Covid-19 and the Continued Tyranny of the Rate of Return Are we about to see the forced imposition of austerity on steroids?

[Cindy McMurray]

An Ethics Institute colloquy with Dr. Richard H. Robbins, past Institute
Fellow, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor and Chair of the Anthropology
Department

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Noon – 1 p.m., Zoom only:
https://plattsburgh.zoom.us/j/93855902839?pwd=cWhUL0VpR3FjTWdwV2VEdnRhOVFxUT09

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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