politics, economy and employment & labour
Facebook is regularly in the news as a force disrupting democratic politics across the globe but what if democracy could be the model to save Facebook? The social network connecting 2.2 billion people has had a rocky time of late. From the alleged malevolent interference by foreign actors in the last US Presidential election via […]
Observers of German politics are witnessing a rather puzzling drama. More than four months after the election there is still no new government and the last hope to form one hinges on a membership ballot of the Social Democratic party. If party members vote down the coalition agreement, new elections are unavoidable. They would take […]
The digital revolution, used here as shorthand for broader technological change, is one of today’s most hotly debated topics in politics, economics and business. It makes politicians wary about which preparatory policies to pursue, economists ponder productivity increases and trade unions think about the future of work. We are undoubtedly faced with large-scale disruptions in […]
The potential threat of technological unemployment is one of the most hotly debated economic issues of our times: in boardrooms and trade union offices but also increasingly amongst policy-makers. The catch-all term ‘digital’ may have been added to numerous political concepts in recent years but beyond such branding there has been very little debate of […]
The technological revolution is one of today’s most hotly debated topics in politics, economics and business. It makes politicians wary about which preparatory policies to pursue, economists ponder vast productivity increases and the future of labor and business leaders think about how to make use of the new possibilities in their organisational environments. We are […]
The fight for the UK to remain a member of the European Union is now fully on. The country will have a momentous decision to make on 23rd June this year. I unfortunately won’t have a vote on my future as a German living in the UK, the country I have lived and paid my taxes […]
There has been a buzz recently about the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) and why it could be a solution to technological unemployment. VOX reported a few days ago that Y Combinator, a start-up incubator, is about to start a five-year research project on how a UBI could work. Noah Kulwin over at re/code […]
Since the hateful attacks in Paris last Friday there has been a lot of soul-searching about the type of Islamist terrorism we are confronted with and what can be done about it. A lot of commentary, including on Social Europe, has identified Western policies as a root cause of the problem. Western actions over recent […]
After more than half a decade of debate dominated by the global financial crisis, 2014 saw a departure from this singular focus. Thomas Piketty started a global discussion about historical patterns of inequality and their negative repercussions. And looking to the future rather than back in time, The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and […]
I have long been mulling over how much money the German government has actually saved as a result of the Greek/Eurozone crisis. It has been clear that crisis-driven capital inflows into Germany have led to higher demand for government bonds. As a result prices went up and yields down. If you manage a debt stock of […]
I will be writing about the Labour Party and its political soul-searching in the coming weeks. But I want to make a more general point right at the beginning of this process that will have a significant impact on how Labour, and indeed the Conservative majority government, should position itself in the new political landscape […]
Social Europe Journal has just published its latest Research Essay “Public Capital in the 21st Century” by Giacomo Corneo. The main argument of the paper is that the state should become a kind of investment state in order to make sure that high returns on capital do not further increase inequality but benefit the wider public. […]
You might have heard about recent reports stating that global inequality is decreasing. This is a nice example of constructing the comparison according to the result you would like to see. Yes, inequality between countries has declined but the most important comparison is what is happening to inequality within countries as this tells you how the distribution system, that […]
