The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) latest Economic Outlook outlined the catastrophic scenarios facing the world economy due to the COVID-19 pandemic. No “return to normal,” in the words of OECD chief economist Laurence Boone, could be envisaged. Rather, the world should prepare for “dire and long-lasting consequences for people, firms and governments.”
The pandemic has accelerated a “great fragmentation” of the world economy, with trade restrictions, closed borders, and diverging economies. Boone continued, “Everywhere, the lockdown has also exacerbated inequality across workers, with those able to telework generally highly qualified, while the least qualified and youth are often on the front line, unable to work or laid off, with the effects further compounded by unequal access to social protection.”
In response, Boone, a former adviser to the one-time Socialist Party president of France, François Hollande, insisted that governments cannot prop up private sector wages indefinitely and called for drastic relocation of capital and labour “from impaired sectors and businesses…to expanding ones.”
Read the full article from World Socialist Web Site
Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay
