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Permalink Reply by William F Rushby on 10th mo. 16, 2020 at 8:30pm

Fareed: The Pandemic Should Be a Great Equalizer. It Isn’t.

“Pandemics should be the great equalizer,” Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column. “They affect everyone, rich and poor, Black and White, urban and rural.” But instead, Covid-19 “is ushering in the greatest rise in economic inequality in decades, both globally and in the United States.”

The World Bank estimates 100 million people will fall back into extreme poverty worldwide. In the US, between 6 and 8 million have been pushed into poverty, by one estimate—and while the top 25% of earners has largely recovered, the bottom 25% “has cratered.” Still, Congress can’t agree on another economic relief package.

“I cannot help but wonder whether the relative normalcy of life for elites has prevented us from understanding the true severity of the problem,” Fareed writes. “For those of us using Zoom, things have been a bit disruptive and strange. But for tens of millions of people in the United States—and hundreds of millions around the world—this is the Great Depression. Can we please help them?”

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Permalink Reply by Rainer Möller on 10th mo. 19, 2020 at 7:27am

Following this review Macaes' seems to say that before our times, when "Liberalism" reigned, all people were of the same opinion. Is that so? I would rather say that so-called "public opinion" was much more homogenous but people's opinions were as divided as ever.

With other words, there was a liberal "hegemony" - not a normal state of affairs in a democracy.

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