Share the Wealth

Philippe Askenazy is a specialist of labour and employment relations. He is a senior economist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, and fellow of NIESR (London) and IZA (Bonn). He is also columnist for Le Monde. He is the co-initiator of the collective called the "Appalled Economists", a group aiming to stimulate collective thinking and public expression of economists who do not resign themselves to the predominant neoliberal orthodox doctrine". His "Manifesto of the Appalled Economists" published in 2010 with three co-authors was translated in dozens of languages in Europe and Asia.

The latest book by Philippe Askenazy is extraordinarily refreshing and innovative and deserves a wide international readership. Askenazy shows convincingly that is above all the relationship of forces and the legal and institutional system in which these relations are expressed that determine the share of wealth. The descriptions of the possible emergence of a new, participatory trade unionism are particularly successful: by describing the innovative mobilisations of subway drivers in New York, London or Paris, of American nurses, not to speak of cleaning workers in the luxury hotels in Paris's 'golden triangle' or bus drivers in Silicon Valley, Askenazy gives one hope again and shows that several futures are possible in the framework of the existing globalisation that is underway.