Why do we forget the past and then be condemned to repeat it?
Have you read that we have a similar number of people unemployed that we had before the great depression? How could a hundred years of progress get us into this situation?
It is clear. Economic policies did not strengthen the average worker but made them weak. How could people have stable financial situations when health care has increasingly been a reason people file for bankruptcy? How can the average worker survive when wages have been flat for decades, and even people with degrees have low incomes? Why do we think that US business is strong when it only takes an act of nature and of human stupidity to bring the entire system down?
A resilient economy spends money on protecting its citizens from pandemics or other known natural disasters. There is a reason there was an office for this. Short-term thinking always gets us in trouble, but the US is so stupid that it can’t learn from its mistakes.
This isn’t our first round with infectious disease. We know the Spanish flu, polio, and others. The world used to die due to infectious diseases and we learned how to handle it. So why did this cause such a problem? It caused a problem because people did not take it seriously, and there was a lack of strong response when it was early and needed a strong response.
I am not here to vilify or point fingers at anyone. There is plenty of blame to go around. Everyone is guilty. China, WHO, and individual governments. A public that elected and accepted stupidity is just as much at fault. Who in their right mind would fire people who protect us from infectious diseases? We need to fire people who make bad decisions. We don’t however because the US loves to make the worst decision possible.
Are we so stupid that we forget all that history has taught us? Do we forget that our decisions have consequences? We have no one to blame for this but ourselves.