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Dawn of the Age of Aquarius

December 17, 2020   ·   0 Comments

By Doug Skeates

A frequent topic of conversation pertains to ‘After Covert 19, what’s next?’ The question ignores the fact that change was in the wind long before the modern pandemic and recent events represent just one more step on the way. One major step in history was the societal shift in the 1960s following the second world war. The emphasis then was on a dominant state, a more or less equality in taxation and a strong social safety net. This changed to experiencing an age of rule by the free market. Government became a dirty word to be replaced more and more by privatization. The goal in society became limitation of public control, cutting social costs and other measures favouring the private sector. The end result, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, i.e. loss of the middle class.

Today’s power structure is based on wealth with the rich controlling many aspects of society. The Reagan / Thatcher era is the norm of society today, based on both industrial and governmental decision-making. What was once considered as radical became the regular. Corporations have grown financially, often exceeding the economies of many countries, a level of dominance, which tends to ignore any but the well off. At the grass roots level, foodbanks are a better indication of the state of society reflecting the high level of un- and under-employment.  

Things are changing with the current pandemic being symptomatic of what was becoming over the past few decades. A paragraph from The Correspondent, quoting The Financial Times (April 4, 2020), “Governments will have to accept their role in the economy. They must see public services as investments rather than liabilities and look for ways to make labour markets less insecure. Redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the elderly and wealthy in question. Policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes will have to be in the mix.” This is putting a human face on the capital system that society has promoted for the past half century where executive level salaries have climbed from 20 times the average earned by the ‘working class’ to many hundred times today.

Society has complained about their discomfort with the system. A common phrase, Occupy Wall St., was illustrated world-wide by literally millions taking to the street in almost every city. Organizers referred to the movement as an expression by the 99% opposing rule by the more powerful 1%. Unfortunately, the effort apparently did little to influence the world as the power structure continued to ignore the situation. Police enforced the laws (enacted by the elite!) and apparently nothing was done about it. Even more persuasive was the protest movement initiated by Sweden’s Greta Thunberg. Again millions globally took to the street to express their displeasure. Fortunately a great deal of activity to combat global warming has resulted as some countries have pledged to plant many more millions of trees and initiate other measures to achieve the goal of curtailing the rising level of atmospheric emissions.

A forward-thinking new level of economists led by Mariana Mazzucato is evolving a more people-oriented generation of capitalism which de-emphasizes just changing wealth distribution to concentration on wealth creation. The pandemic especially has shown that the really important work is caring for people, education, public transport and ensuring the availability of food and water. Local supply of goods and services are becoming much more norms of society, replacing big money in the form of centralized corporate dominance. Renewable energy sources for example are rapidly overtaking the world’s reliance on fossil fuels the major cause of climate change.

The basic attitude of economists, almost revolutionary, is emerging, with leaders like Mazzucato promoting a new form of capitalism. The present approach, a society where people are becoming redundant replaced by machines. It is annoying to answer the telephone to hear a recorded message instead of a person, or to go shopping and be expected to enter one’s purchases on a computer to be followed by payment with a credit card. Robots are replacing workers in many fields.  The current pandemic is marshalling in a new world where the radical views of recent decades are looking more realistic for the years ahead.

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