The world has changed, Lori Fox writes. And we're not going back to the old one:
The world we knew is gone.
The life you thought you were going to have is gone.
The lives we all thought we were going to have are gone.
We're still trying to understand what has happened to us:
Since COVID-19 first emerged sometime toward the end of 2019, more than 741,000 people have died and 20 million have been infected, with 121,000 infections in Canada alone. With people locked into their homes, sick or afraid of getting sick, the economy came to a grinding halt, a shockwave of lost jobs and reduced or redistributed consumer spending. Canada lost around two million jobs in April, with the hardest hit – outside of people who were already un- or underemployed – being low-wage workers, of which women and younger people comprise a large portion, groups that were already at an economic disadvantage in the Before.
Those jobs aren’t just going to just magically reappear as we reopen; COVID-19 has reshaped consumer demand and will continue to do so into the future. Many small businesses – restaurants in particular – are permanently closed, and it will take time for something to replace them, if such a thing will even be possible in the near future.
Maybe that's not a bad thing. However, we need some perspective:
For the working class who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic, discussions around CERB – which some claim is a disincentive for people to return to work – and how some people, particularly millennials, spend that money, only serves to make the deep-seated class divide in this country more apparent. If $2,000 a month – about $12.50 an hour, or around $24,000 a year before taxes for a full-time worker – means that people are making more money than they were before, the problem is not CERB, but that workers are not fairly compensated for their labour with a living wage. Anyone who would weigh in critically on how that money is spent, moreover, should ask themselves if they believe that only the wealthy deserve financial autonomy, and the pleasure and dignity of human comforts, or if CERB is really just a subsidy for landlords.
The curtain has been pulled back on how our society operates:
The destabilizing effect of this pandemic has laid bare the economic inequality on which our society functions. Class disparity, the resistance to universal income, systemic racism, the militarization of the police and the rhetoric of the current political climate are not the result of the pandemic; they are the endgame of capitalism. We’ve merely paused the machine long enough to see them clearly.
So the question remains: What are we going to do about it?
Image: Pinterest
8 comments:
Here is a good complement to your post, Owen: https://www.thestar.com/business/2020/08/15/as-the-pandemic-continues-the-rich-are-getting-richer-than-ever-before-and-economists-are-getting-concerned.html
Thanks for the link, Lorne. The wealthy will always find a way to horde what they have. I was struck by this sentence: "In fact, since COVID-19 deep-sixed the economy, one of the unforeseen consequences has been to make the poor even poorer and the rich even richer — a reality that concerns many economists, especially as that could hamper our ability to recover from the recession."
Recovery is all about getting money into the hands of those who will spend it -- not about putting it into the hands of those who will put it in the bank.
What's happening because of the pandemic - the wealthy becoming wealthier, the poor becoming poorer - is not new: the Great Depression had the same effect. Will we see another Roosevelt, a healer, many of his kind, perhaps, who will be brave enough to work for economic justice? If it's been done successfully once, there's no obvious reason why it can't be done again.
CED
It can be done again, CED. The key factor is character. Heraclitus was right. Character is destiny.
"What are we going to do about it?" Judging by how we've dropped our guard this summer and the timidity of our political leadership that ought to have stepped in even at the expense of being seen by some as trampling on their right to be mask-free and congregating on beaches and bars, we're probably on our own.
The most vulnerable age group, our own, will probably spend most of the next 12 months in a repeat of the past six. Self-isolating, social distancing, handwashing like Lady Macbeth, masks and gloves - the whole drill. For many it's going to be hard, if not impossible, to maintain any semblance of normal family life as our children go back to work and our grandkids are consigned to those incubators also known as classrooms.
Around Thanksgiving it seems, according to various sources, most recently today's Guardian, we can expect not only a resurgence of Covid-19 but a seasonal flu that could be a real beaut. This is definitely not the year to get queasy about flu shots. My GP says we should get every vaccine on offer including flu, bacterial pneumonia, and shingles. These are all afflictions that could cause you to leave home for a stay in hospital, if there are still beds.
As for the rich getting richer, governments should revisit wartime measures to curb profiteering. After all, isn't it government's first duty to protect the wellbeing of the citizenry? Unfortunately many governments are ready to proclaim emergencies while struggling to maintain normalcy, business as usual. That's all the proof anyone needs to realize that governments today often compromise the public interest in order to serve the needs of special interests.
I realize I'm an accomplished crepe hanger but I really question our society's limits, our resilience. I'm most worried about what's going on in America given our long and porous common border. The next four to six months could see a permanent breakdown in American society, the culmination of a people deeply divided across numerous fault lines - racial, ethnic, economic and, yes, political. I worry that the right is united but the centre and left in America have little cohesion and could more easily be rolled up, disenfranchised.
We live in interesting times and the next six months may prove the most interesting we have ever experienced.
It's never been easy living next to the United States, Mound. John A. Macdonald understood that fact in spades. We may have arrived at another such moment.
It took centuries for the world to get to where it was into the 1970s. By the 1980s/90's it had shifted to a service industry with resturants, coffee bars, bars, etc. which became a constant in our lives For the past 30 years this provided low income jobs for a work force, which wasn't always young and unable to become part of the middle class.
What we have seen over the past 30 ears was a phenomena not seen previous. That life style is not coming back any tine soon even if COVID were to disappear tomorrow. People have also changed their life styles, more interested in keeping a roof over their heads.
When industry groups and such talk about re opening the economy they mean re opening the low income economy. Its not going to happen People just don't the money nor will they any time soon. We are better off to work towards a high value economy. Governments needs to put more money into higher education, value added industry, tech, medical research, etc.
A nation of bar and resturant workers is not going to work. A nation which doesn't have industries which produce things of value isn't going to go anywhere.
Point well taken, e.a.f. We need an economy that spreads wealth among people, not one that concentrates wealth in a few hands.
Post a Comment