politics, economy and employment & labour
Inequality is the biggest challenge of our time. It undermines social confidence and reduces support for democratic institutions. It lurks behind the new toxic relationship that western societies have established with their future and explains much of recent resentment-driven electoral phenomena and the surge of identity politics with its disruptive backlash. As for the economic […]
Why is inequality such a big issue? Why is it so corrosive to societies? I think it became a big issue, because essentially of the crisis. What the crisis did was make people realise that when, for example, their houses were repossessed, or they couldn’t repay the mortgage and so on, actually, they had to […]
Scratch the skin of any social democrat and s/he bleeds equality. Because of structural weakness we water the concept down into social justice or fairness or we try and dress equality up with more complex ideas like ‘capabilities’. The problem is that we aren’t getting it, indeed we’re moving further away from it. The great […]
For more than a decade, organizations such as the IMF, OECD, ILO and even World Economic Forum have issued stern warnings that the global trend of increased inequality will harm growth, social cohesion and the business community. So, is Europe doing anything about it? No, and the real question is: Why not? One reason is […]
It is hard to believe that it is any coincidence that by far the most economically unequal large country in the European Union, the UK, was the one that narrowly voted to leave it in 2016. The UK has severe social problems due to severe economic inequality. These include an inability to see unfairness as […]
The first research papers showing that health was worse and violence more common in societies with large income differences were published in the 1970s. Since then a large body of evidence has accumulated on the damaging effects of inequality. Countries with bigger income differences between rich and poor tend to suffer from a heavier burden of a […]
A job is the best way out of poverty. This is a widely held belief among European policy-makers. Therefore, labour market reforms in European countries during recent decades focused on creating jobs. Yet, job growth was not supposed to be achieved by demand-stimulating economic policies but by supply-sided labour market reforms. ‘Activation policy’, at European […]
The economic mainstream is perplexed: growth is finally taking hold across Europe, economic forecasts have been revised upwards, and employment is expanding. The only indicator that stubbornly refuses to follow suit is wage growth, defying textbooks and economic orthodoxy alike. Bloomberg has called it the “mystery of missing wage growth,” the Financial Times writes about […]
The material prosperity of people consists of two main resources: income and wealth. The possession of wealth, in particular, offers extended consumption options, can make good a loss of income and secures one’s own pension – for example, via owner-occupied housing. Furthermore, it can finance the education of children and is built up to enable […]
Though the two principles “equal pay for equal work” and “equal pay for work of equal value” have been legally fixed with the European Treaty of Rome 1957 as well as with the subsequent Equal Pay Directive 1975, the EU still shows – latest data from 2015 – an average (unadjusted) gender pay gap of […]
Since the 1940s, the Left in most western European countries has relied on a combination of four strategies to tackle inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth. Firstly, the pursuit of full employment through Keynesian demand management. Secondly, state planning and nationalisation of the means of production. Thirdly, collective bargaining and the promotion of […]
On 26 April, the European Commission launched its proposal for a European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) as a flagship initiative to strengthen the EU’s social dimension. The EPSR consists of 20 key principles, not legally enforceable, that are primarily addressed to the EU member states and European institutions and intended to serve as a […]
