Covid-19 and the Continued Tyranny of the Rate of Return Are we about to see the forced imposition of austerity on steroids? An Ethics Institute colloquy with Dr. Richard H. Robbins, past Institute Fellow, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor and Chair of the Anthropology Department

[Cindy McMurray]

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Noon – 1 p.m., Zoom only (link to follow)

Institute for Ethics in Public Life

Government budgets at all levels have been battered by the costs of
contending with the pandemic. Vastly reduced business and personal incomes
have led to reduced tax revenues. The accumulation of government debt added
to a likely rise in consumer debt delivers to creditors/investors even
greater power than they possessed before the pandemic.

This effect will buttress corporate demands for legislative measures that
remove or at least reduce such threats to the return on capital as
inflation, taxes, wages, responsibility for negative externalities, lack of
investment opportunities, competition and default.

The outcome will be an acceleration of government policies that mitigate
threats to the return on capital – policies that will further decimate the
lives of everyone else and leave us even more exposed to Covid-19 and
vulnerable to subsequent pandemics.

Institute colloquies are open to students, faculty, administrators and
alumni. The Fellowship program at the Institute for Ethics in Public Life
is generously supported by gifts to the Plattsburgh College Foundation.
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