Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Crisis: A Bloody Sacrifice

Carlo Bordoni 15th May 2015

Carlo Bordoni

Carlo Bordoni

Crisis inevitably has a negative outcome on society as a whole: not only does it help to increase social inequality, but it is a major cause of devastating personal tragedies. Economic collapse, job loss, the inevitable family problems, the stress and the state of deep depression, social disadvantage and marginalisation that results from all of this, are not easy to deal with.

The stock market crash of 1929 in the United States had caused an unprecedented chain of suicides: thousands of people who had lost everything, including the hope of surviving the disaster of an economic system in which they had believed and in which they had placed all their trust. Today, the crisis has returned to weigh on the shoulders of millions of people, creating the same conditions of hardship that the world had known at the beginning of the thirties.

Thus, the Europe of the third millennium, shocked by the worst economic crisis since the crash of 1929, has seen a return to cases of suicide: extreme forms of despair that stand out in a broader framework of lives devastated, impoverished, reduced to misery and then forced to deal with the stress of an unjust, unbearable and hopeless condition. Inequality, already present in a creeping form, and therefore less apparent in “normal” times, has become striking and inhuman since 2008 in the weaker countries of the European Community.

It cuts the population in two, dividing it with a clean break between those who succeed and those who do not. Among those who manage to overcome it, albeit at the cost of sacrifice and renunciation, and those who succumb to it, the economic consequences are not simply limited to the elimination of jobs, consumer spending, and quality of life, but have a serious impact on the very existence of people and even determine their life expectancy. This lethal effect not only strikes in the obvious way, as in the case of suicides, but debilitates the mind and body of those affected by the crisis and leads to premature death, eroding from the inside, through a long and relentless process of debilitating life.

We have only recently begun to study its collateral effects on people’s lives, especially in cases where emergency conditions persist for a long time and lead to long-lasting changes, so much so that they are not resolvable in a timely manner. Göran Therborn (The Killing Fields of Inequality, Polity, Cambridge, 2013) bridges this gap with his research based on the results of empirical studies and official statistics from Eurostat.

Unemployment has risen proportionately to the outcomes of European integration and mainly involves the Eurozone nations, with the exception of Germany, where, instead, employment has grown by 2.4%. All the other countries have recorded negative rates and four countries (Greece, Latvia, Spain and Croatia) have lost a fifth of the total number of jobs, entering headlong into the spiral of the crisis, and thus jeopardising the life expectancy of their citizens. Therborn confirms the impact of unemployment and economic depression on the average life expectancy, predicting that at least 2.47% of the inhabitants of the European Community will suffer the consequences within the next decade.

This is the price of the crisis: almost a war, a bloody sacrifice on the altar of high finance and human insensitivity.

Carlo Bordoni

Carlo Bordoni is an Italian sociologist and journalist writing for "Il Corriere della Sera".

Home ・ Politics ・ Crisis: A Bloody Sacrifice

Most Popular Posts

schools,Sweden,Swedish,voucher,choice Sweden’s schools: Milton Friedman’s wet dreamLisa Pelling
world order,Russia,China,Europe,United States,US The coming world orderMarc Saxer
south working,remote work ‘South working’: the future of remote workAntonio Aloisi and Luisa Corazza
Russia,Putin,assets,oligarchs Seizing the assets of Russian oligarchsBranko Milanovic
Russians,support,war,Ukraine Why do Russians support the war against Ukraine?Svetlana Erpyleva

Most Recent Posts

Sakharov,nuclear,Khrushchev Unhappy birthday, Andrei SakharovNina L Khrushcheva
Gazprom,Putin,Nordstream,Putin,Schröder How the public loses out when politicians cash inKatharina Pistor
defence,europe,spending Ukraine and Europe’s defence spendingValerio Alfonso Bruno and Adriano Cozzolino
North Atlantic Treaty Organization,NATO,Ukraine The Ukraine war and NATO’s renewed credibilityPaul Rogers
transnational list,European constituency,European elections,European public sphere A European constituency for a European public sphereDomènec Ruiz Devesa

Other Social Europe Publications

The transatlantic relationship
Women and the coronavirus crisis
RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?
US election 2020
Corporate taxation in a globalised era

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

Bilan social / Social policy in the EU: state of play 2021 and perspectives

The new edition of the Bilan social 2021, co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), reveals that while EU social policy-making took a blow in 2020, 2021 was guided by the re-emerging social aspirations of the European Commission and the launch of several important initiatives. Against the background of Covid-19, climate change and the debate on the future of Europe, the French presidency of the Council of the EU and the von der Leyen commission must now be closely scrutinised by EU citizens and social stakeholders.


AVAILABLE HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Living and working in Europe 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic continued to be a defining force in 2021, and Eurofound continued its work of examining and recording the many and diverse impacts across the EU. Living and working in Europe 2021 provides a snapshot of the changes to employment, work and living conditions in Europe. It also summarises the agency’s findings on issues such as gender equality in employment, wealth inequality and labour shortages. These will have a significant bearing on recovery from the pandemic, resilience in the face of the war in Ukraine and a successful transition to a green and digital future.


AVAILABLE HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

EU Care Atlas: a new interactive data map showing how care deficits affect the gender earnings gap in the EU

Browse through the EU Care Atlas, a new interactive data map to help uncover what the statistics are often hiding: how care deficits directly feed into the gender earnings gap.

While attention is often focused on the gender pay gap (13%), the EU Care Atlas brings to light the more worrisome and complex picture of women’s economic inequalities. The pay gap is just one of three main elements that explain the overall earnings gap, which is estimated at 36.7%. The EU Care Atlas illustrates the urgent need to look beyond the pay gap and understand the interplay between the overall earnings gap and care imbalances.


BROWSE THROUGH THE MAP

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us on social media

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube