The Erosion of the German Middle Class

Bösch, Gerhard; Kalina, Thorsten

doi:10.1007/s10272-016-0580-4

Cited by 3 publications

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“…At the same time, it readily lies within a specific socio-economic context that accepts capitalist relations. At best this resonates with social democracy, or more precisely in the German case, with Christian Democrat versions of Corporativism -or what Bosch and Kalina (2016) refer to as the Bismarckian welfare state.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Crossing Boundaries: VET, the Labour Market and Social Justice

Avis

2018

IJRVET

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Purpose: The paper explores the relationship between vocational education and training (VET), the labour market and social justice in the current conjuncture.Approach: The paper adopts an approach rooted in critical policy analysis. It consequently sets the discussion within the wider socio-economic and political context. Such an approach enables an exploration of the changing nature of waged labour in current conditions.Results: A critical policy analysis facilitates a discussion of the labour process, waged labour and its intensification. At the same time these processes are allied to the effective expulsion and marginalisation of particular groups of workers from employment. Importantly, such processes need to be placed in their localised and spatial context within particular social formations.Conclusion: Equity models of social justice that emphasise equal opportunities, are restrictive and can be contrasted with equality models which have a more expansive and philosophically rooted understanding of justice. The paper through its examination of the salience of VET in the current conjuncture as well as its significance for a post austerity democratic and radical politics, argues for a relational analysis that seeks to interrupt the patterns of inequality precipitated by neo-liberalism.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Crossing Boundaries: VET, the Labour Market and Social Justice

Avis

2018

IJRVET

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“…The reason for this is the high share of individuals with multiple sources of income and of secondary earner households in the top income bracket, as well as the high share of singles and households with mini-jobbers in the bottom income bracket, both of which are categories with below-average volumes of work (cf. Bosch and Kalina 2016). Unfortunately, international comparative research is lacking in this area.…”

Section: Erosion Of Collective Bargaining Leading To Growing Income Imentioning

confidence: 99%

Does the German social model support the convergence of living conditions in the EU?

Bösch¹

2019

Towards Convergence in Europe

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The European Community was not conceived merely as an economic union, in which, once barriers to trade had been reduced through the play of market forces and the mobility of the factors of production, living standards in the poorer countries would converge with those of the wealthier countries. Economists categorise such catch-up processes as 'beta-convergence'. The European Union (EU) also talks of a European social model, by which is meant not only that social standards should converge towards a minimum level, but also that they should be further developed in order to establish fair working and living conditions and equality of opportunities. The aim is to reduce social inequality within member states and the EU as a whole, a process termed 'sigma-convergence'. Both convergence criteria belong together, because increasing social inequality hampers growth (Ostry and Berg 2014), and thus also beta-convergence, if too little is invested in the life opportunities and therefore also the human capital of disadvantaged groups, thereby causing consumer demand to stagnate. Germany is one of the wealthiest EU member states; it might be surmised, therefore, that the question there would be less about catch-up processes than about maintaining prosperity. However, following German reunification and the integration of the poorer part of the country after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the organisation of such catch-up processes has determined German economic policy to date. The various solidarity pacts intended to provide aid for eastern Germany are the functional equivalent of the EU's cohesion fund. Also, social inequality within Germany has increased considerably in the past two decades. This is linked not to reunification but to the deliberate policy goal of weakening the once inclusive wage system and to a redistribution from the bottom to the top, primarily through tax policy (Bach et al. 2016). Growing inequality in the EU member state with the largest population has acted as a brake on sigma-convergence in the EU as a whole. There is also the question of whether Germany, with its growing current account surpluses within the straitjacket of European austerity policy, is hindering other countries' catch-up processes (beta-convergence). Consequently, the convergence debate cannot be conducted on a country by country basis, because in a common economic area-and even more so in a monetary union-a policy adopted by one country (particularly the largest country) can have both positive and negative effects on the convergence processes in other countries. After the experiences of recent years, we surely have to bid farewell to the naive hope of the EU's early years that all member states would grow and prosper together.

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An individual-based model for predicting the prevalence of depression

Loula

Monteiro

2019

Ecological Complexity

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The Erosion of the German Middle Class

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Crossing Boundaries: VET, the Labour Market and Social Justice

Crossing Boundaries: VET, the Labour Market and Social Justice

Does the German social model support the convergence of living conditions in the EU?

An individual-based model for predicting the prevalence of depression

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