Tag Archives: in-english

Partager cet article At the start of 2017, with the elections in France in the Spring and then in Germany in the Autumn, it may prove useful to return to one of the fundamental issues which plagues discussion at European level, that is the alleged economic asymmetry between Germany with its reputation as prosperous and France which is described as on the decline. I use the term ‘alleged’ because, as we shall see, the level of productivity of the German and French economies – as...

Partager cet article Anthony B. Atkinson passed away in the morning of January 1st 2017, at the age of 72, after a long illness. This leaves us with an invaluable loss. Anthony « Tony » Atkinson occupies a unique place among economists. During the past half-century, in defiance of prevailing trends, he placed the question of inequality at the center of his work while demonstrating that economics is first and foremost a social and moral science. Tony was born in 1944 and published...

Partager cet article The debate on basic income has at least one virtue, namely that of reminding us that there is a degree of consensus in France on the fact that everyone should have a minimum income. Disagreements exist over the amount. At the moment, the Revenu de Solidarité Active or RSA (the French minimum income scheme) granted to single individuals with no dependant children is 530 Euros per month, a sum which some people find sufficient, and others would like to increase...

Partager cet article Let it be said at once: Trump’s victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic and territorial inequality in the United States over several decades and the incapacity of successive governments to deal with these. Both the Clinton and the Obama, administrations frequently only went along with the move to liberalisation and sacralisation of the market launched under Reagan, then Bush, father and son; at times they even exacerbated them. The financial and...

Partager cet article One does sometimes wonder why the French are so morose. The answer is fairly simple. As a result of the errors of their governments, the countries in the Euro zone have just experienced the longest period of stagnation since World War Two. In 2017, the level of economic activity in the area will with difficulty rise to its 2007 level, with huge regional and social disparities. In particular young people and the less privileged were faced with a sharp rise in...

Partager cet article A few weeks ago, the IMF published a study challenging some of the inequality-generating mechanisms described in my book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (see the IMF study here). To make it clear, I am very pleased that my book has made a contribution to stimulating public discussion about inequality,  and all the contributions to this debate are worth taking on board! In this instance however, the IMF study does seem to me to be rather weak and not very...

Partager cet article In less than two months, the United States will have a new president. If Donald Trump wins it would be a catastrophe for his country but also for the rest of the world. Racist, vulgar, full of himself and of his fortune, he epitomizes the worst of America. And the fact that Hillary Clinton has had so much difficulty in outdistancing him in the opinion polls should give us all food for thought. Trump’s strategy is classical: he explains to the poorer whites...

Partager cet article Logically, the question of selection at university entrance and the well-known software, the APB (Admission Post-Baccalaureat), used to organise the orientation and allocation in higher education of some 700,000 baccalaureate holders each year in France, should rank high in the debates in the coming electoral year. One sure sign is that while associations of secondary school pupils are struggling to finally access the source code of the software, the subject...