Can We Tough It Out Until 2022? And, If We Do, What's Next?

It could be two more years before the Covid-19 pandemic is reined in.  That's the latest from the World Health Organization. It probably comes down to the fact that, while mild in lethality rates compared to something like Ebola (which, by the way, is staging a comeback), Covid-19 is really transmissible, especially when people ignore the modest precautions - masks, social distancing and loads of handwashing throughout the day and we've got a load of those types in our midst.

Two more years. Maybe less if Big Pharma can develop effective vaccines in the coming months and flood the markets with enough doses to make a difference.  We're told there are several drugs under development but you know, don't count your chickens...

So far the focus of our governments has been very near-sighted. In an effort to avert serious economic collapse governments have doled out scads of money to keep people afloat. What's unclear is how they can keep that up in the longer run if no Covid magic wand appears?

Where does the tax base come from if people are skint and scrambling for work in a troubled economy rigged to serve the few, not the many? There are pockets of wealth as Krugman pointed out in his column yesterday. We could eat the rich although I'd rather think of them as the "fatted lamb." If you get all wobbly at the idea of confiscatory taxes - wealth taxes, luxury taxes, that sort of thing - just tell yourself that even Theodore Roosevelt would have approved.

"One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows." 

We also have to consider the health of the government treasury. With climate change now bearing down on us this is no time for a government down to its last dime. The federal government's record on mitigation, i.e. cutting greenhouse gas emissions/decarbonizing the economy, has been lousy. At least it can focus on adaptation, especially bolstering the essential infrastructure we all rely upon. That, obviously, ain't cheap.

It's said that drastic times require drastic measures. It may not feel like it, not yet, but these are drastic times. Planet Earth, nature, is becoming a much more dangerous and unforgiving host to mankind. A civilization carrying a Herculean debt load on its shoulders has a real problem if we're to respond to both man-made and natural imperatives. Some solution must be reached to forestall a collapse of the global order. Debt and wealth. Wealth and debt. There are two things that are careening out of balance. Two things to focus on. Getting rid of the neoliberal order might be a good start.