{"id":827,"date":"2026-08-26T12:01:46","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T10:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/2026\/08\/26\/where-is-the-new-economy-an-attempt-at-a-progress-report\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T17:40:04","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T15:40:04","slug":"where-is-the-new-economy-an-attempt-at-a-progress-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/2026\/08\/26\/where-is-the-new-economy-an-attempt-at-a-progress-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Where is the New Economy? An Attempt at a Progress Report"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

America’s president relies on tariff threats, Argentina’s head of state on radical government cuts, and in Germany, it suddenly seems as if the old Agenda 2010 era rule applies again: that people simply need to work more to solve the problems of the day. None of this suggests that, nearly 20 years after the great financial crisis, a new economic policy paradigm has developed to draw lessons from the collapse of the then-dominant market liberalism. This seems astonishing, given that for years there have been waves of new research that clearly address the new challenges of our time better than the mere hope that market-liberal reforms or increased labor could help against increasingly incomprehensible inequality, the risks of AI, climate change, or state-subsidized low-cost competition from China. <\/p>\n\n

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Admittedly, there is no finished new model for the new era yet. Many questions remain open. However, unlike a few years ago, something has now crystallized: a broad consensus on the goals that define the new paradigm. Unlike in the market-liberal era, it is not just about economic efficiency and growth. These alone cannot fix climate change or inequality\u2014and apparently not the fatal tendency to turn to authoritarians and populists. The fact that it involves a new distribution of roles between markets and corporations on one hand, and politics and the community on the other, is as much a part of the new understanding as the premise that there can be no lasting prosperity without positive incentives in climate policy and more active countermeasures against the dominance of a few ultra-wealthy individuals. <\/p>\n\n

Behind such goals and principles have primarily been the great pioneers of the New Economy in their respective fields. This applies to Thomas Piketty, Gabriel Zucman, and Branko Milanovic, who helped ensure that drastic inequality could be statistically recorded and analyzed in the first place. It applies to Mariana Mazzucato, who is often ridiculed in established economic circles but has nonetheless provided spectacular insights into the actual strategic role of governments\u2014and thus concepts such as the idea of mission-oriented policy beyond the naive belief that markets always make decisions that are also good for people. <\/p>\n\n

This also applies to many others: to Dani Rodrik and his early criticism of poorly managed globalization\u2014and his concepts of modern industrial policy or the importance of focusing on “good work” rather than just efficiency; or to Nobel laureates Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, who have historically documented how much governments have always participated in major innovations\u2014contrary to what the dogma of market-liberal technological neutrality would suggest.<\/p>\n\n

All of this no longer unites only the usual suspects. The extent of the consensus on the new goals and principles was expressed, for example, in the Berlin Declaration, initiated by the Forum New Economy in the spring of 2024. Signatories included Nobel laureate Angus Deaton and former IMF Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard, as well as Aspen head Annika Mildner Storm, who a few years ago was part of a G7 group of economists exploring new approaches. <\/p>\n\n

The following year, a volume titled “London Consensus” followed\u2014initiated at the renowned London School of Economics\u2014another example of bringing together what constitutes the new thinking. The Spanish government, in turn, brought together leading international new thinkers such as Mariana Mazzucato and Isabella Weber. The list could be extended significantly. The bottom line: what began as a disparate attempt by specialized experts to find new answers to partial problems has now become a fairly robust framework of new principles and goals. <\/p>\n\n

Furthermore, the fact that all of this is not just an academic exercise can now be measured by several practical examples. What US President Joe Biden implemented in economic policy until 2024 (keyword: IRA) was strongly based on principles designed by the pioneers of the new paradigm, as was the EU’s Green Deal\u2014or attempts in Germany to reverse the divergence of incomes through higher minimum wages (with success). This also includes what led to the reform of the debt brake in Germany in 2025. Although resistance to this arises repeatedly, hardly anyone would still claim that the budgetary dogma of the “black zero”\u2014which had such fatal consequences for the condition of schools, roads, and railways\u2014is preferable. This, too, is a paradigm shift. Those who invest in the future do not achieve it through cuts. <\/p>\n\n

Numerous surveys show how much the necessity of the new has already reached the public: there are large majorities who agree with the statement that today’s wealth gap is no longer compatible with differences in performance\u2014even among CDU and FDP voters, only a minority still finds this acceptable. A true transformation. In France in 2025, there was a majority in the National Assembly for the first time for a higher wealth tax, as proposed by Gabriel Zucman; it only failed in the Senate. This, too, would have been unthinkable a few years ago. <\/p>\n\n

The question remains all the more why the new goals and principles have not yet been incorporated much more strongly into practical politics\u2014why the new paradigm still seems so absent there. One reason is likely that, beyond the growing consensus on principles and goals, there are not yet truly comprehensive, reliable practical instructions for action. The consensus that something must be done about inequality is still met with many open questions regarding the exact means. A simple wealth tax would not yet make the poor richer and would not significantly reduce inequality. A kind of starting capital of 30,000 euros or more for everyone in their early twenties would promise more\u2014but exactly how this could be distributed and abuse avoided has not yet been fully researched. What constitutes the best climate policy is also not so clear\u2014only that simply increasing levies is not optimal or even acts counterproductively seems increasingly evident. <\/p>\n\n

If this is true, it also confirms a thesis that circulated early among new thinkers\u2014and was an initial assumption of the Forum New Economy’s work in its earlier phase: that the rise of populists and authoritarians since around 2015 has much to do with the decline of the market-liberal paradigm\u2014and with the fact that after the great crisis of meaning for market liberals, no finished new paradigm was ready, not even a consensus on new goals and principles like the one that exists now. Consequently, populists simply filled the vacuum with their seemingly simple but usually ineffective means. The dangerous wave of authoritarianism will only end when people are convinced of what a new paradigm brings for the actual solution to the problems of our time. <\/p>\n\n

This could explain not only the election and re-election of Donald Trump or the past success of the Brexit campaign. It could also explain why, in Germany, the crude economics of the 1990s and 2000s are experiencing a revival in a much more moderate way due to a lack of mature new ideas. Those who have no new ideas reflexively fall back on the tried and tested\u2014with the fatal side effect that it was not actually that proven, and certainly is not now. <\/p>\n\n

For the next stages toward a truly better new paradigm, a chance could lie exactly here. It doesn’t take much wit to recognize that it naturally helps little to work more, as the German Chancellor has proclaimed; or to engage in supposedly miraculous “structural reforms” of, say, the German pension insurance\u2014when the real problems lie in Donald Trump, the Chinese, or Elon Musk. Or in an insufficiently attractive climate policy that punishes rather than sets positive incentives. <\/p>\n\n

When well-intentioned reforms are praised that de facto mean the cutting of benefits, such as in pensions, this risks appearing negligent in reality. There is plenty of empirical evidence that such cuts lead to (even more) people voting for populists. This is a bankruptcy declaration for the old economic school, which defines such things as external effects outside its own area of responsibility. <\/p>\n\n

There is much to suggest that such contradictory policy is gradually being perceived as such\u2014just as it is increasingly evident that the attention-seeking, blustering politics of Donald Trump do not really help those economically who voted for him in protest. This is an opportunity for those who offer a New Economy, a new economic paradigm, in contrast. <\/p>\n\n

In all likelihood, this will only be successful if there are even more well-thought-out answers on how to develop enough new means, instruments, and policies based on the now-established new goals and principles to improve actual circumstances. This requires concrete concepts for a more attractive climate policy, the testing of starting capital to reduce inequality, a better understanding of industrial policy based on concrete practical examples, or a better-managed globalization. This is a task for the coming period\u2014for the Forum, as for all who are convinced that things will not get better with the old recipes, but worse. The foundation of increasingly shared goals and principles has been laid\u2014now comes the next stage. <\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

\n

“There is now a consensus on the goals and principles of a new economy. More progress is still needed in developing concrete policy\u2014to stop the populists as well.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the collapse of market-liberal dogma nearly 20 years ago, innovative thinkers have been searching for more appropriate answers to the problems of our time. In the meantime, a consensus on goals and principles has grown\u2014despite the defensive struggles of resurgent market radicals and ordoliberal nostalgics. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"artikel-autor":[17],"class_list":["post-827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unkategorisiert","artikel-autor-thomas-fricke"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":828,"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions\/828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827"},{"taxonomy":"artikel-autor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum-new-economy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artikel-autor?post=827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}