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.
Right-wing populism is gaining traction: Donald Trump has won the White House; Austrian far right politician Norbert Hofer barely lost the Austrian presidential election, and France’s Marine Le Pen is likely to win most of the votes in the first round of the French presidential elections. Has the world gone mad? Have racism and xenophobia […]
There has been much discussion recently in Social Europe posts about a Basic or Citizen’s Income: an unconditional and non-withdrawable income for every individual. My aim here is to respond to one particular point made more than once: a Citizen’s Income would be unaffordable. This is a complex question to which a variety of responses […]
Universal basic income (UBI) schemes are getting a lot of attention these days. Of course, the idea – to provide all legal residents of a country a standard sum of cash unconnected to work – is not new. The philosopher Thomas More advocated it back in the sixteenth century, and many others, including Milton Friedman […]
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 […]
Where in the world would you expect economic growth to accelerate most this year? In my view, the region set to enjoy the most positive economic and financial surprises this year will be the European Union, and specifically the much-maligned eurozone. Growth in Europe has languished since the 2008 crash for a number of reasons, […]
EU-wide income inequality declined notably prior to 2008, driven by a strong process of income convergence between European countries. The Great Recession broke this trend. After 2008, income convergence has been sluggish, while inequality within many countries has increased significantly. Despite the implicit assumption stemming from many EU policy documents that European economic integration should […]
The question of public debt is once again making headlines across Europe, most notably in Italy and Greece. Yet, public debt is not among the most pressing issues facing the EU and Eurozone (with the possible exception of Greece), at least from a financial-economic standpoint. Moreover, when talking of “the problem of public debt” or […]
Le Monde has good reason to claim that the idea of a “universal basic income” (UBI) or “citizen’s income”, which in these times of unrestrained populism is reappearing in Italy and France, is “a false good idea”. The theory (an unconditional universal income guaranteed for all citizens of a given community) poses enormous problems of […]
In 2013 Colin Crouch wrote a noted book entitled The strange non-death of neoliberalism. In it he discussed why neoliberalism had managed to avoid being killed by what had appeared to be its nemesis: the global financial and economic crisis. The title came to mind on reading some recent work on the political economy of modern […]
Ireland’s dramatic recovery from its severe and prolonged economic crisis has led to the country being regarded as a ‘poster child’ for economic regeneration from fiscal austerity. The Irish case has been widely hailed by the Troika institutions as evidence that where a country stuck closely to prescribed austerity measures, the fiscal disciplines and structural […]
One of the world’s leading inequality economists, Professor Branko Milanovic, presents a bold new account of the dynamics that drive inequality on a global scale. Drawing on vast data sets and cutting-edge research, he explains the benign and malign forces that cause the rise and fall of inequality within and among nations. He also reveals […]
There are huge disparities in wage levels across the EU. As Figure 1 shows, the level in Romania in 2015 was about half that of Czechia, which was in turn less than one third the German level, with the gap actually increasing since 2008. Some differences in pay reflect different kinds of work, but gaps […]
