to remove the huge global emissions related to food production.

Not seeing the wood for the trees—the EU’s environmental blunder

George Tyler 7th September 2021

Supporting a conversion to wood burning has unwittingly incentivised power plants to increase greenhouse gases.

US economy mired in viral stagnation loop

George Tyler 31st August 2020

The travails of the US economy come amid a politics never so poisonous since the civil war.

A European Union climate agenda for COP26

George Tyler 27th February 2020

The EU should bring a new climate agenda to Glasgow—including a roadmap for emerging nations to embrace a future beyond fossil fuels.

Unpacking supreme courts to restore checks and balances

George Tyler 7th November 2019

Democracy is threatened by politicisation of constitutional courts. Unorthodox tactics are required to restore their role.

The superiority of codetermination

George Tyler 16th July 2019

The United States should learn from the better performance of European companies which have worker representation on boards.

What European Democracies Can Teach America

George Tyler 22nd June 2018

Amid authoritarian and illiberal forces buffeting social democracies, it is helpful to renew appreciation for their political architectures, especially the central role developed over a century and a half for the principle of proportional representation (PR). Its absence is one factor responsible for the poor quality of American democracy documented in Billionaire Democracy. In contrast […]

Fake News And The Fairness Doctrine

George Tyler 23rd May 2018

Fake news in America’s public square is a failure of its information marketplace. Remediation should occur through enhanced marketplace competition, not government censorship. I have argued that the quality of democracy is lower in America than in much of Europe. It lacks co-determination, for instance, which is why US wages stagnate even as inflation-adjusted wages […]

Codetermination Enters The American Political Debate

George Tyler 20th April 2018

Three senators have introduced unprecedented legislation mandating that employee representatives must comprise one-third of Boards of Directors at publicly-listed US corporations. Upgraded corporate governance with codetermination is an unfamiliar concept to most Americans. Its appearance acknowledges the weakness of conventional tools to end wage stagnation. And it reflects frustration by Democratic senators Tammy Baldwin, Elizabeth […]

Social Media Platforms Should Tell The Truth

George Tyler 26th March 2018

The high quality democracies of northern Europe are an unnatural construct, history teaching us that the universal default setting of human society is authoritarianism. There are many key elements in crafting and sustaining such high quality democracies, including engendering a common body of trusted information, a communitarian spirit, the rule of law and the like. […]

American Democracy Sold To The Highest Bidder

George Tyler 30th January 2018

Aristotle measured the quality of democracy by the extent to which politics constrains the economically powerful, allowing the preferences of the landless to be reflected in public policy. According to a new analysis, American democracy gets a failing grade on Aristotle’s test while the countries of northern Europe are star pupils. Path-breaking recent research has […]

Trump: Reaganomics Redux

George Tyler 22nd November 2016

It’s wages, stupid! Analysts are pondering why millions of the same voters who favored President Obama in 2008 and (less enthusiastically) in 2012 pivoted to favor his antithesis, Donald Trump, in 2016. Economic frustration centered on stagnant wages is mostly the answer, reflected in a generalized desire for “change” expressed by 39 percent of voters […]

Why US Democrats Must Derail Republican Party Nationalist Populism With Economic Populism

George Tyler 15th February 2016

The Republican presidential aspirant nominated at this summer’s convention is likely to become that party’s nominee in part by invoking jingoist and xenophobic themes drawn from the playbooks of eastern European authoritarians. Miloš Zeman, the Czech President asserts, for example, “I do not want Islam in the Czech Republic.” And Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán has […]

Labor Day: Good Time To Readdress Pay And Collective Bargaining

George Tyler 7th September 2015

President Obama has belatedly awakened to the plight of America’s middle class whose economic fate is dependent almost entirely on wages. Taking a lead from his predecessors since Ronald Reagan, Obama proved indifferent during much of his first term to the deterioration in the collective bargaining position of employees at US workplaces – the key […]

Why We Need A Cultural Revolution In American Capitalism

George Tyler 10th August 2015

Corporations are at the center of market fundamentalist capitalism practiced in the UK and US. Yet, in contrast to northern Europe, they are only weakly embedded in their communities, insufficiently attuned to the aspirations and needs of the wider stakeholder community. Rather than government diktats, the solution is cultural changes whereby inspired societal norms produce […]

Why President Obama Needs To Reframe The Wage Debate

George Tyler 28th November 2014

Stagnant wages have robbed the American middle class of opportunity. Wage compression is why fewer Americans now believe they are middle class; remarkably, the share of Americans who self-identify as below-middle class has risen 60 percent since 2008 to near equivalence in size with those identifying as middle class. Horatio Alger has emigrated to Australia […]

President Obama Is Emulating Buchanan Instead Of Lincoln

George Tyler 21st July 2014

Obama is Leaving Economic Inequality for his Successors to Fix President Obama is emulating former President James Buchanan. His economic agenda is to kick the can down the road, leaving his successors an America of widening economic inequality without prospect of remediation. The Obama Presidency is facing the most toxic, polarized environment since the antebellum […]

Britain’s, Not France’s, Middle Class Is Being ‘Run Into The Dust’

George Tyler 20th February 2014

While France and Britain cooperate on multiple fronts, the Cameron government is not above using its neighbor as a political foil. Grant Shapps, conservative party chairman opined in January 2014 that French President Hollande had “led his countrymen back into the dust” which is “exactly what [Labour leader] Miliband wants to do with the British […]

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WSI Report

WSI Minimum Wage Report 2025

The trend towards significant nominal minimum wage increases is continuing this year. In view of falling inflation rates, this translates into a sizeable increase in purchasing power for minimum wage earners in most European countries. The background to this is the implementation of the European Minimum Wage Directive, which has led to a reorientation of minimum wage policy in many countries and is thus boosting the dynamics of minimum wages. Most EU countries are now following the reference values for adequate minimum wages enshrined in the directive, which are 60% of the median wage or 50 % of the average wage. However, for Germany, a structural increase is still necessary to make progress towards an adequate minimum wage.

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Cohesion Policy

S&D Position Paper on Cohesion Policy post-2027: a resilient future for European territorial equity

Cohesion Policy aims to promote harmonious development and reduce economic, social and territorial disparities between the regions of the Union, and the backwardness of the least favoured regions with a particular focus on rural areas, areas affected by industrial transition and regions suffering from severe and permanent natural or demographic handicaps, such as outermost regions, regions with very low population density, islands, cross-border and mountain regions.

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The evolution of working conditions in Europe

This episode of Eurofound Talks examines the evolving landscape of European working conditions, situated at the nexus of profound technological transformation.

Mary McCaughey speaks with Barbara Gerstenberger, Eurofound's Head of Unit for Working Life, who leverages insights from the 35-year history of the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS).

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Spring Issues

The Summer issue of The Progressive Post is out!


It is time to take action and to forge a path towards a Socialist renewal.


European Socialists struggle to balance their responsibilities with the need to take bold positions and actions in the face of many major crises, while far-right political parties are increasingly gaining ground. Against this background, we offer European progressive forces food for thought on projecting themselves into the future.


Among this issue’s highlights, we discuss the transformative power of European Social Democracy, examine the far right’s efforts to redesign education systems to serve its own political agenda and highlight the growing threat of anti-gender movements to LGBTIQ+ rights – among other pressing topics.

READ THE MAGAZINE

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