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George Tyler

George Tyler is a former US deputy Treasury assistant secretary and senior official at the World Bank. He is the author of What Went Wrong: How the 1% Hijacked the American Middle Class … And What Other Nations Got Right.

George Tyler

Getting to zero—what’s the beef?

George Tyler 3rd December 2021

Most livestock land will have to be repurposed as carbon sinks to remove the huge global emissions related to food production.

Not seeing the wood for the trees—the EU’s environmental blunder

George Tyler 7th September 2021

Supporting a conversion to wood burning has unwittingly incentivised power plants to increase greenhouse gases.

US economy mired in viral stagnation loop

George Tyler 31st August 2020

The travails of the US economy come amid a politics never so poisonous since the civil war.

A European Union climate agenda for COP26

George Tyler 27th February 2020

The EU should bring a new climate agenda to Glasgow—including a roadmap for emerging nations to embrace a future beyond fossil fuels.

Unpacking supreme courts to restore checks and balances

George Tyler 7th November 2019

Democracy is threatened by politicisation of constitutional courts. Unorthodox tactics are required to restore their role.

The superiority of codetermination

George Tyler 16th July 2019

The United States should learn from the better performance of European companies which have worker representation on boards.

What European Democracies Can Teach America

George Tyler 22nd June 2018

Amid authoritarian and illiberal forces buffeting social democracies, it is helpful to renew appreciation for their political architectures, especially the central role developed over a century and a half for the principle of proportional representation (PR). Its absence is one factor responsible for the poor quality of American democracy documented in Billionaire Democracy. In contrast […]

Fake News And The Fairness Doctrine

George Tyler 23rd May 2018

Fake news in America’s public square is a failure of its information marketplace. Remediation should occur through enhanced marketplace competition, not government censorship. I have argued that the quality of democracy is lower in America than in much of Europe. It lacks co-determination, for instance, which is why US wages stagnate even as inflation-adjusted wages […]

Codetermination Enters The American Political Debate

George Tyler 20th April 2018

Three senators have introduced unprecedented legislation mandating that employee representatives must comprise one-third of Boards of Directors at publicly-listed US corporations. Upgraded corporate governance with codetermination is an unfamiliar concept to most Americans. Its appearance acknowledges the weakness of conventional tools to end wage stagnation. And it reflects frustration by Democratic senators Tammy Baldwin, Elizabeth […]

Social Media Platforms Should Tell The Truth

George Tyler 26th March 2018

The high quality democracies of northern Europe are an unnatural construct, history teaching us that the universal default setting of human society is authoritarianism. There are many key elements in crafting and sustaining such high quality democracies, including engendering a common body of trusted information, a communitarian spirit, the rule of law and the like. […]

American Democracy Sold To The Highest Bidder

George Tyler 30th January 2018

Aristotle measured the quality of democracy by the extent to which politics constrains the economically powerful, allowing the preferences of the landless to be reflected in public policy. According to a new analysis, American democracy gets a failing grade on Aristotle’s test while the countries of northern Europe are star pupils. Path-breaking recent research has […]

Trump: Reaganomics Redux

George Tyler 22nd November 2016

It’s wages, stupid! Analysts are pondering why millions of the same voters who favored President Obama in 2008 and (less enthusiastically) in 2012 pivoted to favor his antithesis, Donald Trump, in 2016. Economic frustration centered on stagnant wages is mostly the answer, reflected in a generalized desire for “change” expressed by 39 percent of voters […]

Why US Democrats Must Derail Republican Party Nationalist Populism With Economic Populism

George Tyler 15th February 2016

The Republican presidential aspirant nominated at this summer’s convention is likely to become that party’s nominee in part by invoking jingoist and xenophobic themes drawn from the playbooks of eastern European authoritarians. Miloš Zeman, the Czech President asserts, for example, “I do not want Islam in the Czech Republic.” And Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán has […]

Labor Day: Good Time To Readdress Pay And Collective Bargaining

George Tyler 7th September 2015

President Obama has belatedly awakened to the plight of America’s middle class whose economic fate is dependent almost entirely on wages. Taking a lead from his predecessors since Ronald Reagan, Obama proved indifferent during much of his first term to the deterioration in the collective bargaining position of employees at US workplaces – the key […]

Why We Need A Cultural Revolution In American Capitalism

George Tyler 10th August 2015

Corporations are at the center of market fundamentalist capitalism practiced in the UK and US. Yet, in contrast to northern Europe, they are only weakly embedded in their communities, insufficiently attuned to the aspirations and needs of the wider stakeholder community. Rather than government diktats, the solution is cultural changes whereby inspired societal norms produce […]

Why President Obama Needs To Reframe The Wage Debate

George Tyler 28th November 2014

Stagnant wages have robbed the American middle class of opportunity. Wage compression is why fewer Americans now believe they are middle class; remarkably, the share of Americans who self-identify as below-middle class has risen 60 percent since 2008 to near equivalence in size with those identifying as middle class. Horatio Alger has emigrated to Australia […]

President Obama Is Emulating Buchanan Instead Of Lincoln

George Tyler 21st July 2014

Obama is Leaving Economic Inequality for his Successors to Fix President Obama is emulating former President James Buchanan. His economic agenda is to kick the can down the road, leaving his successors an America of widening economic inequality without prospect of remediation. The Obama Presidency is facing the most toxic, polarized environment since the antebellum […]

Britain’s, Not France’s, Middle Class Is Being ‘Run Into The Dust’

George Tyler 20th February 2014

While France and Britain cooperate on multiple fronts, the Cameron government is not above using its neighbor as a political foil. Grant Shapps, conservative party chairman opined in January 2014 that French President Hollande had “led his countrymen back into the dust” which is “exactly what [Labour leader] Miliband wants to do with the British […]

Eurofound advertisement

Fifth round of the Living, working and Covid-19 e-survey: Living in a new era of uncertainty

The fifth round of Eurofound's e-survey, sampled between March 25th and May 2nd 2022, sheds light on the social and economic situation of people across Europe two years after Covid-19 was first detected on the European continent. It also explores the reality of living in a new era of uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine, inflation and rising energy prices. The e-survey reveals the heavy toll of the pandemic, with respondents reporting lower trust in institutions than at the onset, poorer mental wellbeing, a rise in unmet healthcare need and an increase in households experiencing energy poverty.


AVAILABLE HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Discover the summer issue of the Progressive Post!

The summer issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out! It offers compelling analysis on: the energy-crisis challenge, Ukraine war, western Balkans, enlargement, housing crisis, rural areas, minimum wage and much more!

Almost five months into the war, and against the backdrop of soaring energy prices, rising inflation, a changing international order, rampant disinformation, the Ukrainian refugee emergency and all the other consequences triggered by the Russian war against Ukraine, the EU finds itself at a historic turning point. It must choose between sticking together, taking bold decisions, and acting accordingly—or, on the other side, allowing indecisiveness and divisions to gain the upper hand.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

Towards a new Minimum Wage Policy in Germany and Europe: WSI minimum wage report 2022

The past year has seen a much higher political profile for the issue of minimum wages, not only in Germany, which has seen fresh initiatives to tackle low pay, but also in those many other countries in Europe that have embarked on substantial and sustained increases in statutory minimum wages. One key benchmark in determining what should count as an adequate minimum wage is the threshold of 60 per cent of the median wage, a ratio that has also played a role in the European Commission's proposals for an EU-level policy on minimum wages. This year's WSI Minimum Wage Report highlights the feasibility of achieving minimum wages that meet this criterion, given the political will. And with an increase to 12 euro per hour planned for autumn 2022, Germany might now find itself promoted from laggard to minimum-wage trailblazer.


FREE DOWNLOAD

ETUI advertisement

Workers on the route

Discover the new issue of HesaMag, the health and safety magazine with a European view (aussi disponible en français), published twice a year by the ETUI, and take your seat for an exclusive journey through the day-to-day reality of transport workers across Europe, from Romanian drivers to Dutch dockers and French female flight attendants, just to name a few.


MORE INFORMATION HERE

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