In early 2011, an unprecedented wave of political uprisings swept the Arab world. It was the so-called Arab Spring. Protesters in several Arab countries took to the street and demanded changes in governments, freedom, bread, and dignity. The main slogan was “the people want to bring the regimes to an end.” The reasons that inflamed the uprisings across the region included excessive levels of corruption, police brutality, lack of political freedoms, low levels of income along with high income inequality, high levels of youth unemployment and, last but not least, dictatorial regimes.
Publications
A four-day workweek or Universal Basic Income (UBI) straight away? Demands for shorter labour time, preferably complemented with compensatory wage increases, are a must-have for any electoral campaign. But do we really work more, at the expense of time spent with the family or leisurely activities? Do we really need new regulation to cut our working hours? While some workers do work long hours, generalisations are dangerous, as documented by the statistics on how we spend our time. Germany offers an interesting case study.
Much of the socio-economic damage linked to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted from poor regulation: the coronavirus would certainly have caused much less damage in contexts more respectful of the principle of individual responsibility. Unfortunately, poorly conceived regulation continues to lead to more and more state intervention, in a spiral that produces unsatisfactory results and constrains individual freedoms.
We recently wrote about the extraordinary increases in debt financed by seemingly circular transactions between member state borrowing agencies and the ‘Eurosystem’ – the ECB and all the national central banks. A recent paper by Magnin and Nenovsky considers monetary data from Q4 2007 (when the financial system began to wobble) to Q2 2020. In this period, the euro area monetary base grew by 330%, money supply by 61%, and yet the CPI inflation metric was up only by 17%. Seeking to answer the question as to why such a low observable level of inflation has resulted from this “avalanche of public debt increases in the euro area”, the authors examined the institutional structure behind Eastern Europe’s socialist economies, in force for between 45 and 70 years, until ending around 1989.
Edmund Burke once said that “No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy”. In contrast to this principle, however, in June and July finance ministers and central bankers met in London and Venice to check the prosperity of “their” peoples and of the entire planet by proposing a universal corporate tax rate of at least 15%. According to media reports, the words “at least” were added on the insistence of the EU ministers.
IREF is a free-market oriented think tank. It promotes ideas, events, and academic research.
With regard to research, IREF supports original projects that lead to the production of papers of academic quality of at least 7,000 words. This support is not a prize to published work, nor is it an encouragement to “work in progress”.
In spite of the attacks it has suffered in the past years, globalization is doing well. In particular, last November free trade supporters celebrated the birth of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a free trade agreement that includes the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. India initially took part in the negotiations but later decided to leave. The 15 RCEP member countries account for about 30% of the world population and 30% of global GDP, and are the largest trade bloc in history, larger than the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement and the European Union. The deal will take effect 60 days after ratification by at least six ASEAN and three non-ASEAN signatories. Thus far, it was ratified by Japan, China, Singapore and Thailand. Presumably, RCEP will be operational by the end of this year.
„I hope that our government, more enlightened and more liberal than in the past,
will be in the future the true friend of the best and noblest cause that exists;
and that the name of England will forever be dear to the Greeks.“
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in a letter to Alexandros Mavrokordatos (February 22, 1825)
