STICHWORTE: • • • • • • • • • •von

Die Pandemie än­dert die Gesell­schaft grund­legend

Schon mehrfach habe ich versucht, einen Blick auf die Zeit nach der Pandemie zu werfen:

The Economist fasst den Stand der Diskussion zusammen:

  • “The Cholera pandemic of the early 1830s hit France hard. (…) The end of the plague prompted an economic revival, with France following Britain into an industrial revolution. (…) The city’s poor, hit hardest by the disease, fulminated against the rich, who had fled to their country homes to avoid contagion. France saw political instability for years afterwards.” – bto: Heute haben wir zwar bessere staatliche Auffangnetze, aber das Klima ist schon vor Corona nicht optimal gewesen.
  • Today, even as covid-19 rages across poorer countries, the rich world is on the threshold of a post-pandemic boom. (…) Many forecasters reckon that America’s economy will grow by around 7% this year, roughly five percentage points faster than the pre-pandemic trend of just over 2%. (…) The Economist’s analysis of GDP data for the G7 economies back to 1820 suggests that such a synchronised acceleration relative to trend is rare. It has not happened since the post-war boom of the 1950s.” – bto: Es war ja ein ungewöhnlicher Schock, der so schon mit einem Krieg verglichen werden kann.
  • “The record suggests that, following periods of massive non-financial disruption such as wars and pandemics, GDP does tend to bounce back. But it offers three further lessons. First, while people are keen to get out and spend, uncertainty lingers for some time. Second, the pandemic encourages people and businesses to try new ways of doing things, upending the structure of the economy. Third, political upheaval often follows, with unpredictable economic consequences.” – bto: Letzteres wird derzeit versucht zu verhindern mit massiven Staatsausgaben. Die neuen Wege des Geschäftemachens sind absehbar.
  • “Spending rises, prompting employment to recover, but there is not much evidence of bacchanalian excess. The popular notion that people celebrated the end of the Black Death by ‘wild fornication’ and ‘hysterical gaiety’, as some historians suppose, is (probably) apocryphal. The 1920s were far from roaring, at least at first. On New Year’s Eve 1920, after the threat of Spanish flu had decisively passed, ‘Broadway and Times Square looked more like the old days’, according to one study, though America nonetheless felt like ‘a sick and tired nation’.” – bto: Ähnlich war es nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, wo die Amerikaner nur 20 Prozent ihrer Kriegs-Ersparnisse ausgaben. Das lag sicherlich auch daran, dass ihnen noch die große Depression in den Knochen steckte.
  • “Historians believe the Black Death made Europeans more adventurous. Piling on to a ship, and setting sail for new lands, seemed less risky when so many people were already dying at home. ‘Apollo’s Arrow’, a recent book by Nicholas Christakis of Yale University, shows that the Spanish flu pandemic gave way to ‘increased expressions of risk-taking’. Indeed a study for America’s National Bureau of Economic Research, published in 1948, found that the number of startups boomed from 1919. Today new business formation is once again surging across the rich world, as entrepreneurs seek to fill gaps in the market.” – bto: Das wäre auch erfreulich, vor allem in Deutschland.
  • “A paper by researchers at the IMF (…) finds that ‘pandemic events accelerate robot adoption, especially when the health impact is severe and is associated with a significant economic downturn.’ The 1920s were also an era of rapid automation in America, especially in telephone operation, one of the most common jobs for young American women in the early 1900s. Others have drawn a link between the Black Death and Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press. There is as yet little hard evidence of a surge in automation because of covid-19, though anecdotes abound of robots springing up.” – bto: Auch dies wäre eine sehr positive Entwicklung. Wir brauchen unbedingt mehr Automatisierung.
  • “When people have suffered in large numbers, attitudes may shift towards workers. That seems to be happening in this pandemic: policymakers across the world are relatively less interested in reducing public debt or warding off inflation than they are in getting unemployment down. A new paper from three academics at the London School of Economics also finds that covid-19 has made people across Europe more averse to inequality.” – bto: Auf diesem Gefühl basiert gerade in Deutschland viel Politik. Dabei ist es sicherlich nicht das vordringlichste Problem des Landes.
  • “Recent research from the IMF considers the effect of five pandemics, including Ebola, SARS and Zika, in 133 countries since 2001. It finds that they led to a significant increase in social unrest. (…) Social unrest seems to peak two years after the pandemic ends.” – bto: Dieses Mal trifft uns die Pandemie ohnehin schon angeschlagen. Das sollten wir nicht vergessen. Denn es macht alles schwerer.

→ economist.com: „What history tells you about post-pandemic booms“, 25. April 2021