Comment: Covid-19 is resetting the way we talk about economics

Professor Wendy Carlin (UCL Economics) discusses how Covid-19 will change the way people talk about public policy and the economy, from general conversation to academic rhetoric and more formal language. Like the Depression and the Second World War, the Covid-19 pandemic will change how we talk about the economy and public policy. This will be true not only in seminars and policy think-tanks but also in the vernacular with which people discuss their livelihoods and futures. One result will be a leftward shift on the one-dimensional government-versus-markets continuum of policy alternatives. A more fundamental consequence would be a rethinking of that anachronistic dichotomy to include approaches drawing on values beyond compliance with government and individual gain. There are precedents for this scale of change. After the Depression, US president Franklin D Roosevelt stated that "heedless self-interest is.