Social Europe articles on the economy

The Euro crisis has painfully exposed the weaknesses of the European economic policy regime and the peripheral Euro area countries have been suffering a deep depression. So how do Europe’s elites want to reform that regime? Are they questioning the neoliberal model or merely modernising it? To get a glimpse of the future of the […]

By the time British citizens went to the polls on June 23 to decide on their country’s continued membership in the European Union, there had been no shortage of advice in favor of remaining. Foreign leaders and moral authorities had voiced unambiguous concern about the consequences of an exit, and economists had overwhelmingly warned that leaving the […]

How should the European Union react to the decision of the British people to withdraw from the union? This is the question that is at the center of the political debate in Europe. The starting point in trying to answer this question is the observation that the European Union has a very negative image today, […]

At the end of 2015, Greece’s public debt was 176% of GDP, while Japan’s debt ratio was 248%. Neither government will ever repay all they owe. Write-offs and monetization are inevitable, putting both countries in a sort of global vanguard. With total public and private debt worldwide at 215% of world GDP and rising, the tools on which Greece and Japan […]

The European Commission has just issued a communication on “A European agenda for the collaborative economy” (02.06.2016). The Commission considers this term ‘collaborative economy’ as interchangeable with the term ‘sharing economy’. It will, according to them, create fantastic new opportunities and in particular new employment opportunities. This economy is growing rapidly and therefore the Commission […]

In the UK currently there is a heated debate between those who want to stay in the EU and those who want to leave the EU – Brexit. The economic consequences of Brexit for the UK are, above all, hotly debated. Most studies point towards significant economic costs for the UK, in a range of […]

On June 23, the UK will vote on whether to remain in the EU. On November 8, the US will vote on whether to elect Donald Trump as president. These elections have much in common. Both could lead to outcomes that would have seemed inconceivable not long ago. Both pit angry populists against the political […]

Universal basic income is a disarmingly simple idea based on a disarmingly simple premise. The digital revolution threatens massive technological unemployment; ergo, every citizen should be paid a basic income regardless. Like all simple ideas, however, things get more complicated on closer scrutiny. For decades there have been jeremiads predicting that workers would be replaced […]

Swiss voters decided in a referendum on June 5 whether to introduce a “basic income”. In proposed reforms to the social welfare system, all residents would be entitled to a guaranteed income of SFr30,000 ($30,275) a year from the state — unconditionally. The concept of basic income has been discussed for decades. It has attractions for people at both […]

A commitment to the independence of central banks is a vital part of the creed that “serious” policymakers are expected to uphold (privatization, labor-market “flexibility,” and so on). But what are central banks meant to be independent of? The answer seems obvious: governments. In this sense, the European Central Bank is the quintessentially independent central bank: No […]

The term “helicopter money” is derived from a vivid image created by the US economist Milton Friedman in which a central banker showers notes on a grateful populace. More recently, the notion has been promoted by Adair Turner, the former chairman of the UK financial regulator, in his book, Between Debt and the Devil. It has […]

Europe is in a Gordian knot of debt, deflation and democratic deficits. A hegemonic Germany that Adenauer, Brandt, Schmidt and Kohl wished to avoid dominates the Eurozone, has defeated democracy in Greece and seems unassailable in its demands for austerity. German arrogance is matched by Commission subservience to Berlin. The ECB is assumed to be […]