Public spending

In mid-September former ECB President Mario Draghi published a 400-page report recommending changes necessary to boost the EU’s competitiveness.  Although couched in broadly positive language, the document did little to…

The bridge between Sicily and the Italian mainland is probably the longest living project in the world. According to some historians, it dates back to the Romans. The idea had…

Modern states carry out intense redistribution. In brief, they modify the holdings of particular persons, collective agents or groups. Tax-transfers and public expenditure are an important tool through which redistribution…

As emphasized in June, the law establishing the Italian universal-minimum-income programme (RdC) also puts the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies — the same authority that advocated its adoption —…

The idea of ​​providing an unconditional income to everyone, regardless of whether «the person is rich or poor, lives alone or with others, is willing to work or not» (Van…

Corona bonuses for the public sector, mask vouchers for pensioners, and state-subsidized family vacations – feel-good policies are making a big comeback in the wake of the pandemic. However, the administrative, marketing, and procurement…

Public debt in the whole world keeps growing. As recently reported in “A Mountain of Debt: Navigating the Legacy of the Pandemic” and “The Aftermath of Debt Surges”, it is just the last “debt wave” in a long-established tendency. Yet, the rise has accelerated during the Covid-19 Pandemic: during 2020, public debt increased by 16 percentage points to 120% of GDP in the advanced economies, and by 13 percentage points to 97% of GDP globally. What are the possible ways out?

Mario Draghi’s government is about to approve an eight-billion euro tax cut – about 1.5% of the estimated 2021 tax revenues. Is this a credible a promise or just an illusion?
The restrictions that followed Covid-19 have taken a heavy toll. Last year, GDP dropped about 9%, tax revenues decreased, and government expenditure soared. As a result, the budget deficit reached around 9.5% of GDP. The 2021 figure should be about the same. Of course, public debt has also risen and is expected to reach 150% of GDP by the end of this year (see Fig. 1).

“Pensions are safe”, former German labour secretary Norbert Blüm promised during the 1986 electoral campaign. Thirty-five years later, the future of Germany’s public pension scheme plays an important role in political campaigns once again. This article considers what today’s main political parties are now offering to the German electorate.

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.