It appears that this crisis is going to persist in some form with attendant economic chaos, for around 18 months. Even if the immediate outbreaks are contained and some restrictions lifted, things will not be able to fully return to "normal" until there is a vaccine. All over the world, tax reciepts have or are going to collapse and government spending has skyrocketed - on healthcare, on supports and on stimulus. Under prevailing economic rules, this is not sustainable for more than a few months, if that. And we've only begun to see the macroeconomic effects in terms of businesses collapsing and people becoming unemployed. There is a banking crisis on the way. The scale of all of this will be much worse than in the 2008 recession. We're talking about levels of disruption associated with the Great Depression or a world war. So, it is very evident that the economic and monetary system that the world has been using will not survive. Ideas like UBI, helicopter money and so forth are all going to be called into play. It will be very difficult for governments to unwind the measure that they're putting in place. And patching things back up again the way they were is not going to cut it. What do you think will or should be the long-term outcomes of this? Personally I'd like to see a new international monetary system along the lines of Bretton Woods, with the stimulus that the world economy needs coming in the form of green investment. And it would be nice if the oil industry could collapse along the way...
I don't expect much international cooperation, but I do know the ultra-capitalist American system will have a much harder time dealing with it than the semi-socialist European systems. America only pulled out of the Great Depression by the introduction of a system that was similar in many ways to what European countries now use, and that will have to come again. There just isn't any way for "the market" or, much less, an "enlightened anarchic" libertarianism to do it without it leading directly to what would basically amount to corporate feudalism. But I fear things will be very difficult for the Americans before they get that far. Especially where the American health care system is concerned.
I agree with most of this, except the collapse of the oil industry would be the number 1 priority, not a side benefit...
Immediate aftermath I can imagine the EU being on very shaky ground, not just because of Brexit's ongoing ramifications, but because of Hungary's collapse into a defacto dictatorship. That could lead to a geopolitical instability within the Schengen zone, I imagine, threatening the viability of the EU as a whole.
More likely, it would lead to Hungary being told: "Restore democracy, or you're gone." There are plenty of powerful people in the EU who would be glad to do some "housekeeping", especially in the east (and also in the south, to a lesser extent, with Greece and the Iberian peninsula). I don't see anything threatening the stability of the core of the EU (France, Germany, Benelux and Italy) in the forseeable future, though. France and Germany, in particular, know they have to get along, because the state of modern weaponry is such that it simply is not acceptable to continue with the recurrent trans-Rhine conflicts that regularly tore Europe apart for 800 years. Doing that today would simply mean the deaths of half of the European population. So as much as they will squabble, those core states of the EU will always stick together. They don't really have any other viable choices, and they know it.
Money is a little tweeting bird chirping in a meadow. Money is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell bad.
Well, it doesn't come from anywhere unless those are reconstituted in some more sustainable way. And that's going to have to involve some very fundamental changes about how money works in the first place. Maybe it will allow states to more easily print it in some circumstances, for example. As for the EU, there are already arguments about "coronabonds" being issued with some of the nations that have been hit hardest pushing for them and - predictably - Germany against them. But something like that is going to have to happen to stop the Eurozone from collapsing. Continuing the anemic response to the previous and unresolved Eurozone crisis with several of its larger members in difficulty, will be insufficient. Ideally there would be a broader international agreement with a new global reserve currency being based on the value of the dollar, euro and yuan. I agree with @Asyncritus that that looks unlikely right now, particularly as long as Mr. Trump is in situ. But a lot of things that we think can't change will do very quickly.
I'll tell you what the aftermath of this is going to be. Grotesquely swollen surveillance states, much more authoritarian governments even in western liberal democracies, permanent restrictions on personal liberty, and immense, all-consuming economic dependencies on the government teat. A UBI in some fashion is almost certain. Some kind of foundational income guarantee like that. Which means much, much higher taxes on anyone who dares to actually be productive. Sovereign/national debts are going to be recalculated somehow so that a lot of it just disappears. Kind of like wiping out student debt only on a national level. Look for nearly civil-war levels of unrest in many countries as governments around the world refuse to give up broad-reaching "emergency" powers they've arrogated to themselves to deal with the pandemic. Oh, and for a minor change . . . as I've noted in the past, masks are going to be fashionable. I thought it would be to combat/subvert persistant surveillance, but turns out it's going to be to protect each other from biologicals.
Gee Lanz, I better get gunz. What a sissy. I always wondered how money was created in the pre-covid period. I think wealth is created (GDP) and the money supply is magically expanded to keep pace. As long as the money supply doesn't outstrip GDP then inflation is not a problem. There's a little something called the velocity of money that Anc pointed out that is a key factor in inflation. With the post covid environment, velocity of money will be down, inflation will be down, so yes, printing money should work just fine. Distribute fairly. UBI is one part (unemployment). Earn more for creative input to society to encourage usefulness (make-work programs). Let the private sector sort itself out with some input to critical industries. A large part of the service industry (which is about all we do these days) will no longer exist (retail, lots of restaurants).
Oh yeah, some kind of 21st century Civilian Conservation Corps type program will likely happen. There are an awful lot of public works and infrastructure projects in need of doing, and if it worked before . . .
bullet trains? Maybe eventually, but I'd be happy with bridges first - many are in a dangerous condition and long overdue for maintenance or replacement.
Given that the economic implosion may kill the airlines, high speed rail would be an obvious - and more environmentally friendly - alternative.
You're going to see customized masks licensed so people can have a mask with a Star Wars logo or their favorite super hero. As for the rest, the future I'd like to see is the future I've always wanted to see and this might just be the event to push us in the right direction. As has already been said, we need infrastructure so yeah we're going to need a huge works program. Bullet trains would be a welcome addition so a continental RR type program would help as well. I'd like to more and more mom and pop stores and restaurants cooperating with local farms and family owned manufactures in order to reduce the reliance on corporations. A UBI of some sort is probably inevitable as well as a public option for health care. We also need a beefed up GI bill and we need to offer citizenship to anyone willing to join the military or civil service. I'd like to see cities create more green spaces for people to run and exercise, but still maintain social distancing. Expansion of National Parks which would create jobs. A reduction in oil production. An international agreement to basically cut off China from trade and return jobs back to the US. Force China to adhere to international norms. Cut ties with Saudi Arabia and other bad actors in the middle-east. Slowly transits back to the gold standard and re-evaluate our social programs so they are more sustainable.
For once we are very much on the same page, there's a real possibility of emergency powers being abused, but then again perhaps not. We've absorbed a lot of nightmare scenarios into the public consciousness about what absolutely, definitely, without doubt, would happen in the event of a major upheaval in society and it's way too easy to forget that a lot of our fears are based on, well, Hollywood. Bear in mind the strength of association between an event like this and predictions of a post apocalyptic wasteland with the weak preying on the strong, yet thus far at leats we're seeing anything but. People are cooperating on a global scale like never before. Hungary serves as an example of the worst case scenario being possible but the idea it's an inevitability is something I'm very wary of for several reasons, not the least of which being that most of the civilised world existed under emergency powers during WW2 and yet the world did not become a dystopian nightmare. Arguably there was a great deal Orwellian about the Cold War years but I don't imagine you're going to suggest Western governments became all pervasive dictatorships, constitution or not? Have hope for the best even when you fear the worst, the reality will likely be less interesting than either.
We should definitely isolate China so the next time they have a Coronavirus event they tell us about it immediately!
Given the Ferengi shenanagins in the "companies acting like assholes..", thread, I'm not particularly impressed by the Randian Superman, so forgive my stone dry tear ducts for their plight.
And yet, as this crisis has demonstrated, it's the folk at the low-end of the income bracket who are considered "key". What's "productive"? Makes a lot of money? Nope. Stockmarket trader? Hardly. Scientist? Maybe. Guy who ensures folk get the food they need? Absolutely. What might come out of this is the recognition, finally, that jobs folk have been told for decades are low-pay because they aren't important are ABSOLUTELY FUCKING IMPORTANT. We've pushed the wages down because "if you don't like it, someone else will do it" but when we need them, they're suddenly irreplaceable.
Along those lines, it will be interesting to see if people remember how do-without-able major league sports are. Paying grown-ass adults millions of dollars to chase a kids' toy around a stadium might suddenly look a bit silly.
“We’ve got to flatten the curve so we can have football season” is what I’ve been hearing lately, so I doubt it.
I agree with most of this but again the emphasis is on forcing China to adhere to international norms and not on the US's responsibility to do the same thing. In may ways the US has been every bit as rogue (if not more so in some regards) in modern times as China. Hell, there's been times when they've seemed much more reasonable during Trump's tenure. Again, perhaps it's an insular thing, perhaps it's a question of perspective, who knows, but there's a lot of underlying assumptions here that the rest of the world don't share. I know this comes across like my personal hobby horse but try for a moment looking at this from the perspective of people who aren't American, who don't have the assumption that West = good, East = bad and the whole playing field looks very different indeed.
This crisis has hammered home that the American economy (perhaps the global economy) is an inch deep and a mile wide. It's time for the U.S. government to "pick some winners" and reorient incentives toward rebuilding our industrial base. We tipped the scales in WW II by converting our massive industrial complex to supplying war materiel on a scale that boggled the minds of the Axis powers. Now, we can't even supply enough surgical masks and ventilators to meet the challenge. I also agree that there should be a real reassessment of the value of workers who actually, y'know, work. Farm laborers, in home care givers, teachers, grocery store workers, fast food workers who were sneered at as "burger flippers" suddenly seem a lot more important than jocks who make millions because of their athletic ability. That's coming from someone who enjoys sports year round. In the U.S. we will have to re-evaluate our bizarre medical system that makes health insurance dependant on employment. Going to a system similar to Canada's would save G-d knows how much money. Not only that, it would free up resources corporations currently have to pour into human exploitation departments. Of course the insurance industry and other middle "men" getting rich off the current system, legally or illegally (fuck you Rick Scott) will fight tooth and nail, while weeping and wailing and wringing their hands over "socialism!" In short, the strip mining mentality that took over the American economy led us to build economic prosperity on a foundation of sand.
No-one I know of says west=good, east=bad. What they do say is democracy=good, authoritarianism=bad. You can't realistically argue that China is not grossly, horrifically authoritarian. And the US catches heat simply because we've been the preeminent world power since the end of WWII, underwriting and establishing much of the current international order. The guy giving the direction is always going to be the one people whine about.
Yes, yes, we all know you're one of the blame America first crowds who'd rather praise Hitler because he was a vegetarian than acknowledge any good that the US has done over the decades. Give me a break.
