Category Archives: Uncategorized

In this blog post @ucdpolitics student, Muireann O’Shea, examines why America tends to look back upon the past with nostalgia, and to what extent this is bound up with perceptions of social mobility and the America Dream. The period of 1950 to 1980 saw the lowest income inequality ever in modern American history, with the top decile taking 30Continue reading “The truly stagnant class in American society are young men from low-income backgrounds”

In PewResearchCenter’s report (2015:1) they argue that lower and upper-income U.S households now outnumber the middle for the first time in decades. Despite financial gains the middle class has lost their majority income share to the upper classes and “the share of American adults living in middle-income households have fallen 61% in 1971 to 50%Continue reading “The chasm of inequality: Why is the middle class shrinking?”

Multinational treaty shopping and tax avoidance is commonplace throughout the world, particularly in poorer countries. The secretary-general of the OECD, Angel Gurría, believes that developing nations lose three times more money to tax havens then they receive in aid each year (The Economist, 2015). This treaty shopping is made possible by lax tax laws which oftenContinue reading “Legal Discrimination: How Double Taxation Treaties Discriminate against Lower-Income Countries”

Following the Great Recession, many solutions have been put forward to “rein the markets in”, and try to plug the inequality that has been on the rise since. These have included rent controls, increased banking regulation, and efforts to harmonise corporate taxation and discourage international tax havens. Most are in agreement that the long termContinue reading “The Financial Transaction Tax: Has the Market Finally Met It’s Foe?”

Over the last decade, the power of social media as an independent media outlet has grown exponentially. Its ability to provide free and non censored information to the masses has allowed it to become a critical tool for political demonstration. @UCD_Politics student, Hazel Nolan, argues that social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook enabled andContinue reading “#Ash-shab’yuridisqatannizam: How 140 characters shaped the world.”

EU-US relations have been marked by a significant volume of trade and close diplomatic ties for most of post-WWII history. Together the EU and US currently account for half of world GDP and a third of global trade (EU Commission Trade Department). The first transatlantic regulatory cooperation agreement was signed 1991 in the area ofContinue reading “Ordoliberalism was the main inspiration behind EU competition law.”

  Against the background of the Eurozone crisis, Germany’s economic thinking has been subject to intense public debate in the english speaking world, and historical experiences and cultural differences have sometimes been adduced to explain Germany’s preoccupation with balanced budgeting and independent central banking. In this post Caroline Bhattacharya argues that German economic policy is deeply intertwinedContinue reading “The role of language in shaping German economic philosophy”

Labour mobility imbalances between European Core and Periphery: evidence from Italy and Portugal In this post Vincenzo Maccarrone argues that much of the debate on the European economic crisis has concentrated on the presence of structural imbalances between Northern and Southern European countries[1]. When discussing this inequality most commentators focus on the differences in current accountsContinue reading “With No Direction Home?”

The following blog post is part of an ongoing conversation on on the EU Global Strategy published on the Global Justice Blog of the GLOBUS H2020-funded research programme Reconsidering European Contributions to Global Justice. _______________________________________________ The delivery of the EU Global Strategy does indeed renew the EU’s commitment to adapt to today’s challenging times. ItContinue reading “The EU Global Strategy: The perils of pragmatism”

Everyone is trying to second guess the negotiating strategy of Theresa May, and how the EU will respond. No country should be more concerned about this than Ireland, the only EU country to share a border with the UK. Next week, the Irish government will host an all Ireland civic dialogue.  Political economy considerations have neverContinue reading “The Political Economy of Brexit: London Will Adapt.”