politics, economy and employment & labour
Social Europe is an award-winning digital media publisher that publishes content examining issues in politics, economy, society and ecology. This archive brings together Social Europe articles on the economy.
Julio López G adds to the debate, initiated by Thomas Piketty and colleagues, on how to spur a European recovery and green transition. On Social Europe, a discussion has been taking place on a plan to reactivate growth and at the same time contribute to ecological reconversion in Europe. It emerged from two proposals, the […]
Eye-watering remuneration for chief executives is economically wasteful as well as socially divisive. Non-profits should pioneer compressed wage hierarchies. As Oxfam reports that the top 1 per cent of the world’s population now own more than the other 99 per cent, it’s time to think about how those at the top of the economic tree […]
It has become fashionable on the left to suggest that capitalism and democracy are now incompatible. In her latest column, Sheri Berman reviews the contrary case. For most on the left the story of the last decades goes something like this. During the postwar era the ‘primacy of politics’ was the rule: democratic governments, particularly […]
The US has been able to run growing budget deficits by issuing more dollars as the reserve currency. If a polycentric world ends its indulgence, the shock to America could be great. In 1944, at the end of World War II, a new international monetary system was agreed. This system pegged currencies to the price […]
The European Parliament elections could see the emergence of a large populist bloc thwarting progress for the next five years. A big mobilisation is needed to prevent that. The elections to the European Parliament in May 2019 will be like no previous European elections—possibly the most important since the first direct elections 40 years ago. […]
For a decade there has been cross-party support in Germany for the balanced-budget rule. But in the first of a series of Social Europe columns on German economic debates, Peter Bofinger explains why the social democrats should abandon the ‘black zero’. If our children and grandchildren look back on the present day in 30 years, […]
Stuart Holland argues that what Europe needs urgently is not new institutions, as recommended by Thomas Piketty and others, but a Green New Deal. In December Thomas Piketty and several others launched a Manifesto for the Democratisation of Europe, supported by 120 European politicians and academics, including proposals for a new European Union treaty, a […]
Should investment in a New Deal for Europe come from taxation or borrowing? Only the latter makes economic and political sense, argues James K Galbraith. Thomas Piketty and several colleagues have taken a shot at the European New Deal (END) of the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25). Writing for DiEM25 last December, Yanis Varoufakis had […]
Italy is the only western-European government where radical-right populists are the dominant power. But now they have found the limits to it. The populist coalition in Italy, of the ‘five-stars movement’ (M5S) and the Lega, was recently the object of ironic media commentary, having produced a copy-pasted version of a decree—to rescue the Italian bank […]
When intellectual and moral arguments align, the global climate can change quickly. That’s what’s happening with the US tax debate. Policy proposals by lawmakers in the United States have spurred a hotly contested debate on taxation among economists in recent weeks. The Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued that the US needed to raise additional revenue […]
Europe desperately needs to resolve its collective-action problem to emerge from the crisis. Democratising Europe, with a fiscal capacity, is better than monetary easing. On December 10th 2018 we launched a Manifesto for the Democratisation of Europe, along with 120 European politicians and academics. Since it was launched, the manifesto has accrued over 110,000 signatures […]
An unemployment reinsurance scheme benefiting countries hit by asymmetric shocks attracts what to some will be surprising support across the EU. Experts argue that European Monetary Union (EMU) has to be completed by ‘automatic fiscal stabilisers’. Welfare states have built-in stabilisers which cushion economic shocks—unemployment benefits, for instance, support the purchasing power of people who […]
