Thomas Piketty is the author of Capital and Ideology (Deusto, 2019)

Is the Covid-19 epidemic crisis going to precipitate the end of liberal and mercantile globalization, and the emergence of a new model of more just and sustainable development? It is possible, but nothing is decided.

At the moment, the absolute urgency is to take action on the crisis and do everything possible to avoid the worst, a mass catastrophe.

Recall the predictions of epidemiological models. Without intervention, the Covid-19 could have caused the death of some 40 million people in the world, of which 400,000 in France, about 0.6% of the population (more than 7,000 million people in the world, close 70 million in France). This equates to almost a year of additional mortality (550,000 deaths annually in France, 55 million worldwide).

In practice, in the worst affected regions and during the harshest months, the number of deaths could have been between five and ten times higher than usual (which unfortunately has begun to be seen in some areas of Italy).

However uncertain these predictions are, they have convinced governments that it was not a simple flu and that the population needed to be confined urgently.

In fact, nobody knows very well what the human losses will be (as of April 19, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, the number of deaths worldwide amounted to 165,903 people, of whom 40,661 in the US, 23,660 in Italy, 20,453 in Spain and 19,718 in France) and how far they would have risen without confinement.

Epidemiologists expect the final death balance to be divided by ten to twenty compared to initial estimates, but the uncertainty is considerable. According to a report published by Imperial College on March 27, only a massive policy of testing and isolating infected people would significantly reduce human loss. Or, in other words, confinement will not be enough to avoid the worst.

The only historical precedent to hold onto is the 1918-1920 flu, which is now known to be nothing Spanish and caused nearly 50 million deaths worldwide (about 2% of the world's population in that moment). Based on statistics from civil registries, the average mortality has been shown to hide enormous disparities: between 0.5% and 1% in the United States and Europe, compared to 3% in Indonesia and South Africa, and more than 5% in India.

It is precisely this that should concern us: the epidemic could explode in poor countries, whose health systems are not in a position to cope with the crisis, all the more since they have had to endure austerity policies imposed by the dominant ideology of The last decades.

Likewise, the confinement applied to the most fragile social groups could be totally inadequate. In the absence of a minimum income, the poorest will soon have to go out and look for work, which will bring out the epidemic. In India, confinement has consisted mainly of expelling rural people and migrants from cities, which has led to episodes of violence and mass displacement, at the risk of aggravating the spread of the virus. To avoid a catastrophe, we need the social state, not the prison state.

In the immediate term, essential social expenses (health, minimum income) can only be financed through loans and liquidity.

In West Africa, it is an opportunity to rethink the new common currency and put it at the service of a development project focused on investment in youth and infrastructure (not at the service of capital mobility for the richest). This will have to be done on a democratic and parliamentary architecture more accurate than the opacity still in force in the euro zone (where the meetings of the finance ministers continue to be held behind closed doors, with the same inefficiency as at the time of the international financial crisis) .

Sooner rather than later, the new social state will demand fair taxation and international financial accounting, so that the richest people and large companies can contribute as much as necessary.

The current regime of free movement of capital, launched from 1980-1990 under the influence of wealthy countries (particularly Europe), actually favors the evasion of billionaires and multinationals from around the world. It prevents fragile tax administrations in poor countries from developing fair and legitimate taxation, which seriously undermines state building.

This crisis may be an opportunity to reflect on a minimum provision of health and education services for all the inhabitants of the planet, financed with a universal right – of all countries – on a part of the tax revenues paid by the most prosperous economic agents. : large companies and households with higher incomes and assets; for example, those that exceed ten times the world average (the richest 1%).

Ultimately, that prosperity is due to a global economic system (and eventually to the rampant exploitation of the world's natural and human resources for several centuries). Therefore, it needs global regulation to guarantee its social and ecological sustainability, including in particular the implementation of a carbon emissions map that prohibits the highest emissions.

It goes without saying that such a transformation needs a major rethink. For example, are Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump willing to cancel the tax gifts granted to the wealthiest at the start of their respective terms? The answer will depend on the mobilization of both the opposition and their own camp. We can be sure of one thing: the great political and ideological changes have only just begun.



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