Book Review: 'Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World,' by Fareed Zakaria - The New York ... - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...emic-world-fareed-zakaria.html
pandemic effects strategy government US dysfunction
shared by Javier E on 17 Oct 20
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“Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World” employs a wide lens, drawing on governance, economics and culture
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What insights does it offer during a catastrophe that evokes the Spanish flu after World War I, which claimed 50 million — some reckon 100 million — lives?
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What matters is not the ideological coloration of government or its size, but its quality, Zakaria says. He argues for “a competent, well-functioning, trusted state.”
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Zakaria lays out the road from the pandemic to the transcendence of America the Dysfunctional. The to-do list is long
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Upward mobility is down, inequality is up. The universities of the United States lead the global pack, but a B.A. at one of those top schools comes with a price tag upward of a quarter-million dollars. The country boasts the best medical establishment, but health care for the masses might just as well dwell on the moon.
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The world’s troubles are not just Made in U.S.A., Zakaria rightly notes. They are rooted in ultramodernity: globalization, automation, alienation, mass migration, the lure and decay of the world’s sprawling metropolises
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The gist of Zakaria’s program is revealed by a recent editorial in The Financial Times, which he quotes approvingly. That newspaper was once a cheerleader of global capitalism. Now it argues that “many rich societies” do not honor “a social contract that benefits everyone.
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So, the neoliberalism of decades past must yield to “radical reforms.” Governments “will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investments. … Redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the … wealthy in question.” Now is the time for “basic income and wealth taxes.”
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Both The Financial Times and Zakaria’s book urge a revolution already upon us, and probably represent today’s zeitgeist and reality.
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These days, Covid-19 is merely accelerating the mental turn engendered by the 2008 financial crisis. We are all social democrats now.
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Government in the West is back with industrial policy and trillions in cash. It is not a radical, but a consensual project
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Taxation, a tool of redistribution, will rise along with border walls. For the more perfect welfare state can flourish only in a well-fenced world that brakes the influx of competing people and products.