"Modern societies cannot function without a welfare state" (tags)
Modern societies cannot really function well without a general social security system. That's why we need a security system for the whole of society that everyone pays into. In addition, growing social inequality is also a major economic risk.
The right to water and 7 challenges to the welfare state (tags)
Visions need concrete, tangible measures that provide security in times of uncertainty and reliably carry all people through the huge changes...The indispensable ecological transformation must also become a social one.
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
Preserving Democracy and the Welfare State (tags)
We are confronted with war and endless suffering, with flight, with poverty and social insecurity, with a global pandemic... The arms buildup planned for decades will not end the deaths in Ukraine, will not make our world more peaceful and will not make it safer.
Justice, Impoverishment and Fear (tags)
The defense of the welfare state is the defense of democracy...Democracy is as strong as it is fragile. It is strong when it is defended. It is strong when we do not allow ourselves to be fobbed off with answers that do not tolerate questions. But it disappears when we become indifferent to it.
Strengthening the welfare state (tags)
Trump's smear campaigns, scapegoating, fear mongering, $8-trillion tax heists, corporate welfare, attacking the poor, minorities, seniors, disabled, children and students have left democracy in intensive care. Helicopter money, a Marshall Plan for journalism and ending wars could revive the debate culture.
The new normality is characterized by fear, social distancing and increasing state control. Many fear that the current situation could become permanent and that our liberal democratic legal system could be transformed into a dictatorial system of injustice.
The welfare state - anchor of stability in the crisis (tags)
Work, income and wealth must be distributed more fairly, and a number of "rules of the game" in our society must be changed. The upheaval forced by the crisis will hopefully force even hard-boiled defenders of the existing to rethink.
Tax Reform in the US: Trump's Attack on America (tags)
The tax reform of the Republicans is a blow against the welfare state and was prepared in the 1970s. The tax reform is profitable for Donald Trump but could cost the Republicans a re-election. $5 trillion goes to households with more than a million dollars income.
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).
Get The Internationalist No. 48! (tags)
Get The Internationalist No. 48! Send US$1 to Mundial Publications, Box 3321 Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008 USA. Subscriptions $10.
Sweden: How the welfare state was stolen (tags)
The entrance of private equity from 2005-6 was a big shift. They created a totally different logic, where short-term extraction of profit was the only goal. In 2011 the shit really hit the fan.
The Tiger and His Trainers (tags)
How preposterous to think we can avert the next crisis without regulating or shriveling the financial sector, addressing income inequality and radically rethinking the meaning and assumptions of economics? Hans-Jurgen Urban likens the financial crisis to a tiger breaking from his cage and sees the welfare state and unions as trainers
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.
VIDEO: "Occupy Movement and Economic Inequality" (tags)
Supporters of the “Occupy Movement” talked about the state and future of the movement. The Occupy Movement began in 2011 as a protest movement against social and economic inequality.
Free Internet Book: "The Future of the Welfare State," Ireland, 2010 (tags)
Happy Martin Luther King Day! The state has a social nature and can't be only a power and security state. The social state seems to have capsized into the activating or punishing state. Thirty-years of neoliberal restructuring gave every privilege to capital.
George Orwell in the Government: The Rich Come from the Poor (tags)
In Germany as in the US, the rightwing insists poverty is not a question of money but of attitude and thus of one's own making. Falling wages are said to be a sign of structural improvements on the labor market!
Five Minutes with Noam Chomsky: The Euro Crisis and the Welfare State (tags)
"Europe’s policies make sense only on one assumption: that the goal is to try and undermine and unravel the welfare state. And that’s almost been said. Mario Draghi said that the social contract in Europe is dead. Perhaps not ‘dead’ but under attack."
Uncovering the Fracture of the System (tags)
Uncovering the fracture and the dislocations of this system, proposing changes and actively interfering is the optimistic side. The collective repression of problems is carried out to a spectacular extent. The welfare state and democracy cannot be separated.
On one hand, industrial capitalism made possible those reforms that are part of democracy. On the other hand, owners of capital fear too much democracy. In the 1980s, the head of Volvo said: Sweden needs Volvo but Volvo doesn't need Sweden.
Philippines: PLM Rejects Neoliberal Policies of the Government (tags)
PLM Campaigns for a Welfare State System
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.
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.."
The US Healthcare Sham and the Scandinavian Model (tags)
The reforms that Barack Obama is proposing will not change the US' abysmal healthcare system because those who profit from it have been able to buy protection from the lawmakers.. The Golden Age of the welfare state began after the Second World War.
Protecting Capitalists or the Welfare State (tags)
Banks and hedge brought disaster upon themselves and their customers with their "innovations" and financial products.. Financial management may never be uncoupled from the real economy and lead a life of its own without economic justification or social responsibility.
The End of Finance Market Capitalism: Renaissance of Socialism? (tags)
The crisis offers an historical chance to civilize an unbridled capitalism with reform policy. The future relation of market and state is the focus of attention.. Financial markets are characterized by herd behavior. Risk consciousness disappears.
Klaus Offe, a left thinker, once proposed Offe's paradox, the idea that"while capitalism cannot coexist with, neither can it exist without the welfare state." Canada has done better than some countries in protecting social welfare. The welfare state is not dead; what is dead is econ security.
The Neediest Need Help Like the Banks (tags)
The same state haggles over every bowl of soup for welfare recipients. For banks, billions appeared overnight. There must also be money for higher wages and more social services.
Further Oppression of the Poor likely at the UN: America – both the Problem and the Soluti (tags)
After many years I devised a human rights approach to address the problems faced by societies, national and international. This includes immediately addressing core minimum obligations (i.e. dealing with the most serious violations), including the empowering rights to human rights education (re democratic support for human rights) and the right to development (re small business promotion) as well as non-retrogression (the protection of existing rights). However remarkably I was to find that the rights I focused on were virtually identical to the rights excluded by the complaints procedure due to be adopted by the UN General Assembly next month. I am now even more convinced than ever that my socially responsible ‘bottom-up’ human rights approach is the path forward while the global elites, international and national institutions fear any change that threatens their positions and lifestyles.
Welfare State and Inner Security (tags)
The punitive side of welfare state reform is read as a success. Problems result because firstly there is not enough work and secondfly thoser integrated in work can often hardly live from that. Massive exclusion and precariousness exist everywhere.
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.
A Slippery Slope?
Welfare State in the Market Trap (tags)
"The crisis of the welfare state is a crisis in the heads of the economic and political elites. The welfare state is a political barrier against the marketing of human labor. The welfare state can be regained through democratic solidarity.. Today one farmer feeds 88 non-farmers."
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.
G4 process is undemocratic, No WTO deal in Potsdam! (tags)
Trade ministers of the G4 countries (the European Union, the United States, Brazil and India) are meeting in Potsdam, Germany, this week try to stitch together a trade deal to which each of them could agree.
The Neoliberal Catechism (tags)
Turning away from the state causes old age poverty and endangers life and limb.. The consequences of privatization are faded out in the US and Germany.. Defining freedom as only entrepreneurial freedom and freedom of capital can be easily veiled.
Basic Income: Freedom for Every Individual (tags)
Katya Kipping rightly characterizes basic income as a democracy package. Solving a material question and strengthening civil rights and personal autonomy are joined.
the welfare state is exposed to serious shocks. Working life is essentially changed. The welfare state protects from the injustice of the free market and creates an identity for those who must claim its benefits.
The Welfare State and Democracy (tags)
The German presidential cabinets following the Mueller government cut the basic social rights of employees and unemployed at a breakneck speed and dismantled the welfare state and democracy.
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.
Reforming or Dismantling the Welfare State (tags)
The neoliberal residual state is more a criminal than a welfare state..The welfare state that has constitutional rank in Germany is now without intrinsic value for neoliberals and subject to the location logic of economic and power interests.
Demographic Development: Reality and Media Distortion (tags)
Reducing uhemployment and intensive education for children and youth are prerequisites for mastering the future. Instead the economy and politics constantly refer to demography.. Catastrophic reports sell better than the truth.
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.
Memorandum 2005: Alternative Economic Policy (tags)
In Germany and the US, the corporation is often stylized as the suffering servant. The market is made sacrosanct; all problems are defined as interferencs with the market. Profits soar and investments fall. Corporations pay increasingly less tax.
Can the State Save Us from Work? (tags)
Whenever more profits are produced with fewer and fewer workers, income should be separated from work. Every citizen should automatically receive a part of the money cake to buy goods produced without his help and find his or her own fujlfillment.
On the Scandinavian Model (tags)
The Scandinavian model could help us find our way to social compromise and true security through investments in education and apprenticeships. Has our wealth blinded us to alternatives and encouraged our altered state of paralysis, insecurity and fear?
THE DEATH OF PENSIONS? by Mumia Abu-Jamal (tags)
Everybody wins -- except the workers.
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.
Sweden: Poorer Than You Think (tags)
Abolish the welfare state (tags)
Netanyahu attacks-Israeli working class responds (tags)
Israeli working class
The Kennedy sycophant's guide to oppressive taxes (tags)
Does the Bush tax plan favor the wealthy? Well, yeah... Let the Democrats and their ilk pool their resources to subvert the Constitution and help "the people" build a Welfare State -- the rest of declare this taxation (read: legal plunder) to be oppressive.
The Curious Case Of 'Neoconservative' (tags)
"How can something exist and not exist both at the same time? The answer: by being neoconservative." How can one be a Trotskyite and claim to be a Conservative at the same time. Why by being a NeoCon.
The Welfare State, Globalization and the Rule of the Market (tags)
The welfare state regressing since 1974/76 or since 1982 must be reformed, democratized and decentralized.. What is central is refuting the neoliberal positional logic, reestablishinig solidarity and reorganizing and extending the welfare state
The Flexible Person: Critical Psychology and Fitness Training (tags)
With athletic and medical metaphors, persons even in nursery school are urged to fitness training. Under globalization, societies find themsevles in positional competition. National chances are set against the global threat. Trans.from German