The chairman of the 16-nation eurogroup, Jean-Claude Juncker, has warned that job losses will escalate this year despite measures taken by EU leaders in recent months to boost the economy. "There's a risk of mass layoffs by the end of the year," he said while addressing a conference in Brussels on Wednesday (15 April) organised by European trade unions. Competition for jobs in the EU is set to rise this year as layoffs increase Mr Juncker, who is also the prime minister of Luxembourg as well as chair of the eurogroup - the EU nations using the euro currency, urged world leaders to move ahead with reforms agreed at the recent G20 meeting in London, but said the EU may need to do more if current stimulus programmes prove insufficient. "If by 2010, we see this is not enough, we will have to reconsider. Now to simply pour more resources in would be premature," he said. However, he repeated the line iterated by many EU governments in recent months in the face of US calls for increased stimulus spending that a clear exit strategy is necessary.
The chairman of the 16-nation eurogroup, Jean-Claude Juncker, has warned that job losses will escalate this year despite measures taken by EU leaders in recent months to boost the economy.
"There's a risk of mass layoffs by the end of the year," he said while addressing a conference in Brussels on Wednesday (15 April) organised by European trade unions.
Competition for jobs in the EU is set to rise this year as layoffs increase
Mr Juncker, who is also the prime minister of Luxembourg as well as chair of the eurogroup - the EU nations using the euro currency, urged world leaders to move ahead with reforms agreed at the recent G20 meeting in London, but said the EU may need to do more if current stimulus programmes prove insufficient.
"If by 2010, we see this is not enough, we will have to reconsider. Now to simply pour more resources in would be premature," he said.
However, he repeated the line iterated by many EU governments in recent months in the face of US calls for increased stimulus spending that a clear exit strategy is necessary.
Motorists will be offered subsidies of up to £5,000 to encourage them to buy electric or plug-in hybrid cars under plans announced by the government. It is part of the government's £250m plan to promote low carbon transport over the next five years. But ministers do not expect the cars to hit the showrooms until 2011. Car industry representatives welcomed the plan but critics said the government needed to invest more in public transport and renewable energy. Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon said that there was huge potential to reduce emissions, with less than 0.1% of the UK's 26 million cars now electric. The strategy also includes plans to provide £20m for charging points and other necessary infrastructure.
Motorists will be offered subsidies of up to £5,000 to encourage them to buy electric or plug-in hybrid cars under plans announced by the government.
It is part of the government's £250m plan to promote low carbon transport over the next five years.
But ministers do not expect the cars to hit the showrooms until 2011.
Car industry representatives welcomed the plan but critics said the government needed to invest more in public transport and renewable energy.
Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon said that there was huge potential to reduce emissions, with less than 0.1% of the UK's 26 million cars now electric.
The strategy also includes plans to provide £20m for charging points and other necessary infrastructure.
Boris Johnson is offering City Hall staff confidence-boosting classes as part of their redundancy packages. The workshops, with titles such as Cresting The Curve, Create Your Own Luck and Me, have been set up in the wake of a jobs cull aimed at saving millions of pounds. Posters advertising the sessions, which will cost the taxpayer £9,000, have appeared in lifts, and they are being publicised on the staff intranet.At least 120 posts have been axed at City Hall, including half the environment team - the group in charge of London's bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Mayor wants to save about £7.5million from an £80million budget. Many of the cuts are of middle managers earning about £40,000.Greater London Authority chiefs claim redundancy "coaching" will boost self-esteem and help those who have lost jobs find new ones.But critics say the courses are little comfort for those made redundant.
Boris Johnson is offering City Hall staff confidence-boosting classes as part of their redundancy packages.
The workshops, with titles such as Cresting The Curve, Create Your Own Luck and Me, have been set up in the wake of a jobs cull aimed at saving millions of pounds.
Posters advertising the sessions, which will cost the taxpayer £9,000, have appeared in lifts, and they are being publicised on the staff intranet.
At least 120 posts have been axed at City Hall, including half the environment team - the group in charge of London's bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Mayor wants to save about £7.5million from an £80million budget. Many of the cuts are of middle managers earning about £40,000.
Greater London Authority chiefs claim redundancy "coaching" will boost self-esteem and help those who have lost jobs find new ones.
But critics say the courses are little comfort for those made redundant.
Germany's Social Democrats are considering adding a 300-euro tax rebate to their bag of Bundestag election promises, a leading newspaper reported on Thursday. A report in the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung said the plan would see taxpayers, who do not have supplementary income in addition to their regular wage, receive the lump-sum payment in return for not filing a tax return. The report also said that couples would be entitled to a 600-euro bonus and that all 30 million German taxpayers would be eligible for the payment. Around three billion euros - to be taken from a new stock exchange tax - would be made available for the bonus scheme. An SPD spokesman described the reports on Thursday as speculation and said that no firm decisions had been taken on the matter.
A report in the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung said the plan would see taxpayers, who do not have supplementary income in addition to their regular wage, receive the lump-sum payment in return for not filing a tax return.
The report also said that couples would be entitled to a 600-euro bonus and that all 30 million German taxpayers would be eligible for the payment. Around three billion euros - to be taken from a new stock exchange tax - would be made available for the bonus scheme.
An SPD spokesman described the reports on Thursday as speculation and said that no firm decisions had been taken on the matter.
The notion that there was a way of life characteristic of modern (or industrial) societies that was qualitatively different from the way of life found in pre-modern (or folk) societies goes back, at least, to the German sociologist Max Weber. Modern societies, said Weber, were governed by bureaucracy; the dominant ethos was one of "rationalization," whereby everything was mechanized, administered according to the dictates of scientific reason. Weber famously compared this situation to that of an "iron cage": there was no way the citizens of these societies could break free from their constraints. Pre-modern societies, on the other hand, were permeated by animism, by a belief in magic and spirits, and governance came not through bureaucracy but through the charisma of gifted leaders. The decline of magic that accompanied the transition to modernity Weber called die Entzauberung der Welt-the disenchantment of the world. -Skip- Indeed, for all one can say about the scientific inaccuracy of the pre-modern world, at least it was imbued with meaning. This is not the case with the modern industrial-corporate-consumer state, which expands technologically and economically, but to no other end than expansion itself. As the sociologist Georg Simmel wrote over a century ago, if you make money the center of your value system, then finally you have no value system, because money is not a value. All of these writers (a list that includes Franz Boas, Arthur Koestler, Jacques Ellul, and Lewis Mumford, inter alia) were pessimistic because they could see no way of reversing the direction of historical development. It was obvious that as time went on, the technical order was not merely overtaking the moral order, but actually obliterating it. This loss of meaning does much to account for the rise of the secular-religious movements of the twentieth century, including Communism, Fascism, Existentialism, Postmodernism, and so on. It also accounts for the depth and extent of fundamentalist Christianity in the United States. For there is no real meaning in the corporate-consumer state, which is at once empty and idiotic. On some level, everybody knows this. We might, then, characterize the crashes of 1929 and 2008 as spiritual rather than strictly economic in nature. John Maynard Keynes saw the fluctuations of the stock market as being governed by human psychology, i.e. by faith and fear. So while in the case of both crashes, one can point to financial "bubbles" and hyperinflated investments, the core of meaninglessness at the center of the consumer-driven economy means that a boom-and-bust cycle is inevitable. In the case of the Depression, it took a war-which involved a huge mobilization of Meaning-to pull us out of it. At the present time, the situation is very different: American wars are now neo-colonial and self-destructive, a drain on the economy. They can only make the situation worse. Hence, the U.S. government has turned to massive bailouts of financial institutions as a solution, but this is analogous to putting band aids on the body of a cancer patient: the core of the problem remains untouched. And what is the core of the problem? Basically, that the technical order is meaningless; that the American Way of Life finally has no moral center. Indeed, I doubt whether it ever did. In Freedom Just Around the Corner, historian Walter McDougall characterizes the United States as a "nation of hustlers," going back to its earliest days. What began as trade and opportunism finally issued out into a full-blown crisis of meaning, and it is this that now constitutes the crisis of late capitalism. -Skip- There is no record of a dying civilization reassessing its values (or lack of values, in our case) and altering its trajectory. Whether the type of moral order that Professor Barber imagines, (Idealism becoming the new realism), can ever become a reality somewhere on the planet is certainly worth debating. But what is not worth debating is whether such a moral order might make an appearance on American soil. History is about many things, but one thing it is not about is miracles.
-Skip-
Indeed, for all one can say about the scientific inaccuracy of the pre-modern world, at least it was imbued with meaning. This is not the case with the modern industrial-corporate-consumer state, which expands technologically and economically, but to no other end than expansion itself. As the sociologist Georg Simmel wrote over a century ago, if you make money the center of your value system, then finally you have no value system, because money is not a value. All of these writers (a list that includes Franz Boas, Arthur Koestler, Jacques Ellul, and Lewis Mumford, inter alia) were pessimistic because they could see no way of reversing the direction of historical development. It was obvious that as time went on, the technical order was not merely overtaking the moral order, but actually obliterating it. This loss of meaning does much to account for the rise of the secular-religious movements of the twentieth century, including Communism, Fascism, Existentialism, Postmodernism, and so on. It also accounts for the depth and extent of fundamentalist Christianity in the United States. For there is no real meaning in the corporate-consumer state, which is at once empty and idiotic. On some level, everybody knows this.
We might, then, characterize the crashes of 1929 and 2008 as spiritual rather than strictly economic in nature. John Maynard Keynes saw the fluctuations of the stock market as being governed by human psychology, i.e. by faith and fear. So while in the case of both crashes, one can point to financial "bubbles" and hyperinflated investments, the core of meaninglessness at the center of the consumer-driven economy means that a boom-and-bust cycle is inevitable. In the case of the Depression, it took a war-which involved a huge mobilization of Meaning-to pull us out of it. At the present time, the situation is very different: American wars are now neo-colonial and self-destructive, a drain on the economy. They can only make the situation worse. Hence, the U.S. government has turned to massive bailouts of financial institutions as a solution, but this is analogous to putting band aids on the body of a cancer patient: the core of the problem remains untouched.
And what is the core of the problem? Basically, that the technical order is meaningless; that the American Way of Life finally has no moral center. Indeed, I doubt whether it ever did. In Freedom Just Around the Corner, historian Walter McDougall characterizes the United States as a "nation of hustlers," going back to its earliest days. What began as trade and opportunism finally issued out into a full-blown crisis of meaning, and it is this that now constitutes the crisis of late capitalism.
There is no record of a dying civilization reassessing its values (or lack of values, in our case) and altering its trajectory. Whether the type of moral order that Professor Barber imagines, (Idealism becoming the new realism), can ever become a reality somewhere on the planet is certainly worth debating. But what is not worth debating is whether such a moral order might make an appearance on American soil. History is about many things, but one thing it is not about is miracles.
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. Wm. Wordsworth As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
