Germans Propose Tax Reforms to Prevent Economic Disaster
Local Editor
A group of German financial experts and entrepreneurs proposed a new way to reform the economic and political system in order to avoid its impending collapse.
In their new book, German financial experts Marc Friedrich and Matthias Weik propose a radical new economic model which they say will help society to cope with the changes wrought by increasing digitalization.
Friedrich told Sputnik Deutschland that action taken to arrest the 2008 financial crisis, such as quantitative easing, has only papered over the cracks in the global financial system.
"Things are going in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, nothing has changed since the 2008 financial crisis. On the contrary, problems were only covered over with a lot of cheap money. Don't forget that the European Central Bank [ECB] has pumped 1.75 trillion euros into the system to buy bonds from bankrupt companies and to support insolvent countries, in order to keep the whole money carousel running. [However,] that has only bought time," Friedrich told Sputnik.
Their idea builds on proposals for a universal basic income that have been put discussed with increasing regularity in recent years.
Last summer, the Swiss rejected a referendum proposal to give every citizen a basic income of 2500 Swiss francs [$2478].
However, the idea remains of interest to people seeking a way to alleviate social inequality. In January 2017, the Finnish government began a two-year pilot scheme which pays 2,000 unemployed Finns an unconditional basic income of 560 euros [$680].
Friedrich and Weik joined forces with Götz Werner, founder of the drugstore chain DM who supports the implementation of a basic income, to write their book, called "Or else it's going to blow: Why we have to radically rethink economics and politics."
"This common purpose led us to write this political wake-up call, this book. We understand that there will be no change from above, the change must come from below, from the people, otherwise it's going to blow. That's why the title is, 'or else it's going to blow,'" Friedrich explained.
Source: Sputnik, Edited by website team
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