L’espion inattendu
This unexpected novel in a column that generally devotes itself to essays offers a timely means of escape from the current crisis situation. The spy of the title (The Unexpected Spy) was unsuspected by the author and her mother. In a format that lies between fiction and historical account, Ottavia Casagrande tells the story of part of the life of her grandfather, the Sicilian Prince Raimondo Lanza di Trabia, an extravagant dandy and charmer whom she never knew. He died from falling out of a window in what had gone down in history as unexplained circumstances in Rome on 30 November 1954, just a few months after his daughter Raimonda, the author’s mother, was born.
For her dialogues, Casagrande tells us that she took inspiration from Boris Vian, but the book, which was published in Italian by Feltrinelli under the title “Quando si spense la notte – Il principe di Trabia, la spia che non voleva la guerra”, inevitably harks back to the novels of Maurice Leblanc. There is something reminiscent of Arsène Lupin in this prince, who is at one and the same time a gentleman, an adventurer and a thief. The story brings to life his wartime experiences, travelling across Europe, from fascist Italy to Churchill’s Britain, through a France in utter disarray. A period of nine months between the Allies’ declaration of war and Italy joining it passes before our eyes, during which two lovebirds, the prince and a beautiful English spy, get up to the most amazing adventures. Perfect escapism for self-isolation. Olivier Jehin
Ottavia Casagrande. L’espion inattendu. Editions Liana Levi. ISBN: 979-10-349-0226-2. 264 pages. €19.00
L’Europe sociale
In this work, Amandine Crespy sets out to explore social Europe through its four constituent dimensions: a raft of public policies produced or co-produced by the EU and its member states, different modes of governance, a political project that has given rise to conflict between players and the evolution of national social systems. Crespy, a lecturer in Political Science and European Studies at the Free University of Brussels and at the College of Europe in Bruges, takes a closer look at the players in this policy, which include the European institutions, their competences, the instruments at their disposal and how they use them.
The author stresses that since the 2000s, there have been three factors clipping the wings of social integration: “firstly, the Conservative, Liberal and Eurosceptic forces, which are hostile to any extension of European social regulations, gaining ground in the member states and European institutions (…). Then, the expansion to twelve new member states from Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic region between 2004 and 2007 profoundly altered the balance of power within the EU (…). Finally, more recently, the climate of popular defiance against the EU, which reached its climax with the Brexit referendum, has made the courts in Luxembourg more reluctant to extend individual rights, particularly where these appear to clash with the state of origin or the vast range of different cultural and societal preferences to be found across Europe” (our translation). This being the case, there has been an undeniable decline of social Europe in its legally binding dimension, made all the worse by ten years of recession and budgetary discipline.
These days, “social dialogue no longer seems to bear (…) much fruit” and although the 2000s saw a rise in the scope of coordination in areas in which national leaders did not want more centralisation, “the open method of coordination has shown its limits from the points of view of both efficiency and democratic legitimacy”, notes the author, stressing that it failed to “establish itself as a substitute to regulations of obligatory application and subject to sanctions by the CJEU”. Crespy adds that “with the creation of the European Semester in 2011 and the progressive creation of a European Pillar of Social Rights (under the Juncker Commission: Ed), we saw an increasing set of hybrids between various modes of governance. It is to be feared that these processes, whilst adding very little efficiency in terms of implementation or the ability to generate political compromises, will serve to muddy the chains of accountability and feed into a bureaucratic approach to the governance of social policies”. Its political ambition having been unmet, social Europe needs to be rethought in the context of a change of economic development model that seems increasingly inevitable.
“From a number of perspectives, the creation of a European basic income would be (…) a true paradigm shift”, Crespy argues, stressing that “this old Utopia” has regained a lot of interest in the recent context following the crisis of 2008, as austerity policies have had the result of exacerbating poverty and social inequality. A universal basic income at European level would support the weakest welfare states of the EU, without replacing them, and would thus allow an upward convergence. “It would be a macroeconomic stabiliser in times of crisis, an instrument for which many have been making the case”, she stresses, adding that also have the effect of “reinforcing the political and democratic legitimacy of the EU” by making European citizenship more tangible in its social dimension. (OJ)
Amandine Crespy. L’Europe sociale – Acteurs, politiques, débats. Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles. ISBN: 978-2-8004-1642-7. 306 pages. €11.00
Good Economics for Hard Times
The American of Indian descent, Abhijit V. Banerjee, and the Franco-American Esther Duflo both lecture at the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2019. They co-founded and are co-directors of the “Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab”. They are also a couple in their private lives as well as in their development economy research and as such, jointly wrote this book, whose misleading title may suggest a guidebook to various miracle remedies to come out of all crisis situations. Although strewn with personal recollections and anecdotes, the work’s greatest ambition is to make what is known as economic science accessible and demystify it, whilst debunking certain received ideas and many economic models.
“Economics is too important to be left to the economists”, the authors assert, based on the observation that “ignorance, intuitions, ideology and inertia combine to give us answers that look plausible, promise much and, predictably, betray us”. They go on to argue that “the only recourse we have against bad ideas is to be vigilant, resist the seduction of the ‘obvious’, be sceptical of promised miracles, question the evidence, be patient with complexity and honest about what we know and what we can no. Without that vigilance, conversations about multifaceted problems turn into slogans and caricatures. Political analysis gets replaced with simplistic quack remedies”. This is both a warning and a call to arms that is aimed at everybody, economists, political figures journalists, in their respective roles, and citizens from all walks of life.
The book starts by painting a bleak picture: the crazy years of strong economic growth, fed into by the expansion of international trade and China’s unbelievable economic success, are certainly over. Chinese growth is slowing and trade wars are breaking out here and there. The countries that rode this wave – in Asia, Africa and Latin America – are starting to worry about what lies ahead. Obviously, in most wealthy countries, in the West, this slowdown of growth dates from much longer ago, but the accompanying unravelling of the social fabric makes it a particular cause for concern today. The authors argue that we have gone back to the days of Charles Dickens’s Hard Times, with the wealthy on one side and the poor on the other, increasingly alienated and enjoying little by way of future prospects.
Complex issues are stacking up and the answers to them are not to be found in a tweet, the authors point out, observing that this could explain why governments are doing so little to meet the challenges of our times. They add that by reacting in this way, they are stoking the anger and mistrust that are polarising our societies, making us even less capable of thinking, talking and acting together. They describe the situation as a “vicious circle”.
To get out of it, Banerjee and Duflo carry out a one-by-one analysis of these various complex issues and the possible solutions available to us. They argue that immigration does not have the effect of squeezing out the locals from the employment market and that the classic model of supply and demand does not apply to the labour market. The beneficial effects of international trade and, therefore, globalisation have been usurped, in their view. At the least, they deserve to be downgraded. Although opening up to international trade is important to small open economies, such as Belgium, which has a share of imports of more than 30%, it has very little effect in the United States, where imports represent just 8% of goods consumed. This explains why Donald Trump can afford to pursue a protectionist policy, at least up to the point at which China stops buying American agricultural products.
As others have done before them, the two economists call for an end to the obsession with GDP. They challenge the tax cuts to the rich, in particular reference to Donald Trump’s fiscal programme and the cancellation of the wealth tax in France, although taxation is still a lot higher in the latter country. On this point, they base themselves on a study by the Booth School of Business of the University of Chicago, which demonstrates that tax cuts for the wealthiest 10% have produced no significant increase of income and employment, but that tax cuts for the other 90% of the population do. In correlation with possible other factors, the main growth factor is that of the better allocation of resources within the context of structural reform or a transition to a new mode of economic development, the authors explain, calling for welfare of the people to be given priority.
Banerjee and Duflo also refer to the problems of preference and polarisation, discrimination and racism, climate change, robotics and artificial intelligence. “One robot in a commuting zone reduces employment by 6.2 workers and also depresses wages. The employment effects are most pronounced in manufacturing and they are particularly strong for workers with lower than a college education, especially those who do routine manual tasks. However, there are no offsetting gains in employment or wages for any other occupation or educational group”, the two economists report, stressing that there are “good reasons to suspect that some of the recent automation is excessive”. Indeed, businesses are investing in automation even where robots are less productive than humans. This can predominantly be explained by the fact that labour is generally taxed at a higher level than capital. Robots don’t go on holiday or maternity leave or demand a wage rise and you don’t need to pay for their health insurance or pension. The authors therefore call for a “robot tax, large enough to prevent them from being deployed unless the productivity gains are sufficiently high”. They report that such a “robot tax” was voted down by the European Parliament in 2017 amid concerns that it would stifle innovation.
Although they do not consider that a universal basic income would in itself be the miracle cure that would absorb the social shocks facing individuals, the economists nonetheless feel that in combination with other tools, it could be one element of a response. In the United States, tax could rise from 26 to 31.2% of GDP, allowing all Americans to be paid $3000 a year. If it was paid for out of a tax on capital and the share of capital in the economy increased as a result of automation, the universal basic income could, over time, be increased, the authors argue, adding that there is less room for a tax increase in Europe, but a raft of social transfers (housing, income support, etc.) could be merged into a single aid, with a few restrictions on spending it. Moreover, an initial experiment in Finland in 2017 and 2018 showed that beneficiaries of the basic income are happier. (OJ)
Abhijit V. Banerjee et Esther Duflo. Good Economics for Hard Times. Allen Lane. ISBN: 978- 0241306895. 416 pages. £25.00
Brexit
“LE BREXIT EST UN PHÉNOMÈNE
LITTÉRAIRE
LE PLUS BEAU
LE PLUS GRAND
LEPLUSBEAULEPLUSGRANDPHENOMENE
LITTÉRAIRE
DE TOUS LES TEMPS” according to Haitian poet James Noël, confirming the observation we made in the last edition of Kiosk, looking at the great proliferation of English-language authors and works. Noël, in French this time, adds poetry to the list, in a highly engaged style that is frequently characteristic of the West Indies. Although he shares their palette of colours and imagery, the poet also stands out from the major classic black poets with his lyrical or elegiac tones. The music of the words is nonetheless there, taking the reader with him to the point that it is impossible to stop reading – or listening, to a register that owes much to the declamatory tradition:
“Le Brexit m’excite
C’est incroyable
C’est la première fois
Qu’une nation se jette par la fenêtre
En plein orgasme”.
Brexit could be seen as a new trench between Britain and the rest of the continent or as a wall between them. It therefore comes as no surprise that this compilation includes several texts on the subject of walls, which the author tells us he started to write in 2012, when the “world in which we live started to shake, to turn, close in even more on itself, to break into pieces more than ever in a rush of closure and downturn”(our translation). “Walls prospered, they grew dense, whilst forests, gardens – even private ones – were paradoxically threatened”, states Noël, adding: “given the proliferation and deregulation of walls, invisible and tangible ones alike, I felt that there was an urgent need for an indictment of a phenomenon that constitutes a terrible and infectious reality: the migration of walls”. This theme is apt for meditation in these extraordinary times of self-isolation and migration of a virus that knows no walls …
“Solide absence de liens, solide absence de ciment social des espèces et des espaces
Fortement critique, le cas clinique du monde au pied du mur
De ce côté dur de la réalité des murs, c’est à la base la vie qui en sort écrasée”.
A flicker of hope remains: “Que les ponts demeurent et s’élèvent parmi les embûches en embouchure
L’eau continuera de couler sans entrave à l’horizon
Les fleuves feront chanter les ponts, sans pouvoir les liquider”.
Let us shore up bridges and forge connections during these times. (OJ)
James Noël. Brexit suivi de La Migration des murs. Au diable vauvert. ISBN : 979-10-307-0338-2. 174 pages. €12.00