What Have We Learned from the COVID-19 Crisis? Domestic and International Dimensions and Policy Options for a Post-Coronavirus World: Introduction

Abstract

Abstract This introductory article describes how modern financialized capitalist economies of the 21st Century, which adopted the neoliberal creed over the last half-century, have been facing increasing vulnerabilities whose acceptance of this policy system has made them progressively susceptible to crises, of which the COVID-19 pandemic will not be the last. Government actions, especially on the fiscal side, have led to an unprecedented evolution of key macroeconomic variables which have stood on its head the neoliberal logic. Given the requirements to protect our societies from the Coronavirus through programmed cuts in both employment and consumption spending, particularly during the severe lockdowns, government actions have not only starved modern credit-driven financialized economies of their key fuel but have, in many ways, further magnified the income and wealth inequalities that characterize our 21st Century dual economies. The challenge will be how to break away from the neoliberal discourse that wants a return to the austerity policy box and to focuses, instead, on much-needed public investments with an eye to the future that will build public capacity so that modern societies become less vulnerable to future crises.