Everything new? How Covid-19 is changing our way of life

We are in the midst of a time of not knowing. Even the seemingly stable economies of Europe, North America and Asia have been thrown into a tailspin by the tiny virus. In emerging countries such as Brazil and India, the human and economic consequences are much more serious. It is impossible to predict the impact on individual economies. The economic upheavals in large parts of Africa are even more uncertain.

However, the pandemic has already brought one certain insight: the community of solidarity has once again become an essential foundation of our society. After all, lockdowns, social distancing rules and all the other imperatives of the moment only serve the individual to a limited extent. On the one hand, the aim is to protect particularly vulnerable risk groups from infection. On the other hand, the burden on the healthcare system should remain within reasonable limits. In Germany, both seem to have been achieved to some extent, as far as we can tell a few months after the outbreak of Covid-19.

Beyond these measures, it was surprising for many people to see which professional groups are keeping the business running during the crisis, i.e. are systemically relevant. The jobs of those people who take care of the garbage, sit at the supermarket checkout, drive buses, work in the medical sector and many others are no less important to our society than those of the bankers whose jobs were saved by the state after 2008 – perhaps even more so.

For me, both observations form a possible framework for our way of life in the time after Covid-19. The sustainable well-being of the community must once again become the basis for action in every area. Of course, this also applies to the economy. The extreme market liberalism that has dominated economic activity in recent years has replaced goals such as sustainability or solidarity with short-term profit maximization. This has made a few very rich, but driven many to the edge of existence. At the same time, the middle class has become noticeably thinner.

As a result, the basis for a new economic miracle, which many companies are hoping for after the crisis, has become noticeably smaller. It is therefore important to nourish this middle class again. Perhaps also by giving those newly discovered systemically relevant professions wages that reflect their importance in society.