Thanks for sharing this, Azeem. Couldn't agree more with the fourth infrastructure investment. As an immigrant to the US (from the Indian sub-continent, where my parents and in laws still reside), I am watching the role of different levels and types of social and institutional capital in country-level responses to Covid-19--live, everyday. American's are still 'bowling alone' I guess.
Thanks. Two thoughts: the recovery is most likely to look like a "U" with a bumpy, wider bottom (line) and I appreciate the 4 infrastructures perspective
The focus of Dr. Doom is economic; and I appreciate reading his thoughts. I wonder also about the political changes that will occur that challenge the structures currently supporting American-style capitalism. Will healthcare be restructured for access and delivery of basic care. Perhaps surveillance of disease Will become a critical national priority.
I wonder about the politics too. Will this stoke nationalist sentiment of wanting to control borders more or will it empower collaborative problem solving of global challenges? Will the impression that China's authoritarian response led to a fast response empower ever more authoritarian leadership in the West? Now that govt see how far they can push society, will they continue doing it and will it be in favour of responding to challenges like climate change?
This was good. I actually didn't find it all that pessimistic. Sounded more like the real need to guide society and governments away from financially extractive economies, and more towards public good.
The comment system keeps deleteing my input as I type. So forewarning, this is going to seem bleak.
The Salient facts as I see them are the USA's weponisation of a form of "Winner Takes All"/Disaster Capitalism. One in which the system of Capitalism itself functions best when the people who have no input, (are a net drain) to the system, don't exist.
Another is the statistic, (from the NYT) that only 12% of the US population are metabolically healthy. While fully 80% of the US population have some combination of cardiovascular dysfunction and insulin insensitivity/diabetes. Both of which the virus is known to exacerbate. This being the likely reason for the sobering estimate from Trump of a potential 100-240K death toll.
Globally so far small kids have been spared the worst of the disease due to a less well developed immune system. Given that many kids in the US are are also metabolically unhealthy, you do have to wonder if the US, isn't the place where kids are going to begin to die. You have only to look at the exponential curve the line the US is tracking infection wise to see this. The same curve the UK is tracking. Few people care about the fate of a small island in the North Atlantic. A caveat that does not apply to the USA.
In many places, where the elderly have assets, houses, pensions, etc. This could see a generational wealth effect cascade or trickle down. In the USA where many people are in debt and live hand to mouth. The likelihood is that those debts will be suddenly materialised by defaults once the humans they are attached to die. You do have to wonder what the people who hold those debts will do. After all the US is a country where bond holders have pursued debtor nations through the courts to recover cash. I wonder if that won't happen here, given the impending scale of the defaults.
I say all this as a prelude to the hope that the USA will magically begin to invest in people, infrastructure and science, etc. Something I see as unlikely. My reason for saying this are the works of the American economist and diplomat J.K Galbraith. Specifically "the New Industrial State" and "The Economics of Innocent Fraud" That last of which he wrote on his death bed. It's an cogent excoriation of the financialisation of American life.
One particularly sad point for me was a recent Reddit thread, you have three wishes, on personal, one global, one irrelevant, (or something like that) most of the comments chose money as the personal wish. To me that's dark. You can wish for anything and you wish for money? When did dreams get so small?
I'm not trying to depress people here, Nouriel is already spamming us with his opinions via another FT hosted forum, so I'm familiar with his output. I do tend to agree with him in general, much as Azeem does. However being an old fashioned Keynesian, I severely doubt that any Roosveltian figure is going to rise phoenix like, from the ashes. The good technocrat that Keynes says is necessary for times like these. I suspect that that would sound to much like central planning and outright communism to much of the Red state mentality.
A more urgent question for the enlightened West is what they do with the unreliable state actor the USA has become. How do they take a stand against a belligerent asymmetric threat like Russia. With on-shoring, who will champion democracy abroad? What becomes of the "exorbitant privilege" that is the US Dollar, and the countries that use it as a dual currency. These are not questions that need to be answered now, but they do need to planned for by the countries that formerly relied on the USA. At least in my opinion.
Is part of the issue with strategy (or lack of) in the U.S and the U.K the age of the leaders and their voters. Speaking from the U.K it very much feels like we are living an ideal of the baby boomer generation with Brexit and much of government policy around it. This is a generation who, I feel, are looking backwards and not towards the future. Many will not have an inkling of the idea of the 'exponential age'.
Will the west even have the capacity to start to be competitive in this new world until the younger generations become the biggest groups of voters (I recall in interesteing graphic from The Economist whcih was in one of the newsletters recently whcih covered the change of generations of voters).
I'm not in a position to predict the shape of this contraction, but Roubini's four types of infrastructure make sense in any case. Thank you
Right? They would have made sense before the pandemic.
So much did...
Thanks for sharing this, Azeem. Couldn't agree more with the fourth infrastructure investment. As an immigrant to the US (from the Indian sub-continent, where my parents and in laws still reside), I am watching the role of different levels and types of social and institutional capital in country-level responses to Covid-19--live, everyday. American's are still 'bowling alone' I guess.
Thanks. Two thoughts: the recovery is most likely to look like a "U" with a bumpy, wider bottom (line) and I appreciate the 4 infrastructures perspective
I suppose it depends how wide that bottom bump is!
Sure... bumpy as in echo peaks with peakedness, in part, determined by the width
The focus of Dr. Doom is economic; and I appreciate reading his thoughts. I wonder also about the political changes that will occur that challenge the structures currently supporting American-style capitalism. Will healthcare be restructured for access and delivery of basic care. Perhaps surveillance of disease Will become a critical national priority.
I wonder about the politics too. Will this stoke nationalist sentiment of wanting to control borders more or will it empower collaborative problem solving of global challenges? Will the impression that China's authoritarian response led to a fast response empower ever more authoritarian leadership in the West? Now that govt see how far they can push society, will they continue doing it and will it be in favour of responding to challenges like climate change?
This was good. I actually didn't find it all that pessimistic. Sounded more like the real need to guide society and governments away from financially extractive economies, and more towards public good.
The comment system keeps deleteing my input as I type. So forewarning, this is going to seem bleak.
The Salient facts as I see them are the USA's weponisation of a form of "Winner Takes All"/Disaster Capitalism. One in which the system of Capitalism itself functions best when the people who have no input, (are a net drain) to the system, don't exist.
Another is the statistic, (from the NYT) that only 12% of the US population are metabolically healthy. While fully 80% of the US population have some combination of cardiovascular dysfunction and insulin insensitivity/diabetes. Both of which the virus is known to exacerbate. This being the likely reason for the sobering estimate from Trump of a potential 100-240K death toll.
Globally so far small kids have been spared the worst of the disease due to a less well developed immune system. Given that many kids in the US are are also metabolically unhealthy, you do have to wonder if the US, isn't the place where kids are going to begin to die. You have only to look at the exponential curve the line the US is tracking infection wise to see this. The same curve the UK is tracking. Few people care about the fate of a small island in the North Atlantic. A caveat that does not apply to the USA.
In many places, where the elderly have assets, houses, pensions, etc. This could see a generational wealth effect cascade or trickle down. In the USA where many people are in debt and live hand to mouth. The likelihood is that those debts will be suddenly materialised by defaults once the humans they are attached to die. You do have to wonder what the people who hold those debts will do. After all the US is a country where bond holders have pursued debtor nations through the courts to recover cash. I wonder if that won't happen here, given the impending scale of the defaults.
I say all this as a prelude to the hope that the USA will magically begin to invest in people, infrastructure and science, etc. Something I see as unlikely. My reason for saying this are the works of the American economist and diplomat J.K Galbraith. Specifically "the New Industrial State" and "The Economics of Innocent Fraud" That last of which he wrote on his death bed. It's an cogent excoriation of the financialisation of American life.
One particularly sad point for me was a recent Reddit thread, you have three wishes, on personal, one global, one irrelevant, (or something like that) most of the comments chose money as the personal wish. To me that's dark. You can wish for anything and you wish for money? When did dreams get so small?
I'm not trying to depress people here, Nouriel is already spamming us with his opinions via another FT hosted forum, so I'm familiar with his output. I do tend to agree with him in general, much as Azeem does. However being an old fashioned Keynesian, I severely doubt that any Roosveltian figure is going to rise phoenix like, from the ashes. The good technocrat that Keynes says is necessary for times like these. I suspect that that would sound to much like central planning and outright communism to much of the Red state mentality.
A more urgent question for the enlightened West is what they do with the unreliable state actor the USA has become. How do they take a stand against a belligerent asymmetric threat like Russia. With on-shoring, who will champion democracy abroad? What becomes of the "exorbitant privilege" that is the US Dollar, and the countries that use it as a dual currency. These are not questions that need to be answered now, but they do need to planned for by the countries that formerly relied on the USA. At least in my opinion.
Is part of the issue with strategy (or lack of) in the U.S and the U.K the age of the leaders and their voters. Speaking from the U.K it very much feels like we are living an ideal of the baby boomer generation with Brexit and much of government policy around it. This is a generation who, I feel, are looking backwards and not towards the future. Many will not have an inkling of the idea of the 'exponential age'.
Will the west even have the capacity to start to be competitive in this new world until the younger generations become the biggest groups of voters (I recall in interesteing graphic from The Economist whcih was in one of the newsletters recently whcih covered the change of generations of voters).
Hi, I'm not keen on ad hominem attacks so I've taken this comment down.