EN DE FR
und zum andern das bedingungslose Grundeinkommen, das in einer Zeit anhaltender Rezession die Dinge wieder ins Lot bringt. Ein ganz kleines bisschen weniger für die Reichen und ein bisschen mehr für die Zukurzgekommenen. Dafür bedarf es keiner Revolution! Wir brauchen nur ein bisschen Zeit…und eine Vision! Alles andere ist nichts als Populismus und Manipulation.
OB 24.6.2016
Here we are, the British have given their answer – by barking up the wrong tree, obviously, as not ‘Brussels” but governments and parliaments are the ones deciding about the distribution of wealth in the member states. But populists are most successful with those who feel they are being left behind and not given their share of the famous growth which is expected every day now or said to have arrived …and they are not seeing it! How stupid can you be! And what’s more, now we are faced with these migrants who are coming, millions of them, snatching the last few breadcrumbs from us! No one will stop the big bosses continuing their practice of social dumping and employing migrants below negotiated wages; even a profoundly socialist town in Belgium has been caught for not having realised that their building contractor had indirectly employed workers at absolutely unspeakable, infamous conditions! This is definitely the end of the line, and I have much sympathy for people who say that not only they are being told humbug but that others shamelessly continue to stuff their pockets. The traders in the City, for one! They are paid mindboggling bonuses for profits they have generated on behalf of global investors and which the British taxman is unlikely to ever see a single penny of…..let the British enjoy their new-found freedom! Good luck with Boris to do a better redistribution job than Cameron….the awakening will be rude!!
But what do we do about the other European citizens? All European social systems are based on the concept of economic growth and the more or less generous redistribution thereof, depending on the political vision in place. So, what do we do when it’s gone? We invoke it, we conjure it up, we pretend it’s there, but actually the truth is more like Waiting for Godot. Perhaps we have reached the end of a cycle which started with globalisation and liberalisation after the second World War and was accelerated during the 70s and 80s. The European countries embraced it fully on the basis of being able to export their industrial production to “developing” countries turned “threshold” countries and then BRIC. It took a while but now these countries have caught up with us and hardly need us any more while we can’t compete with their low cost environment. Less production, less creation of wealth, less tax income, less or no growth…that’s the end of redistributing a cake that’s shrinking!
OB 24.6.2016
