The Covid-19 pandemic has already led to unprecedented financial bailouts across developed economies. It has shown that centralized governmental responses to the pandemic resulted in far better health outcomes. As the healthcare crisis resides and the economic one dominates the conversation, the fragility of the economies built by neoliberalism in the past 40 years has become painfully clear.
Yes, neoliberal globalization is crashing hard. Despite the bailouts and the unorthodox policies of central banks the current world order seems to be coming to an end, but the battle is unlikely to be over and may be in fact entering its most contentious stage. It is still the case that the neoliberal beast has been wounded.
We can see this by taking a look at two of its core trends: the trend towards increased global outsourcing with the aim of producing goods cheaply, and the trend towards lower taxation, increasing privatizations and making governments compete to become more attractive destinations for global capital.
