EU: Four Predictions on the Future of Europe by US Think Tank Carnegie Europe - by Jan Techau

At the end of all this madness, what is the EU going to look like? This is a question heard a lot these days, in one form or another. Most observers sense that these are extraordinary times for Europe, and that political realities might look very different rather soon. And while it is impossible to predict how the greatest political project in history will transform under existential pressures from both within and outside, all of these pressures point in a certain direction when it comes to Europe’s future.

Let’s start by saying that there will never be an end to all this madness. Human affairs never reach an end point, some sort of magic equilibrium of all driving forces at which those affairs can be frozen and preserved. In European integration parlance, this means that there is no such thing as finalité politique, that old canard.

The EU serves a purpose, and its workings and its setup will be adapted as this purpose changes. Again and again. So instead of looking at some imaginary final outcome that will be outdated the moment it is reached, let’s look at the forces that shape the union.

Ultimately, it is the needs of Europeans that build the EU. Yes, political leadership and a good helping of civic boldness on behalf of the European citizenry are necessary as well, neither of which is in ample supply these days. But fundamentally, the EU either serves the needs of the day or it gets into crisis. Such a moment has been reached today. And the current crisis that Europeans are both observing and undergoing is nothing but the readjustment of a project that no longer serves the needs of the day properly, and therefore needs renovation.

What makes this moment different from earlier existential crises is that the direction of integration is more diffuse now than in the past. Some needs point toward more integration, but others perhaps point toward less. I am convinced that in the long term, the net result will be more integration. But it will not be wholesale “ever closer union,” the aim enshrined in the EU’s treaties. It will be something a little more diffuse.

The biggest overwhelming need is that Europeans will have to react to the harsh winds of political globalization in the future. Political globalization is more than just the economic globalization that has been talked about endlessly in the last decade. It is a quest for political order on a planet that has outgrown its merely regional structure. It will drag the Europeans out of their cozy, U.S.-subsidized corner of comfort, in which liberal order, pluralism, political stability, and the absence of major conflict were somehow taken for granted.

Read more: Four Predictions on the Future of Europe - Carnegie Europe - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Globalization on the rocks

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/globalization-political-fault-lines-by-nouriel-roubini-2016-07

Global Economy - The Globalization Fairy Tale

Globalization’s Gluttony By Anatol Zukerman A painting and poem by Anatol Zukerman. A painting and poem by Anatol Zukerman. ©2015 The Globalist ALL RIGHTS RESERVED You can join the conversation about this story on the original post on theglobalist.com. http://www.theglobalist.com/globalization-gluttony-united-states/#noredirect Powered by Como: http://www.como.com

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Global Economy: Globalisation And Technology Drive Insecurity - by Paul Sweeney

People are insecure. Young people worry about getting a decent job, finding a secure home and having to pay off the vast debts run up in the decade of uber-liberal economic policies of European governments to 2007.

Elderly people worry about their security in old age, access to decent health care, about their children getting jobs or being forced to emigrate.

A recent Eurofound study concluded that 14% of jobs in Europe are high-paid good jobs; 37% are well-balanced good jobs; 29% are poorly balanced jobs; and 20% are poor quality jobs. Thus almost half of all those at work are not in good jobs.

Yet we have never had such high incomes or wealth. This is in spite of the six years of the Great Recession. Total national income is substantially higher than what it was a generation ago. Yet only a generation ago too, jobs and pensions were more secure, homes were easier to find and health care was not such a big worry.

What has led to today’s insecurity? The big drivers of insecurity are globalisation and technology. They have shifted low skilled jobs and now even middle income jobs offshore, created intense competition, change and uncertainty. They give great power to large corporations, while undermining the power of states and of organised labour. Crucially, they have also changed the nature of politics.

Globalisation and technology have been key drivers in the three-decade-long (a generation) decline in the share of national income of workers and the self-employed and its corresponding shift to wealthy people and corporations A few countries like Ireland witnessed the boom of catching up with the rest of Europe for 20 years, when overall earnings rose so the seismic shift in income was not so evident, but thanks to the Great Recession, it now is.

Both globalisation and technology have reduced labour’s bargaining power through offshoring, through sectoral shifts in employment from manufacturing to services, from large units to smaller ones and to autonomous, self-employed working. It has facilitated the massive decline in corporate governance – in the way firms are run and what their objectives are. It boosted the pay of the elite to extraordinary levels that have nothing to do with performance. Both have also facilitated financialisation – where finance rules the real economy.

Globalisation has also reduced financial disclosure, blurring our knowledge of the real ownership and control of business. It has led to the privatisation of swathes of public services, and these privatised public services are increasingly run by big, non-competing oligopolies. It has facilitated increased tax evasion and tax avoidance on unprecedented scales by the wealthy and by large companies. The Luxleaks and HSBC exposures are only the tip of this iceberg of tax cheating on an industrial scale in some countries.

Read more: How Globalisation And Technology Drive Insecurity