Homelessness: Structural Violence in a Rich Country (tags)
People who have no housing and become homeless in such a rich country are handed over to "structural violence." Nowhere does the capitalist economic system fail so blatantly as in the supply of living space since apartments in Germany are treated like sausages.
Social division in the schools and 7 challenges to the welfare state (tags)
The most difficult task will be to redefine prosperity not only in philosophical concepts, but also in concrete tangible and experiential terms detached from consumption. Many are already working on this. The United Nations adopted a strategy for a blueprint for peace and prosperity
A Social Change is Overdue (tags)
Social rental housing construction which has been increasingly restricted since the 1980s must be resumed on a grand scale and rapidly promoted to offer low-income earners, single parents and large families a place to stay.
The Welfare State in Crisis (tags)
Since 2008, crisis was the defining political theme. "No one should be fooled about the majority will of the population regarding taming wiled finance capitalism. The system could only be bailed out from collapse with taxpayer guarantees." (Habermas 2010).
Political economies are calibrated to a form of economics oriented exclusively in competitiveness and high profits...The selling off of public services through the agreement on trade with services and the new edition of MAI were prevented because of social protest.
TTIP: Threat to Democracy and the Constitutional State (tags)
The TTIP, the largest free trade zone comprising 800 million of the EU and the US is being secretly negotiated. Democracy and the constitutional state are threatened by 3-person arbitration courts where corporations can sue states and decisions are irreversible.
The Soup Kitchen State Grows (tags)
Old age poverty is the result of dismantling the social state...What is lacking for the impacted is justice. Need justice and distribution justice have always existed in the political realm. The task of the social state was to fight poverty and protect citizens.
Neoliberalism as a Variety of Social Darwinism: Ten Million More Unemployed (tags)
Social cuts are a danger for democracy..When fear of social descent or collapse seizes the middle class, the danger grows that exclusion-ideologies may gain acceptance like racism, nationalism or social Darwinism..The economic future is given away on the altar of an ideology that raises location competition to the leitmotif of political-economic policy.
Reduced working hours is the only logically and historically consistent answer to the annual productivity increases that are above the real growth rates of the economy and without reduced working hours lead to a decline of work volume and unemployment.
Newspeak Rules: How Neoliberalism Explains the World (tags)
Originally positive terms were devalued in the last decades (social state became "welfare dictatorship") Social dislocations are charged to the impacted themselves. The scandal of poverty mutates to the scandal of the poor themselves.
The Future of the Social State (tags)
The extended family as a kind of "self-help group" replaces the social state in the backward-oriented utopia of liberal-conservatism. Nothing hurts families more than the "rebuilding" or dismantling of the social state and the marketing of interpersonal relations.
This is not a social state any more (tags)
Building community centers (as in Vancouver BC), redistributing income and assets from top to bottom, reducing working hours, expanding the public non-profit sector and accepting housing, education and health care as rights not privileges would be important steps to a bright future.
Education as Tranquilizer (tags)
"A false strategy of combating poverty results inevitably from a flawed analysis of the causes of poverty. Whoever culturalizes the problem relies on education reforms without repairing the structural causes.."
Vivisection of Neoliberalism (tags)
"Therer is no such thing as society," said Margaret Thatcher. "The neoliberal understanding of democracy is marked by skepticism and open hostility." (Ptak) That market pressures are often more severe and oppressive is repressedf as long as possible.
Another Economy is Possible (tags)
The world economy increasingly has the character of a plutonomy, a wealth economy where the rich appropriate an ever larger share of the social wealth. Imagine an economy that serves justice, peace and creation, where competition and cooperation coexist and the future is safeguarded
Criticism of Neoliberalism: Book Review (tags)
The neoliberal understanding of freedom restricts the possibilities of individuals to participation in the market. Structural and economic power are faded out.
Neoliberalism in Crisis (tags)
Liberation theology warns the future of the first world is the third world. Everyday time is replaced by kairos time, the time of decision, when lawlessness masks as lawfulness. The language of proclamation runs crossway to the language of time. Cast your net on the other side!
Privatization Endangers Democracy (tags)
Neoliberal hegemony or market radicalism is a danger for democracy because economic mechanisms replace politics. Neoliberals change the understanding of justice in society. The less generous the social benefits, the more powerful must be its security machine.
Social Cuts Cause Suffering (tags)
"Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come" (Victor Hugo).. Liberated from their existential worries, people could develop their talents.. A basic income could expand the efficiency of our society.
How Much Poverty Can a Society Endure? (tags)
Pretending that justice is possible with growing inequality is pure ideology. Distribu-tive justice is the key for a peaceful future.. Spending for the welfare state has not grown in Germany.
More Sensitivity and Less Prejudice (tags)
Since journalists influence the political and social climate in the subject of migration, they should show greater sensitivity toward racist exclusion..Integration is not a one-way street but can only succeed when we create the prerequisites and grant equal rights.
Primal Fears Seize the Middle (tags)
Social justice decays to mere equal opportunities.. Demography often serves economic circles, established parties and the media as a tool for social-political demigogues in legitimating neoliberal recon-struction or dismantling the welfare state.