Een debat in Amsterdam & the US...

The Demise of the Middle Class
In collaboration with the Wiardi Beckman Foundation
Lezing/College
Robert Kuttner, one of the founders of the progressive magazine The American Prospect, comments on the demise of the American middle class and the deterioration in income and status against the backdrop of the financial and political crisis in the United States. Is this shift political or technological? How can we compare it to Europe?
TaskRabbit.com markets itself as a Web service that matches clients seeking someone to do odd jobs with people looking for extra income. The company makes its money by tacking on a 20 percent surcharge to the fees paid by clients. At the rate things are going, tens of millions of us could end up as temps, contract employees, call-center operators, and the like. They all have in common that they have lost bargaining power.
Is the working middle class eroding?

Catelene Passchier (FNV- onder voorbehoud) and Wiemer Salverda (AIAS) react. Do The Netherlands and the European Union have better solutions in store? Ieke van den Burg (WBS Europe Fund) will moderate the debate.

About the speakers

Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect as well as a Demos Distinguished Senior Fellow. He was a longtime columnist for Business Week, and continues to write columns in theBoston Globe. He co-founded the Economic Policy Institute in Washington and serves on its executive committee. He recently published Debtor’s Prison, the Politics of Austerity versus Possibility. Other publications by Kuttner are Everyting for Sale, The Squandering of America and A Presidency in peril, among others.
As board member of the FNV (Dutch Federal Labour Union) Catelene Passchier (lawyer) is responsible for labour law and social economic policy. She is known for her in depth knowledge and as a successful negotiator. On behalf of FNV she also is the main negotiator with the Dutch government and employers, and has a lot of experience as an influencer on European social policy.
Wiemer Salverda holds a special chair Labour Market and Inequality at AMCIS of the University of Amsterdam. He studied (general) economics and graduated at the Free University in Amsterdam. He obtained his doctorate in economics with a study of the youth labour market at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (1992). During his working life he specialised in the analysis of labour, particularly wages and employment, in a broad economic context.
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