The COVID-19 Pandemic as Tipping Point: Analysis and Prognosis for <em>La Longue Durée</em>

Schrecker, T

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-99924-6_2

The COVID-19 Pandemic as Tipping Point: Analysis and Prognosis for La Longue Durée

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Ted Schrecker

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Abstract

The central argument of this paper is that by magnifying inequalities that were already growing within national borders, the COVID-19 pandemic represented a tipping point into a future of yet more extreme inequalities in health and well-being. After explaining the tipping point concept with reference to climate change research and a wider multidisciplinary literature, I describe the events and policies, notably in labor markets and social policy, that created the pre-pandemic landscape of inequality. These are inseparable from the global diffusion of neoliberalism, starting with the founding of the Mont Pèlerin Society in 1947. I then describe the ways in which the pandemic and responses to it magnified inequality, in ways that are likely to be extraordinarily difficult to reverse. Early casualties will include the remaining tax-funded (Beveridge-style) systems for financing health care. The concluding section situates my analysis as an example of the historical perspective of la longue durée identified with Fernand Braudel and suggests that the road that began at Mont Pèlerin led in 2024 to Mar-a-Lago with the election of Donald Trump and to the political ascent of the far right more broadly