1/7 - “#COVID19 has accelerated the world into the future. Here are five powerful forces that were at work before #COVID19, that intensified during the pandemic and will still affect the world in 2025, and far beyond.” ft.com/content/dd3593…
2/7- “First, technology. The march of computing and communications technology continues to reshape lives and the economy. Now, broadband communications, together with Zoom and similar videoconferencing software, has made it possible for a huge number of people to work from home.”
3/7 - “Second, inequality. Many higher-paid office workers have been able to work from home,while most others could not. In western countries,many of those most adversely affected are also members of ethnic minorities. Meanwhile,many of the those already powerful have prospered.”
4/7 - “Third, indebtedness. Aggregate indebtedness has grown almost everywhere over the past four decades.Whenever crises have interrupted the private sector’s ability to borrow,gov have taken up the slack.This happened after the global financial crisis and again during Covid19.”
5/7 - “Fourth, deglobalisation. The plausible future is not that international exchange is going to die. But it is likely to become more regional and more virtual. A marked result has been a desire to shift supply chains back home, or at least out of China.”
6/7 - “Finally, political tensions. One dimension has been a decline in the credibility of liberal democracy,the rise of demagogic authoritarianism in many countries and the rising power of China’s bureaucratic despotism.Another is the rise of populism in core western countries.”
7/7 -“Yet perhaps the biggest challenge will demand a global co-operation that will not exist. Sustaining a dynamic world economy,preserving peace and managing the global commons were going to be hard.But an era of populism/great power conflict will make this far more difficult.”
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