The Bundestag election campaign should be about more than short-haul flights and Christmas money, argues Thomas Fricke in Der Spiegel. Populism, climate change and the increasing gaps between winners and losers of globalization – the coming government must face up to big questions. The contributions at the eighth New Paradigm Workshop of the Forum New Economy last week give an impression of the really important matters of the future, so the tenor of the column.

First and foremost, this includes asking the question of how to effectively reduce the widening gap between rich and poor in Germany, or how to curb the loss of control felt by many people, which, according to populism researcher Robert Gold, is noticeably helping to fuel populist movements. How to truly combat the climate crisis is another question looming large. Tom Krebs of the University of Mannheim estimates that the German government would have to invest 100 billion euros over the next 10 years to enable an industry conversion to green hydrogen. And how is this supposed to be financed if the sensibility of the debt brake remains unquestioned? Joe Biden in the USA is currently demonstrating what a politics of tomorrow may look like. Can and should we achieve something similar here? All of this and more was discussed during the Forum New Economy conference – showing what should actually dominate the election debate.

You can read the full column here.

An overview of the contributions to the VIII New Paradigm Workshop can be found here.

“The country needs investment,” is the key message of Cerstin Gammelin and Alexander Hagelüken in their article for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, where they present key studies undertaken for the occasion of the Forum’s recent VIII New Paradigm Workshop. As figures from the Macroeconomic Policy Institute (IMK) suggest, the German government would have to invest around one percent of gross domestic product, or about 460 billion euros, to make up for past shortcomings and achieve a sustainable level of investment. A massive sum – how can this possibly be financed? According to Philippa Sigl-Glöckner of ‘Dezernat Zukunft’, a reform of government spending policy is urgently needed – moving away from a minimal debt ratio towards a state policy that strives for lower unemployment rates, better wages and a reduction in involuntary part-time work.

Also at the center of the debate: calls for increased spending on climate-friendly technologies such as renewable energy based hydrogen. According to a recent study by Tom Krebs of the University of Mannheim, instead of its currently planned 12 billion euros, the German government would have to invest up to 100 billion euros in a hydrogen climate strategy.

Not only in terms of future investments, but also in present terms, the government is challenged to act: Stefan Bach and Markus Grabka of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) argue for an expansion of collective wage agreements and a tax reform to specifically promote the incomes of those who have little. In particular, they say, the proportion of people in Germany who own their own home is far too low by European standards and needs to be elevated.

All studies cited in the article were undertaken on behalf of the Forum New Economy for its eighth New Paradigm Workshop on the Future of the German Model, taking place May 25-27.

The full article can be found here.

Joe Stiglitz, Gordon Brown, and many others join forces and urge US president Joe Biden to consider a temporary waiver of WTO´s intellectual property rules during the Covid-19 pandemic. The hope brought up by vaccine rollouts in wealthier countries is far from reaching low- and middle-income countries. Vaccine access in those countries urgently needs to be scaled up if the ultimate goal is that of saving as many lives as possible and reaching global herd immunity – an open sharing of know-how and technology is thus a moral imperative.

This the core message of the open call published on Project Syndicate and signed by many Nobel laureates and former heads of state and government: “If the past year has taught us anything, it is that threats to public health are global, and that strategic government investment, action, cooperation, and solidarity are vital. The market cannot adequately meet these challenges, and neither can narrow nationalism.”

You can read the full article here.

Online conference: A systemic Recovery
When? Wednesday, 28 April, 2021: 3:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Where? Online conference: Join the livestream via this link.

The first session (15:00) features a High-level Panel discussion, chaired by Rana Foroohar and Martin Sandbu of The Financial Times, on avoiding post-COVID stagnation, negative spill-overs on emerging and developing economies, and how to transform our economic and financial system to achieve environmental and social goals. The speakers include UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, Mark Carney; IMF Chief Economist, Gita Gopinath ; UCL Professor, Mariana Mazzucato; Harvard economist, Kenneth Rogoff; and Nobel Prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman.

The full agenda is available here.

Is Joe Biden to F. D. Roosevelt what his new spending and fiscal plans are to the New Deal? This image is crystallising more and more. In our recent series of articles analysing the ´rescue plan` first and the ´infrastructure plan` then, we already hinted that Joe Biden’s proposals were close to ending the era of neoliberal policies so cherished by Reagan and his successors, and that – as discussed in our December Short Cut with James Galbraith – with Joe Biden in power the possibility of a new New Deal was approaching.

Now even the influential French weekly magazine L’Obs promotes Joe Biden as the new Roosevelt and devotes 10 very interesting pages to him, where it also addresses the question of whether the EU is prepared to embrace this paradigm shift in terms of public spending and fiscal rules coming from overseas.