The importance of public finance in the framework of the 2008 economic crisis and the pandemic crisis

Abstract

The capitalist economic system creates a constant tendency towards crisis. When crisis trends are considered in terms of their periodic effects, they produce results that have different dimensions such as ecological crises and health crises and include a radical transformation of the socio-economic structure. In this sense, the main purpose of this study is to emphasize that the real source of crises is the change dynamics of the economic system and, in this context, other crisis manifestations are a reflection of economic crises and the transformation in the socio-economic structure after the crisis. In this context, it is important to make a historical evaluation of economic crises and pandemics, based on the idea that the past provides understanding of today and that today requires rethinking the past. The study argues that there is a causal relationship between epidemic diseases causing pandemics and health crises and economic crises that involve radical economic and social transformations. Based on this, the 2008 economic crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic crisis are considered as recent experiences that made this causality relationship visible.  In solving the economic and social problems arising from these experiences, the concept of republicness which can be expressed as a paradigm shift in terms of public finance, is discussed as an important alternative approach within the framework of health services and living wage proposals.