mini-job

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Basic Income And The Left by henningmeyer

basic income, Bernie Sanders, carbon tax, centre right, eurozone crisis, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, labour market flexibility, land value tax, means of production, mini-job, moral hazard, precariat, quantitative easing, Silicon Valley, technological determinism, the market place, Tobin tax, universal basic income

At this low rate of allowance, people will still have to go out and work on the labour market. The basic income then wages and working conditions. Progressives can never be happy with the current state of affairs and the dismantlement of social and economic rights. becomes very rapidly a simple wage subsidy or an After the Second World War, the ILO was able to open door to ‘mini jobs’. Can this be a progressive issue its ‘Declaration of Philadelphia’. In it, member solution? states declared that ‘labour is not a commodity’. And A last point on which van Parijs does not touch but one that is very important is that our current social 24 indeed, thanks to social struggles and the then emerging welfare states, the power relations between labour and capital changed.

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But it is a blun‐ heavily subsidised, is at the heart of the Nordic derbuss which would be hugely expensive and inef‐ welfare states — not there to be bought by a child‐ ficient: an obvious effect would, perversely, be to care ‘consumer’ with his/her universal basic income. expand the arena of ‘mini-jobs’ offering low pay and Active labour market schemes, which assist workers with low productivity, for which universal basic to make the transition from obsolete skills to those income would simply provide a wage subsidy to in demand, safeguarded by high replacement-rate poor employers. The more obvious trajectory to benefits, are another key feature particularly of follow is to seek to de-commodify labour by proper Denmark’s famed ‘flexicurity’. 64 65 Passing Fad Seen in that light, universal basic income is not so much an idea whose time has come as a fad which 10 will pass for lack of public traction.

Brave New World of Work by Ulrich Beck

affirmative action, anti-globalists, Asian financial crisis, basic income, Berlin Wall, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, full employment, future of work, Gunnar Myrdal, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, job automation, knowledge worker, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, low skilled workers, McJob, means of production, mini-job, post-Fordism, post-work, postnationalism / post nation state, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, rising living standards, scientific management, Silicon Valley, technological determinism, working poor, working-age population, zero-sum game

An eyes-closed policy (or non-policy) was taken to absurd lengths by the Kohl government in Germany, but it is well enough known that breaches in the dyke cannot be repaired in that way. Precisely when nothing is happening politically, a great deal happens out there in the world. Thus, within ten years the number of so-called marginal employees soared from 2.8 million to 5.6 million. The consequences are plain to see. Where mini-jobs without social obligations are no longer the exception but the rule, the old social security system is giving up the ghost. Eyes-closed policies condone and accept an insidious move away from the welfare state. Anyone who ‘deliberately’ bets on full employment soon turns to a politics of criminalization, directed against ‘swamping’ by ‘deviant’ forms of employment.

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The whole matter is obviously jinxed, because apparently identical kinds of work conceal opposite realities that no one is able to reduce to a common denominator. In catering, office cleaning and the retail trade, temporary work is by now largely the rule. To eliminate it is to endanger that whole area of the economy, and with it the jobs that one supposedly wants to create. According to one of the plans devised by the labour ministry, holders of mini-jobs will pay more than DM300 into the health insurance fund – but only if they are already insured anyway (through the family, for example). If they are not so insured and earn between DM300 and DM620, the employer must pay his bit into the health fund – but no insurance cover results from it. The same applies to unemployment insurance.

The Economics of Belonging: A Radical Plan to Win Back the Left Behind and Achieve Prosperity for All by Martin Sandbu

air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, autonomous vehicles, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, collective bargaining, company town, debt deflation, deindustrialization, deskilling, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial intermediation, full employment, future of work, gig economy, Gini coefficient, green new deal, hiring and firing, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, intangible asset, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labour market flexibility, liquidity trap, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Martin Wolf, meta-analysis, mini-job, Money creation, mortgage debt, new economy, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, pattern recognition, pink-collar, precariat, public intellectual, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Richard Florida, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, social intelligence, TaskRabbit, total factor productivity, universal basic income, very high income, winner-take-all economy, working poor

Its labour market reforms in the early 2000s were intended to remove rigid rules and reform benefits that were thought to keep people out of work. The reforms were successful insofar as they increased both growth rates and employment. But average wages did not move—and actually fell for the lower paid. Temporary work, meanwhile, became more frequent, as did so-called mini-jobs, or very part-time positions. As a result, the bottom 40 per cent make the same as or less than twenty-five years ago (after adjusting for inflation), and the number of working poor has doubled.10 Unionisation, too, has fallen significantly, which seems to be behind the long wage stagnation.11 If Germany was the model for some of the southern European countries that reformed their labour markets under pressure from the debt crisis a decade later, it is not a big surprise if they achieve similar results.12 Despite often being seen as an example of an inclusive economy both in Germany itself and by others, the German economy now creates income inequality to equal that of the United Kingdom and the United States before taxes and redistribution—to the point where the German economist Marcel Fratzscher has said the old Germany social market economy that was built on the ruins of the Second World War no longer exists.13 Indeed Germany, too, has produced groups of left behind—those channelled into the precarious rungs of the labour market after the early-2000s reforms, as well as large parts of the former East Germany.

The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class by Guy Standing

8-hour work day, banking crisis, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, bread and circuses, call centre, Cass Sunstein, centre right, collective bargaining, company town, corporate governance, crony capitalism, death from overwork, deindustrialization, deskilling, emotional labour, export processing zone, fear of failure, full employment, Herbert Marcuse, hiring and firing, Honoré de Balzac, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, independent contractor, information security, it's over 9,000, job polarisation, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, land reform, libertarian paternalism, low skilled workers, lump of labour, marginal employment, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, means of production, mini-job, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, nudge unit, old age dependency ratio, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pension time bomb, pensions crisis, placebo effect, post-industrial society, precariat, presumed consent, quantitative easing, remote working, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, science of happiness, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, technological determinism, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, The Spirit Level, Tobin tax, transaction costs, universal basic income, unpaid internship, winner-take-all economy, working poor, working-age population, young professional

Part-timers, often women, who step off a career ladder, may end up more exploited, having to do much uncompensated workfor-labour outside their paid hours, and more self-exploited, having to do extra work in order to retain a niche of some sort. The growth in part-time jobs has helped conceal the extent of unemployment and underemployment. Thus, in Germany, shifting more people into ‘mini-jobs’ has maintained the illusion of high employment and led some economists to make foolish claims about a German employment miracle after the financial crash. Other categories overlapping with the precariat are ‘independent contractors’ and ‘dependent contractors’. There is no equivalence with the precariat here, since many contractors are secure in some respects and have 16 THE PRECARIAT a strong occupational identity.

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay by Guy Standing

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, anti-fragile, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, bilateral investment treaty, Bonfire of the Vanities, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carried interest, cashless society, central bank independence, centre right, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, commons-based peer production, credit crunch, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, disruptive innovation, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, ending welfare as we know it, eurozone crisis, Evgeny Morozov, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Firefox, first-past-the-post, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, gig economy, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, information retrieval, intangible asset, invention of the steam engine, investor state dispute settlement, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, labour market flexibility, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, lump of labour, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, megaproject, mini-job, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Neil Kinnock, non-tariff barriers, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, nudge unit, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, openstreetmap, patent troll, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Phillips curve, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precariat, quantitative easing, remote working, rent control, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, Robert Gordon, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Kuznets, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, structural adjustment programs, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, the payments system, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Y Combinator, zero-sum game, Zipcar

To compound the advantage, in 1998 German trade unions made a ‘concession bargain’ with employers and government that held down wages. Then, in 2004, the Social Democratic government of Gerhard Schröder introduced the Hartz IV welfare reform, which cut unemployment benefits and imposed conditions that forced many to take low-paid ‘mini-jobs’. This put more downward pressure on wages, especially at the lower end, so increasing inequality. Real wages were static or fell from the early 1990s onwards. Average wages were lower in 2015 than in 1990, although national income per person had risen by nearly 30 per cent. In Britain, too, wages have been stagnant for years.

Rewriting the Rules of the European Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity by Joseph E. Stiglitz

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, basic income, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, business cycle, business process, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, deindustrialization, discovery of DNA, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial intermediation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gender pay gap, George Akerlof, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, hiring and firing, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, independent contractor, inflation targeting, informal economy, information asymmetry, intangible asset, investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, labor-force participation, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market fundamentalism, mini-job, moral hazard, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, open economy, Paris climate accords, patent troll, pension reform, price mechanism, price stability, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, TaskRabbit, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, vertical integration, zero-sum game

The optimal policy may accordingly entail using both instruments, as the United States does, though its minimum wage is far below a living wage, and its wage subsidy via tax credit is too small to bring it up to a living wage. IMPROVING WORKER CONFIDENCE Regulate Precarious Jobs Scarcity of good jobs in Europe has forced many to enter precarious work arrangements, which includes part-time jobs, mini-jobs, and on-call and zero-hours contracts,§ to mention some of the new forms of employment (Box 9.1). In some cases, changes in technology have facilitated these new arrangements; whatever the efficiency benefits of the technological changes, they all have distributive consequences of which we must be mindful.

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet by Klaus Schwab, Peter Vanham

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, air traffic controllers' union, Anthropocene, Apple II, Asian financial crisis, Asperger Syndrome, basic income, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, blue-collar work, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, company town, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, cyber-physical system, decarbonisation, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, digital divide, don't be evil, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, microplastics / micro fibres, Mikhail Gorbachev, mini-job, mittelstand, move fast and break things, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, precariat, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, transfer pricing, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population, Yom Kippur War, young professional, zero-sum game

The union, which had typically been weak in the family-owned enterprise, grew stronger, and management took on a more constructive approach to its Works Council going forward. In Germany, similar societal and corporate stresses around economic growth, employment, and the integration of the former East German states ultimately led to a new social pact in the early 2000s, with new laws on co-determination, “mini jobs,” and unemployment benefits. But the new equilibrium was for some less beneficial than before, and even though Germany afterward returned to a period of high economic growth, the situation soon got more precarious for many other advanced economies. A first warning sign came from the dot-com crash in late 2000 and early 2001, when America's technology stocks came crashing down.

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet by Klaus Schwab

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, air traffic controllers' union, Anthropocene, Apple II, Asian financial crisis, Asperger Syndrome, basic income, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, blue-collar work, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, company town, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, cyber-physical system, decarbonisation, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, digital divide, don't be evil, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, microplastics / micro fibres, Mikhail Gorbachev, mini-job, mittelstand, move fast and break things, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, precariat, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, transfer pricing, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population, Yom Kippur War, young professional, zero-sum game

The union, which had typically been weak in the family-owned enterprise, grew stronger, and management took on a more constructive approach to its Works Council going forward. In Germany, similar societal and corporate stresses around economic growth, employment, and the integration of the former East German states ultimately led to a new social pact in the early 2000s, with new laws on co-determination, “mini jobs,” and unemployment benefits. But the new equilibrium was for some less beneficial than before, and even though Germany afterward returned to a period of high economic growth, the situation soon got more precarious for many other advanced economies. A first warning sign came from the dot-com crash in late 2000 and early 2001, when America's technology stocks came crashing down.

Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone by Sarah Jaffe

Ada Lovelace, air traffic controllers' union, Amazon Mechanical Turk, antiwork, barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Boris Johnson, call centre, capitalist realism, Charles Babbage, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, desegregation, deskilling, do what you love, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, emotional labour, feminist movement, Ferguson, Missouri, financial independence, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, gamification, gender pay gap, gentrification, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, Grace Hopper, green new deal, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, immigration reform, informal economy, job automation, job satisfaction, job-hopping, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, late capitalism, lockdown, lone genius, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, means of production, mini-job, minimum wage unemployment, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, new economy, oil shock, Peter Thiel, post-Fordism, post-work, precariat, profit motive, Rana Plaza, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, school choice, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech worker, traumatic brain injury, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, unpaid internship, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, War on Poverty, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture , workplace surveillance , Works Progress Administration

In the book Where Bad Jobs Are Better , researchers Françoise Carré and Chris Tilly studied retail work in Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States and concluded that while conditions varied by country, “in general, retail jobs have gotten worse across all six countries over the past two decades,” with women and young people overrepresented, and lower-than-average wages. German workers, who had better training, got their schedules six months in advance, and had union protections, nevertheless were increasingly in “mini-jobs” with lower pay and fewer benefits. French cashiers got to sit down on the job, and stores closed earlier in the day and on Sundays, yet French retail workers too were tracked for their scanning speed. In Mexico, Walmart is unionized, but the workers complained of excessive unpaid overtime. 35 Even without the union protections that workers in other countries enjoy, retail workers in the United States have managed to push back some of their worst conditions.

The Default Line: The Inside Story of People, Banks and Entire Nations on the Edge by Faisal Islam

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bond market vigilante , book value, Boris Johnson, British Empire, capital controls, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, Crossrail, currency risk, dark matter, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, energy security, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, Eyjafjallajökull, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial repression, floating exchange rates, forensic accounting, forward guidance, full employment, G4S, ghettoisation, global rebalancing, global reserve currency, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, inflation targeting, Irish property bubble, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, labour market flexibility, light touch regulation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, market clearing, megacity, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, mini-job, mittelstand, Money creation, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, negative equity, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, open economy, paradox of thrift, Pearl River Delta, pension reform, price mechanism, price stability, profit motive, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, reshoring, Right to Buy, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, shareholder value, sovereign wealth fund, tail risk, The Chicago School, the payments system, too big to fail, trade route, transaction costs, two tier labour market, unorthodox policies, uranium enrichment, urban planning, value at risk, WikiLeaks, working-age population, zero-sum game

Good suggestions from all over Europe, including England, contributed to our deliberations.’ The ‘Hartz IV’ reforms for the country were focused more on hiring rather than firing. Generous welfare payments for the unemployed (three-fifths of last wage) were slashed to a basic flat rate of €345 per month. Massive tax incentives were created for ‘mini-jobs’ – low-paid, often temporary work. Hartz promised that unemployment would halve. Initially it went up, over the 5 million level only previously seen in the Weimar Republic. The reforms were deeply unpopular, and led to Schröder’s narrow election defeat in 2005. Schröder was fired by the electorate – in part, for making his compatriots easier to fire.