The populism which is spreading across the political scene of the West carries a fundamental contradiction. On the one hand, it is clearly reaping the support of ever widening strata of the working class, though today we prefer to see the latter as (part of) the middle class. Its members see how populists are prepared to talk with no holds barred about working class interests and to propose action to defend them.
Still, when populist leaders come to describe (or to decide) about how this defence should be conducted, a bleak reality emerges: they do not want to increase taxes on the well-off, in order to carry out reforms that would benefit members of the middle class, or at least those among it who are not so well off.
Not only do they disagree with new taxes, but they want them even less on the higher income brackets. Now this also happens to be a callsign of the liberals on the Macron model in France. When they get to decide, it's this liberal approach that the extreme right, with their populist baggage, choose to follow.
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CONDITIONS
While the war in Ukraine dragged on, much has been said about how peace could be achieved in Europe.
There are at least four conditions which would need to be satisfied in order to get a realistic move towards peace. These are:
1) Agreement to continue to respect the legal framework of the OSCE, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, not least with regard to the frontiers of member countries;
2) The security concerns of Russia faced with NATO and EU expansionism all around her borders in Europe have to be given full satisfaction, not ignored, while Ukrainian sovereignty must be guaranteed;
3) Similarly the security concerns about Russia of the countries neighbouring her (Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova...) need to be addressed in full to their satisfaction;
4) NATO would need to affirm exactly its limits in the framework of the OSCE.
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THE DEATH OF SMES
There is general agreement that small and medium size enteprises are among the most effective agents of economic growth. Indeed, such enterprises have been operating longest in the European context, (since the Middle Ages, actually much earlier as well); but also, they're the commercial units which die off fastest.
Everywhere this is seen as a "natural" phenomenon. We get told that on balance, it still is the case that more smes are "born" than those who close, which is a good thing. For the fact there is no decrease in the number of smes indicates there should be no cause for worry.
Yes and no. What could be happening is that the smes which are "leaving" are not of the same kind as those which are entering the scene. For instance many grocers and retail outlets could be closing down at the same time that start ups are being launched in electronics and commercial services.
As a total, the number of smes would appear not to have changed or even of having increased. But does this mean that there's no cause for worry about the closure of smes?