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The Effects of Contemporary Capitalism on Everyday Life
October 12, 2020 @ 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
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Employment is in transition; the platform economy has enforced more independent entrepreneurship and flexible contracts than we have ever seen. Income inequality is growing as taxation systems reward those with capital, resulting in a loop of the rich getting richer and the poor remaining poor. Simultaneously, housing markets are increasingly under pressure. Subsidised housing seems to no longer suffice in ensuring affordable housing for everyone. How to overcome the insecurities for people that come along with these developments? How can contemporary capitalism ensure happy workers and thriving communities? What actions could and/or should firms take? And what role do governance and democracy have to play in all this? With Isabelle Ferreras & Josh Ryan-Collins.
This episode started with a column by Kees Buitendijk and was moderated by Natasja van den Berg and David Overbeek.
About the Speakers
Isabelle Ferreras is a senior tenured fellow (Maître de recherches) of the Belgian National Science Foundation (F.N.R.S., Brussels). She is professor of sociology at the Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) where she teaches at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, at the Institut des sciences du travail and at the Economics School of Louvain. Isabelle is involved as a permanent researcher of the CriDIS (Centre de recherches interdisciplinaires Democracy, Institutions, Subjectivity). Since 2004, she has been an associate of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School (Cambridge, MA) where she is now a Senior Research Associate. In the Spring 2017, Ferreras was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts of Belgium, Class Technology and Society.
Josh Ryan-Collins is Head of Finance and Macroeconomics and Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose and an economist with interests in finance and banking, land and housing, economic rent and climate change. Josh is the author of three books, two co-authored, of which Why Can’t you Afford a Home (2018, Polity) is the most recent. His work on the interaction between the financial sector and housing markets has received international press coverage and led to invitations to provide guest lectures and advisory work from governments, public agencies, academics and civil society groups from across Europe, including the European Commission.
Read More
The Unbearable Insecurity of Housing & Jobs
Summary of & reflection on this episode by Ilse Oosterlaken
Le Manifeste Travail. Démocratiser. Démarchandiser. Dépolluer. (2020)
Why Can’t You Afford a Home? (2018)
Firms as Political Entities; Saving Democracy through Economic Bicameralism (2017)
Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing (2017)
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