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French economist Thomas Piketty explains why financial secrecy remains a huge problem, lauds the press and makes charges against (European) governments. His piece for Le Monde was translated by The Guardian.
10 Sunday Apr 2016
Posted Inequality
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French economist Thomas Piketty explains why financial secrecy remains a huge problem, lauds the press and makes charges against (European) governments. His piece for Le Monde was translated by The Guardian.
01 Tuesday Dec 2015
Posted Academic Organizations, Austria, Inequality, Social Dilemma
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On Sunday, November 30, Joseph Stiglitz advertised his new book “The Great Divide” at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (WU). Neither did I attend the lecture nor do I have access to any recording. My only record of his words is a German article in the Austrian daily newspaper “Der Standard” (which can be accessed here). That means, Stiglitz has been first translated into German and in what follows I re-translate into English. Given this sounds like an instance of the children’s game telephone, there might well be content lost in translation.
Nevertheless, I was quite surprised by what I read. According to the article (as objectively translated as I could) Stiglitz said:
“Demanding solidarity is not easy in good times. It becomes, however, politically dangerous if poverty and unemployment are on the rise since [in this case] it generates breeding grounds for right wing extremist parties. This also holds true for countries like Germany and Austria. Society should not only solidarize with refugees but also with low-income (and low-skill) workers. Those should be increasingly supported by the wealthy elites in these countries by re-distributional policies to avoid social tensions. Necessary funds could be generated by “wealth taxes” [private capital or equity taxes].”
There certainly is a deeper truth to this statement anywhere in the world. Also, it hardly comes as a surprise. However, I was somewhat startled to see it applied to Germany and Austria, admittedly the two countries with the biggest refugee influx per capita recently, but also two countries among the world-leading in equality and the extent of tax funded social services.