It's not that the Covid-19 pandemic is as cataclysmic as the Black Death or even the Spanish Flu of 1918. There's a good chance it won't be - BUT...
The very best minds tell us that Covid-19 is just a dress rehearsal, a glimpse into a future of pandemics and other catastrophes such as climate breakdown that will send us reeling. We're told there are other viral pandemics already in the barrel, locked and loaded. Some may be more or less transmissible that this coronavirus. Some may be more or less lethal than this coronavirus. Climate breakdown - that will come at us from a variety of directions. Sort of like being blindfolded in a boxing ring. It will vary from region to region. It will vary by latitude, population vulnerability, resource shortages and exhaustion, a host of parameters.
We have let a lot of opportunities slip through our fingers over the past 40 years. We didn't think things through. Our leaders didn't either. They've actually gone a little mad, nuts. What else do you call someone in a position of power who still clings to the dangerous delusion of perpetual exponential growth? Justin Trudeau is an adherent. That's his orthodoxy. The Conservatives are even worse. The NDP are in that boat. (if you don't think they're total dunderheads, check this out)
Are these the people you want charting your kids' future? Is their 'vision' worth following? What about your vision? Here's an animation from BBC to get you thinking about what kind of a society we'll need going ahead. Start thinking because - "they're" not. It might be time to imagine a "reset."
One thing that would be a lifesaver for the world and environment health, education, and pensions and equality would be to tax the multi millionaires and billionaires 98.%. A law whereby no one cannot hide their money lest they forfeited three quarters of what is invested overseas to be used for affordable housing for everyone. If people want to begin companies, they have to work at doing so without welfare from working and middle class taxes. Every person or family can only use a certain portion of the worlds resources in their lifetime and everything must be reused or made into some useful...no throwing away anything at all as South Korea is presently doing. This is but a small contribution as to what ought to take place along with doing away with neoliberalism and bring back democracy. We need to be this yesterday. Anyong
ReplyDeleteThere are many who think along the same lines as you, Anyong. Most realize this idea of a confiscatory wealth tax would be hard to implement given the structures that exist for moving money around and hiding it today.
ReplyDeleteThe world richest have become above government and the law
ReplyDeleteof the land.
Even those who proclaim to riches( Trump) are seemingly unaccountable.
Karl Marx correctly opined that capitalism would destroy itself.
The trouble is that capitalism is destroying the life sustaining ecosystem.
My comment is not an endorsement of Communism.
TB
ReplyDeleteA couple of years ago, TB, I watched an interview with economist Nouriel Roubini on the Wall Street Journal website. Roubini came right out and said that Marx got it mostly right.
Just one example of what I speak.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-tough-against-microsoft-microsoft-got-tougher
TB
1:53. The structures then need chancing don’t they. That is what I mean. Anyong
ReplyDelete