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/160/ Enemies of the People (Large & Very Small) ft. Wolfgang Streeck

🕑 Added 2020-11-10 12:24:39 +0000 UTC

Comments

Sensible Captain

Interesting episode, thank you. I was however wondering why not one single comment was given on the most auspicious labour reforms since 1945 - the Hartz 4 labour reforms of 2002. Especially in reference to Alex’s question to Streeck about the myth of the „well-to-do“ German working class. Conveniently introduced to parliament and discussed publicly during the NATO attacks on Serbia, the Hartz 4-reforms provided the main ground for Germany‘s neoliberal restructuring and the precarisation of the working class - the welding of social security and unemployment security into one system, the non-inflation adjusted blanket allowance, along with the humiliating practice of mandatory „one Euro-Jobs“. These Hartz 4 reforms in fact *financed* Germany’s economic export leadership, military leadership, and probably also ideological leadership in the EU, at the expense of an extreme pauperisation (especially of children and single parents). And of course they have been put forward by the social democratic and Green government and effectively abolished the welfare state. In other words, it was monumental and would have deserved a place in this episode with regard to Germany‘s dominance in the EU.