Anthony Annett

Apr 5, 2024 | commonwealmagazine.org | Justin Vassallo |James Chappel |Anthony Annett |Arvin Alaigh

Interested in discussing this article in your classroom, parish, reading group, or Commonweal Local Community? Click here for a free discussion guide. Social democracy might well be the most successful economic project in history. During its heyday—the three decades following the Second World War on both sides of the Atlantic—it led to high productivity, economic growth, full employment, low inequality, and very few financial crises.

Mar 27, 2024 | commonwealmagazine.org | Justin Vassallo |James Chappel |Anthony Annett |Arvin Alaigh

Social democracy might well be the most successful economic project in history. During its heyday—the three decades following the Second World War on both sides of the Atlantic—it led to high productivity, economic growth, full employment, low inequality, and very few financial crises. Political and economic institutions made sure that rising prosperity benefitted all classes in society. The time has come to rehabilitate this economic model for our era.

Dec 5, 2023 | commonwealmagazine.org | Anthony Annett |Matt McManus |Marcia Chatelain |Brad East

Shortly before his untimely death from ALS in 2010, the British historian Tony Judt wrote Ill Fares the Land, a love letter to postwar social democracy. One of Judt’s arguments in that book was that the social-democratic tradition can be regarded as a conservative project. “The left has something to conserve,” he wrote. “The democratic Left has often been motivated by a sense of loss: sometimes of idealized pasts, sometimes of moral interests ruthlessly overridden by private advantage.

Oct 18, 2023 | thetablet.co.uk | Anthony Annett

Catholics were becoming more comfortable with ... the role of the state in pursuing the common good. An economist argues that Catholic Social Teaching – whichhas always opposed free-market capitalism and defended workers’ rights – finds its closest modern incarnation in a strongly green-tinged social democracy.

Jul 19, 2023 | commonwealmagazine.org | Anthony Annett |Randy R. Potts |Jacqui Oesterblad |Nolen Gertz

Thomas Robert Malthus was possibly the most pessimistic economist of all time. Writing in the early nineteenth century, he argued that technological advances were ultimately futile as they would not raise living standards. In his telling, any rise in living standards would just lead to an increase in population, which would push per capita income back down to subsistence levels. This is the famous Malthusian trap.