Fiscal policy for a new post-pandemic COVID-19 welfare regime based on Good Living

Abstract

The great impacts from the COVID-19 health pandemic showed the economistic and instrumentalist limits of fiscal policy, which was overwhelmed by the disruptive crisis in all the countries of the world. In addition, there are great challenges to face climate change. In this context, the main objective of this work is to analyze and propose a set of principles and instruments that should characterize fiscal policy to achieve a new welfare regime called Good Living, which in turn comprises three fundamental elements: i) biocentric sustainability, ii) social equity and, iii) personal satisfaction. The methodology used is basically a bibliographic review under the cross- reference technique, on the concepts of welfare regime and Good Living. It reviews the main fiscal proposals from both the new macroeconomic consensus, as well as the so- called macroeconomics for development and the counter-cyclical fiscal policy from ECLAC. Main conclusions: fiscal policy for Good Living changes the instrumentalist fiscal vision and relates it to a broad and integrated vision in the social, economic and environmental spheres, but without neglecting the criteria of sustainability of the processes through the generation of adequate income and financing, therefore, it would have a higher level than the approaches of the mainstream and Latin American neostructuralism.