ABSTRACT
The crisis of 2020 will certainly go down in history as the most serious of the last hundred years, and it will remain in the memory of several generations. In the years following the global financial crisis of 2008, there has been a growing mistrust in governments and an increasing conviction that public policy is either an obstacle to economic prosperity, or a passive agent not responding diligently enough to crises. Increases in income inequality, more and more countries submitting to non-democratic systems, loss of jobs, fragmentation of societies, and a negative attitude toward immigration have been the result of the crisis. However, political agendas and corporate interests are at odds with each other, and many are demanding a complete overhaul of our economic system in order to make sustainability our priority, instead of tax revenues and profits. Effective policies—competitiveness policies—must be aimed, as an ultimate goal, at increasing productivity, raising wages and expenditure, and thus state revenues through taxes.
