Pensions in the Greek Political Economy

Author(s):  
Platon Tinios

This chapter examines pensions as a factor fuelling Greece’s crisis, as a consideration shaping its bailouts, and as a locus for future unease. The problem was not the absence of reform—there were repeated ineffectual changes before 2010. Nor was it due to structural faults—the system’s building blocks are familiar. A toxic mixture of narratives, between social insurance, government, and social pensions, encouraged fragmentation, transforming sectional privileges into future liabilities; pensions became a key instrument of clientelistic politics. During the crisis a new player, the Troika, reversed ‘Words without Action’ into ‘Action without Words’. The pension landscape after 2018 is characterized by a new system and a recalibration of pensions to restrain their level. Two-tier pensions are provided by a single entity, financed by uniform contributions, with high retirement ages for new retirees. The attempt to protect those close to retirement backfired and necessitated deep cuts in pensions-in-payment. When these were ruled unconstitutional, their place was taken by retroactive application of new system rules to all pensioners in 2016. Despite deep parametric changes, Greece chose institutional continuity over systemic change—opting for a monolithic state-run pay-as-you-go defined benefit pension system, reminiscent of the 1960s. The evolving system is called to overcome the legacy of broken promises, must prove politically durable but also conducive to growth. The last word on pensions may not have been written.

Author(s):  
Hazel Gray

This chapter sets out the analytical framework of political settlements and elaborates the framework to account for the socialist experiences of Tanzania and Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. A political settlement, as defined by Mushtaq Khan, is a combination of power and institutions that is mutually compatible and also sustainable in terms of economic and political viability. The chapter clarifies the core building blocks of the approach and sets out the main differences between political settlements and new institutional economics. The chapter then defines a socialist political settlement where productive rights are formally held by the collective and formal institutions protect common and collectively owned assets. The attempts to construct a socialist political settlement left important institutional, political, and economic legacies. These shaped incentives and constraints which influenced a number of critical processes at the heart of economic development—related to technological learning, accumulation for investment, and political stabilization.


Kuntoutus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 6-20
Author(s):  
Hanna Rinne ◽  
Jenni Blomgren

Tieto kuntoutuksen kentän kokonaisuudesta ja erilaisten kuntoutuspalveluiden käytöstä samoilla ihmisillä on varsin hajanaista ja puutteellista. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on selvittää kuntoutukseen osallistumisen yleisyyttä ja päällekkäisyyttä eri osajärjestelmissä Oulun asukkailla vuonna 2018 laajalla rekisteriaineistolla (N = 192 844). Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan julkisen sosiaali- ja terveyspalvelujärjestelmän kuntoutusta, Kelan kuntoutusta, työeläkekuntoutusta, työterveyshuollon fysioterapiaa ja Kelan korvaamaa yksityistä fysioterapiaa. Vuonna 2018 oululaisista 18 prosenttia sai vähintään yhden tutkitun osajärjestelmän kuntoutusta (N = 34 061). Yleisintä oli julkisen sosiaali- ja terveyspalvelujärjestelmän kuntoutus, harvinaisinta työeläkekuntoutus. Naiset osallistuivat kuntoutukseen miehiä yleisemmin. Kuntoutukseen osallistuminen oli miehillä yleisintä 65 vuotta täyttäneillä, naisilla 45–64-vuotiailla. Harvinaisinta se oli 16–24-vuotiailla miehillä ja alle 16-vuotiailla naisilla. Suurin osa (90 %) kuntoutukseen osallistuneista oli osallistunut vain yhden osajärjestelmän kuntoutukseen. Useamman osajärjestelmän kuntoutukseen osallistuminen oli naisilla miehiä yleisempää. Ikäryhmistä se oli yleisintä 45–64-vuotiailla ja harvinaisinta alle 16-vuotiailla. Vähintään kahden osajärjestelmän kuntoutukseen osallistuneet olivat keskimäärin vanhempia kuin vain yhden osajärjestelmän kuntoutukseen osallistuneet ja myös naisten osuus oli heillä suurempi. Rekisteritietoja kuntoutuksesta on hankala koota kattavasti, sillä järjestelmä on hyvin hajanainen ja toimijoita ja rekisterinpitäjiä on lukuisia. Myös kuntoutuksen määrittely aineistoista osoittautui vaikeaksi. Yhtenäiset tietojärjestelmät kuntoutuksesta palvelisivat paitsi tutkijoita, myös kuntoutujia. Abstract Prevalence and overlap of participation in rehabilitation in different subsystems – a register-based study among residents of the city of Oulu, Finland, in 2018 Knowledge of the whole spectrum of rehabilitation and of the use of different rehabilitation services by the same individuals is quite fragmented and incomplete. The aim of this study is to examine the prevalence and overlap of participation in rehabilitation in different subsystems among residents of the city of Oulu, Finland, in 2018 using extensive register-based data (N=192,844). The study examines rehabilitation organized by the public social and health care system, by the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, by the earnings-related pension system, as well as physiotherapy in occupational health care and private physiotherapy reimbursed by the Social Insurance Institution of Finland. In 2018, 18 per cent of the residents of Oulu received rehabilitation of at least one of the examined subsystems (N=34,061). Receiving rehabilitation of public social and health care was the most common; the rarest was rehabilitation within the earnings-related pension system. Women participated in rehabilitation more often than men. Using rehabilitation services was most common in men aged 65 and over, and in women aged 45–64. It was least common in men aged 16–24 years and in women under 16 years of age. The majority (90%) of those who participated in rehabilitation had participated in rehabilitation of only one subsystem. Participation in rehabilitation of several subsystems was more common in women than in men. It was most common in those aged 45–64 years and least common in those under 16 years of age. Those who received rehabilitation of at least two subsystems were, on average, older than those who received rehabilitation of only one subsystem, and more often women. It is difficult to compile comprehensive register data on rehabilitation, as the system is very fragmented and there are many organizers and registrars. Defining rehabilitation from the data also proved difficult. Unified information systems on rehabilitation would serve not only researchers but also rehabilitees. Keywords: rehabilitation, register-based research, Finland


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 648-680
Author(s):  
SHANE HAMILTON

A range of private and public institutions emerged in the United States in the years before and after the Great Depression to help farmers confront the inherent uncertainty of agricultural production and marketing. This included a government-owned and operated insurance enterprise offering “all-risk” coverage to American farmers beginning in 1938. Crop insurance, initially developed as a social insurance program, was beset by pervasive problems of adverse selection and moral hazard. As managers and policy makers responded to those problems from the 1940s on, they reshaped federal crop insurance in ways that increasingly made the scheme a lever of financialization, a means of disciplining individual farmers to think of farming in abstract terms of risk management. Crop insurance became intertwined with important changes in the economic context of agriculture by the 1960s, including the emergence of the “technological treadmill,” permanently embedding financialized risk management into the political economy of American agriculture.


2012 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maciej Karpiński

ABSTRACT Maciej Karpiński. The Boundaries of Language: Dealing with Paralinguistic Features. Lingua Posnaniensis, vol. LIV (2)/2012. The Poznań Society for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences. PL ISSN 0079-4740, ISBN 978-83-7654-252-2, pp. 37-54. The paralinguistic component of communication attracted a great deal of attention from contemporary linguists in the 1960s. The seminal works written then by Trager, Crystal and others had a powerful influence on the concept of paralanguage that lasted for many years. But, with the focus shifting towards the socio-psychological context of communication in the 1970s, the development of spoken corpora and databases and the significant progress in speech technology in the 1980s and 1990s, the need has arisen for a more comprehensive, coherent and formalised - but also flexible - approach to paralinguistic features. This study advances some preliminary proposals for a revised treatment of paralanguage that would meet some of these requirements and provide a conceptual basis for a new system of annotation for paralinguistic features. A range of views on paralinguistic features, which come mostly from the fields of speech prosody and gesture analysis, are briefly discussed. A number of assumptions and postulates are formulated to allow for a more consistent approach to paralinguistic features. The study suggests that there should be more reliance on continua than on binary categorisations of features, that multi-functionality and multimodality should be fully acknowledged and that clear distinctions should be made among the levels of description, and between the properties of speakers and the speech signal itself.


Author(s):  
O. Cheberyako ◽  
V. Bykova

The article substantiates the nature of the national models of the pension system and its structure in accordance with the concept of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The basis of the national models of pension system are two well-known models of social security: Bismarck and Beveridge Social Insurance Systems. Thus, authors prepared the comparison of this models. The features of pension system in the countries of Europe (Germany, Great Britain, Sweden, Poland), the United States and Chile are analysed. The analysis of the national models of the pension system in Asian countries identifies three institutional patterns: the statist pension system (Taiwan and China), the dualist pension system (Japan and Korea) and individualist pension system (Hong Kong and Singapore). Based on trends of development of pension provision in foreign countries, authors determine the main tasks and ways to improve the domestic system, namely, introduction mandatory funded pension system and reforming the voluntary private pensions insurance.


Sapere Aude ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (19) ◽  
pp. 250-273
Author(s):  
Émerson Pirola

Um debate de longa data no interior do marxismo é o entre perspectivas que tenderiam para uma leitura da obra marxiana centrada nas análises sobre a constituição de sujeitos políticos de e em luta, na constituição de uma classe social revolucionária que enfrente a exploração capitalista, e perspectivas centradas nas transformações do capitalismo ou nas dinâmicas estruturais da economia. Podemos dizer, esquematicamente, que as primeiras perspectivas são “subjetivistas” e as segundas “objetivistas”. Nos anos 1960 esse debate se viu determinado pela chamada polêmica do anti-humanismo, lançada por Louis Althusser contra o marxismo por ele criticado como humanista, visto que advogaria por uma noção de Sujeito idealista e abstrata, descolada dos processos estruturais da economia política capitalista. Antonio Negri, por sua vez, deu e dá grande importância para a noção de subjetividade na análise crítica e enfrentamento do capitalismo. Negri, entretanto, não ignora as críticas efetuadas por Althusser ao chamado humanismo, tomando-as como pré-requisito para o desenvolvimento original de sua teoria. Mostramos, portanto, como Althusser desenvolve suas críticas do Sujeito e do humanismo para então desenvolver as posições de Negri diante destas, a construção de sua própria teoria da subjetividade, resgatada do Marx dos Grundrisse, e apontar as limitações do pensamento althusseriano no que concerne à subjetividade.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Sujeito. Anti-humanismo. Subjetividade. Negri. Althusser. ABSTRACTA long-standing debate within Marxism is the one between perspectives that would tend towards a reading of the Marxian work centered on analyzes of the constitution of political subjects in and in class struggle, the constitution of a revolutionary social class facing capitalist exploitation, and perspectives centered on the transformations of capitalism or the structural dynamics of the economy in general. We can say, schematically, that the first perspective are "subjectivist" and the second one "objectivist". In the 1960s this debate was determined by Louis Althusser's so-called polemic of anti-humanism, in which he criticized certain Marxism as an humanism, since it would advocate for an idealist and abstract notion of subject detached from the structural processes of capitalist political economy. Antonio Negri, in turn, gave and gives great importance to the notion of subjectivity in the dynamics and confrontation of capitalism. Negri, however, does not ignore the criticisms made by Althusser of the humanism, taking them as a prerequisite for the original development of his theory. We thus show how Althusser develops his criticisms of the Subject and humanism to develop Negri's positions for and against them, the construction of his own theory of subjectivity, rescued from Marx’s Grundrisse, and we point out the limitations of Althusser's thought as regards subjectivity.KEYWORDS: Subject. Antihumanism. Subjeticvity. Negri. Althusser.


2021 ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Lyudmyla Alekseyenko

Introduction. The study of theoretical and empirical aspects of the accumulative pension system should help to identify patterns and contradictions of its development in society. In order to conduct an effective economic policy on the introduction of a funded pension system, it is necessary to define a theoretical concept of a model of the active role of the state in socio-economic processes or a moderate liberal model. Reforming the pension system is a rather long process and requires both the definition of the main directions, principles and measures for the development of the funded pension system, and changes in the values, principles and norms of behavior of citizens.The purpose is to substantiate the theoretical concept, trends, problems of the accumulative pension system and the directions of its introduction into society.Research methods are based on the dialectical method of scientific knowledge and a systematic approach to knowledge of economic phenomena and processes, theoretical generalization, systematization, which allowed to reveal the problems of the accumulative pension system based on theoretical concepts and economic-statistical analysis of demographic load of working age and after working age.Results. The indicators influencing the introduction of the second level of the pension system were monitored. The dynamics of indicators of demographic load of the population of pre-working and post-working age is analyzed. The focus is on the peculiarities of wages and final consumer expenditures of households and the general government sector. It was found that in general, citizens belong to the elderly population, so to prevent further deterioration of the ratio between age groups, it is advisable to increase the effectiveness of the social insurance system. The expediency of paying more attention to actuarial statistics to determine the future size of pensions and their exact calculation is substantiated.Prospects. Further research is important to focus on improving the efficiency of the multi-component funded pension system in the context of ensuring compliance with the values, principles and norms of the society.


Author(s):  
О. Сhebereyako ◽  
◽  
V.. Bykova

The article is devoted to actual issues of public finance – old-age income support and social security in the twenty-first century. For this reason, government has tried to guarantee old-age’s pension eligibility. In our country pension system is presented with three-level pension system, which join mandatory and voluntary components – solidary system (first level), compulsory accumulation system (not exist now) and private pension system. According to Ukrainian’s pension model, basic and minimum pensions are funded by solidary system or PAYG (“Pay-As-You-Go”) system. As the results, maintains of sufficient financial resources of Pension fund’s budget is very important for financial stability of pension system. The authors show the relationship between sufficient financial support for the elderly in Ukraine and the financial capacity of the solidarity pension system. It was found that in order to form a financially stability pension system, it is necessary to ensure a sufficient amount of own pension fund revenues and avoiding deficit of the Pension Fund’s budget. So, the main indicators of current PAYG system in Ukraine include the public pension expenditures and deficit of the Pension Fund. The article presents dynamics of revenues to the Pension Fund of Ukraine and structure of own pension fund revenues and allocations from the government budged. According to author’s research, the main source of revenue collection of the Pension fund’s budget in Ukraine is the budget’s transfers. О. Чеберяко, В. Бикова ISSN 2078-5860 ФОРМУВАННЯ РИНКОВОЇ ЕКОНОМІКИ В УКРАЇНІ. 2019. Вип. 41 480 The budget expenditures in the structure of income of the pension fund are also analyzed. The total amount of the government budget expenditures that are directed to financing the pension fund are about twenty percent. In our opinion, the key reasons of the “lack of own income” are the shadowing of the economy, the macroeconomic situation, the low minimum wage, the existence of a limit on the maximum amount of wages, which accrues percent of social contribution. As a conclusion, the authors suggest measures for solving the issue of “lack of own income” of the Pension Fund of Ukraine – rising the retirement age, labor market’s reforming, increasing insurance fees and implement compulsory accumulation system. The analytical materials and conclusions can be useful for following researches of finding solutions for achieving the financial stable Pay-You-Go system. Key words: pension system, The Pension fund, social insurance payments, deficit of The Pension fund, government budget.


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