Frances Abele CM is Distinguished Research Professor and Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy Emerita at Carleton University. She is a research fellow at the Carleton Centre for Community Innovation and the Broadbent Institute. Much of her work focuses on indigenous-Canada relations.
The coronavirus shock has shaken the world’s stock markets, imposing the need for massive state bailouts. But the measures to deal with the crisis risk spurring an authoritarian controlled capitalism — one that protects corporate interests while offloading the costs onto the rest of us.
Politicians who represent the interests of capital clearly grasp the point that a UBI would tilt the playing field in favor of workers. That’s why they’re fighting the idea tooth and nail, even amid an unprecedented crisis.
The coronavirus pandemic affects everyone, but it doesn’t affect everyone equally. Working-class neighborhoods have it much harder than wealthy enclaves — and that’s unconscionable.
With a pandemic raging, Oberlin College is outsourcing 108 unionized campus jobs in the interests of cost-cutting. Universities across the country are doing the same. We can’t let them get away with it.
The COVID-19 pandemic should be a time to reduce the military’s deadly footprint at home and abroad. We can’t let the military use this crisis to expand its powers.
Here are questions we need to ask right away: If foundational economic principles must be abandoned when things get tough, does capitalism really serve our needs? If rapid, radical change is possible when circumstances demand it, what excuse is there for failing to act with similar urgency to prevent cataclysmic climate change?
The pharmaceutical giant Gilead tried to pull a fast one by seeking a special status that would restrict the supply of its coronavirus drug and boost profits. Luckily, healthcare advocates, left-wing journalists, and Bernie Sanders were having none of it.
For decades, America’s “flexible” labor markets have been celebrated by economists and favorably compared to Europe’s “sclerotic” labor institutions — the products of a century of militant worker struggle. Now, thanks to that very flexibility, the US stands on the brink of an economic disaster.
Faced with the coronavirus shutdown, more people are getting meals delivered straight to their homes. At a time of mass panic buying, the state should step in to guarantee a smooth food supply — and start by turning platforms like Uber Eats and Grubhub into a public service.
The Spanish flu of 1918 infected a quarter of the world population and was decisive to the rise of public health-care systems. Today’s COVID-19 crisis is again showing that collective problems demand collective solutions — and a state that provides for all our essential needs.
Jair Bolsonaro is still refusing to implement basic isolation measures to protect Brazilians against the onslaught of COVID-19, hurtling the country toward disaster. Now his negligence is feeding widespread dissent, and even his former allies are calling for the far-right leader’s removal.
After a decade-long, worldwide corporate debt binge, the bill has come due: huge swaths of the corporate world are now at risk of default, with only governments able to save them. This time, any bailouts must place corporate investment under public control.
US sanctions are devastating in ordinary times. But with the COVID-19 pandemic raging, they’re killing more people than ever.
From failing to develop a vaccine, to evicting the jobless and cutting off their health care, to needlessly subjecting workers and the public to infection: capitalism will be responsible for millions of coronavirus-related deaths.
Britney Spears called for a general strike and wealth redistribution in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore we are legally obliged to publish something about it.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo has issued an executive order requiring all nonessential workers to stay home. But construction workers are still being forced to build luxury condos — more evidence that for capital, high-priced real estate is more important than workers’ lives.
Crises like the one we’re in upend the social order, reveal long-festering conflicts, and throw open the doors to futures both bleak and transformative. We can emerge from this crisis a more just society.
For decades, America’s hospitals have been underfunded and understaffed in the name of efficiency. An examination of conditions at one public hospital in Oakland show us how unprepared this austerity-starved health care system is for what’s to come.
A single-payer system in the United States would have meant a more coordinated public health response to coronavirus crises and free and universal health care to all those who need it, like Canadians have received. Instead, our response has been patchwork, uncoordinated, and insufficient — putting millions of lives unnecessarily at risk.
The coronavirus pandemic has revealed a simple fact: it’s low-wage workers like cleaners, cashiers, and care workers who make our society run — not bankers, landlords, or CEOs.