After the 2008 crisis, European authorities saved the banks but forced welfare states to slash spending. Faced with the coronavirus, austerity-hit hospital services are under siege — yet the European Central Bank is again helping out the financial markets, not public health care systems.
Today's coronavirus crash in the stock market exposed the frailty of global capitalism. With governments tapped out on quantitative easing, only significant public investment on the scale of a Green New Deal can prevent a slump.
Cleaners at London's Lewisham Hospital went on strike on Thursday after their outsourced employer ISS repeatedly failed to pay them. The dogma of cuts and privatization has subjected them to poverty conditions — even as they work on the front line of stopping the coronavirus infection.
Led by the autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s government has responded to the coronavirus crisis as you would expect: with an iron fist. But the mainstream opposition isn’t proposing a democratic, egalitarian alternative. Workers will have to step in to fill the void.
From prisoners making hand sanitizer to people forgoing testing because of cost, the coronavirus has exposed the social rot in American society. But we don’t have to live this way — we can transform society for the better.
Coronavirus has had a devastating economic impact in the United States. Yet the richest country in the world has so far passed paltry relief measures.
Cuba is caricatured by the Right as a totalitarian hellhole. But its response to the coronavirus pandemic — from sending doctors to other countries to pioneering anti-viral treatments to converting factories into mask-making machines — is putting other countries, even rich countries, to shame.
We live in an interwoven, interconnected world where an injury to one is truly an injury to all. We must confront the coronavirus with solidarity and fight for a society where the health of all is more important than profits for a few.
Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot has worked hard to portray herself as a “progressive” mayor. But her coronavirus response has largely shielded the city’s corporate elite — while rejecting policies pushed by democratic socialists on the city council that would benefit working-class residents.
Almost half of the women workers in the United Kingdom who have lost their jobs under the coronavirus pandemic cite lack of childcare as a factor. It's time to recognize childcare as a public good, a right for everyone, and make it available to everyone.
The number of infections and deaths that have swept through US nursing homes is staggering. Organized nursing home workers are crucial to ending this devastation.
The GOP’s proposed coronavirus relief legislation is grotesque — an insult to the working class and a threat to the lives and livelihoods of millions. The fact that Senate Republicans felt at liberty to propose it is a telltale sign of political rot.
In a new interview, Noam Chomsky gives his thoughts on the coronavirus pandemic, the depravities of capitalism, and the urgent need for a new era of solidarity and labor struggle.
With days before the fall semester, Marquette University is sending its workers and students into harm’s way. And without a faculty union, administrators and trustees are accountable to no one for the damage they’re doing.
Portugal’s center-left government has announced that all migrants with open residency applications will be given regularized status, allowing them full access to health care and social services. Its example shows that our collective response to the coronavirus outbreak has to include everyone — regardless of where they were born.
Donald Trump has decided to use federal dollars to directly foot the bill for uninsured COVID-19 patients, while Joe Biden is still clinging to the Affordable Care Act. It’s a boneheaded move that is allowing mainstream Democrats to be outflanked by Trump on health care.
African countries haven't yet borne the brunt of COVID-19. But as the virus migrates into the cities and shacks and towns of Africa, it could spread rapidly — pummeling the continent's austerity-wracked public health systems.
The president made a big show of stepping in to help struggling Americans when Congress failed them. But his executive orders have failed, too. Trump claims to back the working class, but he has abandoned them at every turn.
At the start of the coronavirus epidemic, Norway’s government said it would help businesses by making it easier for them to get rid of workers. But trade unions and left-wing parties fiercely denied that these measures were “inevitable” — and they won a bailout to serve working people, not just their employers.
It is indefensible that people should have to fear eviction during a health crisis. Coronavirus calls for emergency controls on the housing market now.