Thread by @danielgoyal

I hear this question often: why didn’t all countries just lockdown for a month and extinguish COVID-19?
The principle is sound - a global response. Our leaders didn't try, it seems, due to the fear of economic instability.
Is it time then, for a new economic model?
1/6

Essential services adapted. Food networks were secured. People worked - often successfully - from home. Healthcare services utilised emerging technologies to maintain care. But, apart from printing more money, where were the intelligent economic solutions?
2/6

And it is not just about the Fat Cats needing the workers to get back to making them rich. Billions rely on daily earnings to survive. The rickshaw driver in India can’t afford the month off, nor can the piecemeal factory worker in England.
3/6

There remains many modern threats: a breakthrough strain of Covid-19 or an entirely new pathogen; the calamities in store as we move too slowly to address Climate Change.
The fragility of the economic rules we impose seem unlikely to fair any better than they have so far.
4/6

Yet it remains a human construct, under conscious control. Surely, there is an economist somewhere who can design an economic system that:
1. Provides security.
2. Can weather periods of low productivity.
3. Permits hard-work to lead to greater opportunities.

In the last 100 yrs my profession has discovered insulin, penicillin, aspirin, artemisinin, vaccines, chemotherapy, cardiac angiograms, MRI’s…
To the economists in the room…what innovation has your profession made?
End.