to read the translated articles by Norman Wagner and Matthais Schnetzer, visit
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2014/10/428387.shtml
In Austria, 30% of the gross domestic product is spent on social services (not including education spending)… Since the 1990s, social security has been increasingly discussed as a financial burden and less as a social achievement… The irony is that the social state is the target of austerity measures in times of economic insecurity with high unemployment and rising poverty although it is then urgently necessary, The social state ensures that the income of persons impacted by a crisis like the current one will not fall enormously and purchasing power will not collapse. Expanding – not cutting – the social system is urgently necessary in the present situation.
With his book “Capital in the 21st Century,” Thomas Piketty has aroused a great international discussion on neoliberalism as an inequality machine and the dangers of patrimonial capitalism.
