The world post Covid-19: what might we expect?

I think a lot of the difficulty we have understanding where the money comes from is caused by the false analogy UK Tories and other conservatives try to draw between national and household finances (‘handbag economics’).
This analogy is patently false if you think about it for 2 minutes, because:

  • when a household spends money that money passes out of the household - but when a nation (with its own currency) ‘spends’ money it just gets re-circulated within the nation (unless/until it gets converted into another currency); and
  • households can’t create money out of nothing - but banks, including central or state-owned banks can.

So the short answer to the question of where money comes from is that banks just create it out of nothing (but this is not the same question as where does real ‘value’ comes from - if we think of value not as money but as comfort, health, etc - real value like this is created by nature but mainly by labour).

The Spanish film is used to explain how ‘printing money’ - ‘quantitaive easing’, etc, can reduce debt and get an economy moving again without any necessary ill effects - which brings us back to the post-Covid-19 subject.
It used to be thought that printing money would lead to inflation, as in Weimar Germany, but it’s now recognised that the real cause of this was not the printing of money as such, but the fact that much of it was indeed getting converted into foreign currency to pay war reparations.
There’s a more technical explanation of this here:


So the real warning of Weimar for us now is precisely the opposite of the old conservative interpretation: it is that austerity enables fascism.

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I read that and as many of the comments as I could before my head started to hurt.

Keynes was a member of the great and good at the Peace Conference of 1919. He was emphatic, at the time, that the result had guaranteed WW2. I do recommend his book, 'The Economic Cost of The Peace".

Harold Nicholson’s diary of the conference is also a rivetting read.

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Don’t give up your day job. You’re not that funny!

Maybe Nigel was being sardonic, but there is a lugubrious truth in what he said. People over 70 are unlikely to have a long term stake in the future, although they may have hopes for younger people who will inherit it.

Another point is that, whatever future people may contemplate, the reality of the 2030s, 2040s and subsequent decades will be fashioned by those who are now still young, children, perhaps, or teenagers, or young parents.

They may want a very different future, not one dominated by unbridled consumption and the despoliation of the natural environment. My own children, all in their 40s, have rejected the consumerism we, their parents, were in thrall to, and the individualism that has broken the back of society as it might be, a place of mutualism, cooperation, friendliness and solidarity.

I am in my early 80s and I dislike the shattered, alienating, contaminated and suspicious world we have made for our young ones. My wish is that they find the spiritual, mental and political means to remake it in their own way. I just hope they will forgive our folly.

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How about downloading two copies, each with a different part filled in?

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Good idea, Teapot. I tend to overcomplicate matters at times where bureaucracy is concerned. :thinking::roll_eyes:

Always trust a Teapot🤗

Here’s a very non-rosy view from Gail Tverberg of what might come to pass. She is a researcher on the way energy limits and the economy are really interconnected, and what this means for our future. She has a background as a casualty actuary, working in insurance forecasting :

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Presumably, we are regarded as “past it”. Well, it won’t be our world in any case. pity they didn’t apply the over 7 rule to the Brexit referendum!

I was over 70 and violently anti-Brexit.
Shame they didn’t apply a simple intelligence test.
This man is a known liar, do you continue to believe him?

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Me too Jane. I never believed in Liar Johnson and his vile crew of self-serving nobodies. An IQ test before you can vote? Well, why not? Unfortunately, many of the older people who voted to leave are ostensibly intelligent!

This applies to all the 600 odd incompetent nobodies in the houses of parliament. Unfortunately we are stuck with them for the next 5 years and probably longer.

I have an inkling that Media commentators are giving more emphasis in past weeks to what sort of a society we shall reconstruct ‘after the crisis has passed’, and sometimes pondering who will be central to any decision over whether we go for a twangy bounce-back to what life was before Covid 19, or opt for a new age dawning, birds chorus sing afresh and more sweetly, no thunder of traffic, no take-away detritus littering the public spaces…

When can we expect the meejah to start trumpeting the gaudy blessings of our squalid past, and slandering those who want to build a New Jerusalem as “Alice in Wonderland” lefty-loony snowflakes, saboteurs and traitors?

About ten days, I reckon. Keep a look out. :eyes::hugs:

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That doesn’t need a funny smiley because it’s NOT funny, sadly it’s true.

That doesn’t need a funny smiley because it’s NOT funny, sadly it’s true.

I think the heart of the matter is that there isn’t going to be a ‘Post Covid-19’ world.
No amount of lockdown is going to eradicate the virus. The lockdown is simply a means of slowing infection rates to a level that the health services can cope with.
Sooner or later, one way or another, we are all going to be exposed to the virus. Hopefully, as individuals, we will be able to defer that exposure until after we have received a vaccine, but if not, then we will just have to take our chance with the mild illness or fatal affliction lottery.

Even with a vaccination there is never a 100% guarantee of effectiveness, so we are all going to have to make some difficult personal decisions about the level of risk we are prepared to take.
Will we feel it’s worth the risk to go to the cinema or a restaurant, or to travel by train, plane, or ferry ?
No doubt those with the famous ‘previous underlying health conditions’ will probably decide to shield themselves to a greater degree and for longer.
Only the passage of time will change our perception of the risk level, but that nasty little virus is still going to be there waiting for the unwary.
No, in my view there simply isn’t going to be a future that doesn’t have Covid-19 in it somewhere.

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A very perceptive point, which will no doubt give valuable ‘steer’ to any future comments on the topic. But I’ll keep the heading for now, unless and until you can suggest how to change it for the better. :hugs:

Hi all, I have to agree with Robert that there will only be a post -Covid19 world with an effective vaccine. I believe that the common cold is a similar virus and we haven’t found a vaccine for that yet so let’s hope the scientists are able to work it out for Covid19.
Stay safe
Izzy x

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Thanks @Geof_Cox for posting this article. I valued it enough to take out a monthly sub to the Guardian after dithering for a year! :thinking:

I think this is great news, an unexpected and very welcome development. Looks like ‘local authorities’ are acting on their mandates to take over the tiller and clap the pirates in Westminster (or some of the scurviest crew) if not in irons, at least in rubber gloves peel potatoes for their meal of humble pie, while honest seafarers take over the ship and take a new direction.

I watched Andy Burnham on TV recently and he spoke like a politician should, not in slogans of with a view to a sound-bite, but as a leader with real vision: a view of how that could match popular and attainable aspirations, shared by people everywhere. A refreshing change.

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This also looks like an important study - it compared green stimulus projects with stimulus measures taken after the 2008 global financial crisis, and found green projects create more jobs, deliver higher short-term returns per £ spent by the government, and lead to increased long-term cost savings.