Bulletin n. 1/2017 | ||
June 2017 | ||
Nathan Gardels, Nicolas Berggruen |
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Salvaging Globalization | ||
in New Perspectives Quarterly , Volume 34, Issue 1 , 2017 | ||
At the Global Progress 2016 conference in Montreal in September, Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s Vice-Chancellor and head of the Social Democratic Party(SPD), concisely captured the backlash roiling politics in his country and the rest of Europe. As average citizens see it, he said, “first the authorities spent billions on bailing out the banks, and now are spending generously on refugees—meanwhile cutting back on pensions, unemployment payments and other benefits through austerity policies. “What about us?” they ask. Sadiq Khan, the new Muslim mayor of London found a similar resentment among pro-Brexit voters that others were being put first by elites disconnected from their concerns. The Brexiters blamed the European Union authorities and immigrants for what ailed them even if they had nothing to do with British problems. “People who couldn’t get their child into a pre-school program blamed the EU. If they couldn’t find affordable elderly care for their parents,they blamed the EU. In short, the Brexit backlash identified all the ills of soci-ety with European integration.” In the US, even as the unemployment rate fell to 4.9 percent (with starkregional differences), median household income rose and there was net migration back to Mexico, Donald Trump swept into power with his mantra that the cosmopolitan governing elites have failed to protect jobs and promote the interests of ordinary Americans first—certainly true for his core constituency of the non-college educated white working class left behind by globalization and policy inattention. | ||