The turning world has got faster as a result of the pandemic. One thousand and one suggestions have been offered as to what is coming next. The vast majority, at least in the West, have been accelerations of previously considered developments. For example, shops will have to be quirky and city centres generally full of costly, fashionable leisure. More significantly (and much less exposed) are the decisions that have already deciding the future for us. The Bloomberg Business Week proclaims that, 'California's vote to classify Uber and Lyft drivers as contractors has emboldened other employers to eliminate salaried positions-and has become a cornerstone of bigger plans to "Uberize" the US workforce.' Perhaps this is what the new 'futurists' mean by robotic production?
Most of these visions of the post Covid future are the normal clap-trap already in the here and now; or a view entirely based on a one-sided perspective that finds a point already made and elaborates it. But clear futures, which are mainly social and political contests yet to be fought, are now better understood, despite the fascinating, speculative, mist and mirrors about shops and working at home.
For instance, youth unemployment in the West has shot up during Covid. The House of Commons Library (26 January 2021) tells us that nearly 6 million of 16-24 young people are now unemployed. That does not include Fairloughed youth, who lose their Government's help, along with the older adults, in April. Nearly 10 million of those.
The West have appalling histories regarding youth employment. Spain's youth now has a 40.2% unemployment figure. France, 21.2%. The US 19%. (The Guardian.) Gutram Wolff, Director of the think tank Bruegal, has studied the trends. In 2008 the US youth were only 10% unemployed. The EU on average moved on from 16% of youth unemployment to 26% now. This is a growing and speeding-up disaster. The UK cost of youth unemployment before Covid (see 'Youth Employment UK') is costed as £28 Billion. Youth unemployment in the UK is estimated by the New Statesman to be the highest since the last 40 years.
Young people in the UK were made redundant at a speed of five times faster that last year.
Just this one thing tells us what is likely to emerge in the West. The future for young people, Continental wide, is getting worse, and more quickly, and much more obvious to see.
Another major 'future' that Covid enhances; fullfact.org points out that average wages fell and are lower now than 10 years ago. (Interestingly, London and the South East suffered the steepest falls but starting from a higher position in the country.) Average earners in London dropped from £700 a week in 2009 to £655 a week now. Northern Ireland fell from £522 a week to £504. Public sector workers and men in Britain felt the worst decline - and the real role of 'self employment', the great boon offered by Thatcher, exposed its purpose, in that the self employed dropped their incomes from an average of £21,000 down to £15,000 in their last 10 year period of 'freedom'.
What does this second fact suggest for the Covid future, at least from the West?
The UK is typical here and leads a growing trend in the West in relation to types of work. Since the end of the 1980s the UK has led a process of shifting production and productivity and investment away from traditional work. Today, small businesses run by the self-employed, represent 93% of the UK's six million businesses. These businesses employ 13.3 million people, and provided a turn-over of £1.6 trillion in 2020 (The Independent.) Meanwhile the immense assets in private housing have, up to now, built the UK's wealth. The world's potential productive investment is in the hands of global communication corporations, China's industry and secret castles of wealth in borrowed nation's banks and tax-havens.
The implications could not be clearer - and we are already being prepared politically across the West. In the UK, small businesses are being destroyed. The middle classes in the big cities are fearful that their housing assets will start to decline and the self-employed are already against the wall. The Thatcher goal of winning the blue collar workers through housing is well over. We already see how the great corporations of the West are willing and organised to prevent any sort of wealth distribution. This, directly, demands a much more ferocious regime to deal with labour. A second wave of capitalism (see California) is emerging. And this, in turn, will require our leaders to carry out some serious adaptions of what remains of any democratic politics. To whit, remove virtually any remaining parts of genuine democratic decisions.
If social democracy had any chance today of shifting wealth towards support for unions, the extension of public ownership and social welfare - let alone the use of expensive measures to reduce climate change - it would need to completely reorganise democratic politics and economics. It would need to prepare for the battle of a life-time. In 2021 ruling classes in the West cannot offer reform, even if they wanted to.
But what is stoking up, particularly in the West, is an immense population that is unable to maintain security, improve their lives or even promise their children that they will do better. We have see the first wave of anger, fury and direct action, from US women, then for an expanded black rebellion again slavery and the police, then from 74 million voters who backed Trump out of poisonous despair. That 74 million was brought together by Trump because he understood that today's capitalism has to divide, to focus on others and not the system. However, the argument post Covid has barely begun. The next stage is to understand that we need a new society, a different type of civilisation, and a new economics and politics to start the move on.
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