Having the underpinnings of our daily lives so radically altered is immensely unsettling. The things we have always taken for granted, be it a daily walk, a quick trip to the store, a handshake with a friend, a rubbing of the eye, all of these and many more now come with the whiff of lethality. The new normal is egregiously abnormal.
We are all in mourning for the routines that until now gave structure to our lives.
But I also know I am but one among many who look for the good that can ultimately emerge from this crisis. The radical, unprecedented and immensely uncomfortable shift in living we are all experiencing has given us the opportunity to reflect on our lives, our values, and our ultimate fate as a society and as a species.
What might have been important to us such a short time ago now seems far less pressing: social status, getting and spending, ideologies that impel us to snipe at our political opponents - none have the urgency they might have held but a few short weeks ago. As Ben Jonson so aptly put it,
"Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."
Assuming we are spared the noose, what is it we want the world to look like when Covid-19 abates?
The Star's Rick Salutin offers his thoughts. Succinctly, he asks a fundamental question:
"Does the economy exist to serve people or vice versa?"I will return to the above question in a moment, but Salutin goes on to talk about this remarkable sight:
If you choose option 1, you pursue it, closing the economy till the plague passes, or settles into normal patterns, like the flu, which can be handled in normal ways (vaccine, built-up immunity) instead of people bringing out their dead as they did of old.
Another angle: Choose the economy, and — consequently — people die, they’re gone forever. Choose people, and the economy doesn’t die. It gets mothballed, put into a coma, to be revived. People die. Economies, which aren’t alive, can be put on hold, then come “roaring back.”
Because the economy isn’t a living being, you can tuck it away awhile.
In that case, the economy gets subordinated to human well-being. Rent, mortgages, debt are forgiven or delayed though money must still be found for repairs etc. Only governments can finance these dislocations. Private businesses can’t because they’re under constraints like competition.
Where will government find the money? .... Governments always find the money when there’s a war to fight.
A remarkable thing about this debate, or nondebate since leaders have overwhelmingly opted for the people choice, is the range represented. Canadian right wing austerity buffs like Jason Kenney, François Legault and Doug Ford leapt in enthusiastically, alongside Justin Trudeau.So much for the ideological divide. It is clear that Canadian leaders are opting for the people. But what about each of us and the innate power we have but too frequently fail to recognize? So we return to the writer's question about where government will find the money.
In the short-term, it will obviously borrow it.
Later, opportunists will no doubt try to foist austerity upon us as the price for today's spending. If we let them get away with that, we will have learned nothing from our current circumstances. No, if the world is to have a real rebirth, real, adult and difficult choices have to be made, including serious discussion around that always fraught topic, taxation.
Simply put, when this is over, many of us will have to pay more taxes. There will need to be special levees to reduce the deficit and the debt, because the old saw about growing the economy to pay for programs will not work for a long, long time, if ever again. Now, I am hardly the only one who enjoys a comfortable retirement, and the thought of paying more bothers me not in the least. As well, the corporate tax rate, when things stabilize, will have to be raised. And if there was ever a time for a financial transaction tax, it is now.
The weeks ahead will continue to be a crucible. We have already begun to reappraise our values as we recognize the things that connect us all. We cannot help but grow in appreciation of the people we rely on, be it the grocery clerk, the garbage collector, the pharmacist, the doctors, nurses, the tireless journalists bring us the best information they can. Equally, our empathy cannot help but increase for the more vulnerable among us: the precariously employed, those living from paycheck to paycheck, renters facing eviction, the homeless, those who rely on foodbanks. Platitudinous thoughts and prayers will not cut it. Programs like a basic income will. And we all must be willing to pay for them.
Fate has delivered to us an unprecedented opportunity to change the world's trajectory. But time is short. When Covid-19 abates, will we emerge healed from our petty obsessions and become participants in creating a new world? Or will vital lessons be quickly forgotten and see us return to our old modes of thinking, modes that are directly responsible for the sad state we are in today?
Now is not the time for us to be anything other than apt students.
