The price of food increased 2.6% in April, the largest single-month increase since 1974, but food industry executives are insisting that the country has enough food. So why are prices going up? The explanation provided by the industry is that consumers are buying more than they need, creating shortages. But a shortage is not a…
To combat the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government has enacted relief packages totaling nearly $2.5 trillion, with more aid likely to come. The fourth and latest effort contains $75 billion in grants for hospitals, and $25 billion to improve coronavirus testing. As economist Austan Goolsbee has rightly noted, “the number one rule of virus economics…
Will the rise of new political forces and the explosion of global crises sound neoliberalism’s death knell? Or will ostensible challenges to existing political and economic orders instead catalyze new mutations in neoliberalism’s dynamic development? Mutant Neoliberalism, a recent edited collection, brings together leading scholars of neoliberalism—political theorists, historians, philosophers, anthropologists and sociologists—to rethink transformations…
Dear Readers, Today we’re bringing you a special Saturday edition of our ongoing covid-19 series. Take care, LPE Blog Your first stop after reading this post should be here, to listen to Amy Kapczynski and Gregg Gonsalves on The Dig podcast. They talk about how to survive this plague – the politics of public health and…
This post is part of our ongoing coverage of the COVID-19 Crisis from an LPE Perspective. Sam Hull– As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, debate has begun over when and how to restart society. Some proposals, such as those that call for seniors to sacrifice themselves for the good of “the economy,” expose the inherent inhumanity…
Dear Readers, As part of our ongoing coverage of the COVID-19 crisis from an LPE perspective, we bring you a round-up of recent work from our LPE community. We’re aiming to make these a (semi) regular feature of the blog throughout the crisis. Above all, we hope you are as well as can be expected. …
We often hear that the current COVID crisis came “out of the blue,” that “nobody” was expecting it.* But anyone with a decent grasp of pressing issues in public health knew the risks of pandemics. As I wrote in 2014: [R]eduction in hospital facilities and other resources, although “efficient” in normal times, may prove disastrous if there…
As part of our ongoing effort to bring you the best LPE work on COVID-19, today we bring you this piece from John Whitlow, followed by a roundup of LPE COVID writing published elsewhere. The poet Langston Hughes once wrote, “I wish the rent was heaven sent.” With a record 10 million Americans filing for…
Today, as part of our ongoing effort to bring you the best LPE work on COVID-19, we’re reposting a letter from Professor Noah Zatz to his City Counsel regarding evictions during the pandemic.
We’re living in strange times. As we try to make sense of the moment, LPE Blog wants to offer some COVID 19 coverage from our regular contributors. We’re starting today with some work that Amy Kapczynski has done with various colleagues.
It is now clear that we are entering a new phase of the global COVID-19 pandemic. The virus appears in new countries around the world each day. New cases are now regularly reported in the United States, and as testing is scaled up, that number will increase, probably substantially. It is clear now that the…