This week’s recommended reads illuminate our discussions on the COVID19 crisis, the need for a global response to the economic crisis, and the fundamental questions of capitalism:
1 | How Private-Equity Firms Squeeze Hospital Patients for Profits in the New Yorker, featuring work by Eileen Appelbaum & Rosemary Batt
“Symptoms of the disease can come on quickly, sending patients to the E.R. without much warning. These, Appelbaum warned, are precisely the conditions under which surprise medical billing happens most frequently. And, with so many people flooding hospitals, it seemed only a matter of time before billing horror stories began to appear.”
2 | Solidarity Economics—for the Coronavirus Crisis and Beyond in the American Prospect, by Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor
“We are facing an immediate need to think long-term. In the same way that we need to flatten the contagion curve by spreading out the impact of the coronavirus, we also need to flatten the economic curve, linking short-term interventions with longer-term programs that provide security for families and community, strengthen connections between people and places, and grow employment and the economy.”
3 | Internationalizing the Crisis, in Project Syndicate, in by Joseph Stiglitz
“In the world’s advanced economies, compassion should be sufficient motivation to support a multilateral response. But global action is also a matter of self-interest. As long as the pandemic is still raging anywhere, it will pose a threat – both epidemiological and economic – everywhere.”
4 | Will COVID-19 Remake the World? in Project Syndicate by Dani Rodrik
“In short, COVID-19 may well not alter – much less reverse – tendencies evident before the crisis. Neoliberalism will continue its slow death. Populist autocrats will become even more authoritarian. Hyper-globalization will remain on the defensive as nation-states reclaim policy space. China and the US will continue on their collision course. And the battle within nation-states among oligarchs, authoritarian populists, and liberal internationalists will intensify, while the left struggles to devise a program that appeals to a majority of voters.”
5 | The Fundamental Questions About Capitalism Seem to be Coming Back in Jacobin, featuring Anwar Shaik
“I started off as an aeronautical engineer: you need to understand that you’re part of a big system, and you also need to understand how it works, if you’re going to operate within that system (and perhaps change it). That goes against the logic of orthodox economics, where you start from the individual elements and try to build an understanding from there.”
Every week, we share a few noteworthy articles that showcase the work of new economic thinkers around the world. Subscribe to receive these shortlists directly to your email inbox.