What will be obvious looking back in six months time?

Yesterday I was on a monthly session with a community where a question posed was:

“What will be obvious looking back in six months time?”

It felt like an interesting question in itself, and I also felt that it had the potential to inform how we act now and moving forwards based on what we can consider will be obvious from that forward viewpoint.

For example, today let me note one thought and what it could in form.

I feel that in six months we will be in a really severe recession, with many, many people radically struggling with the most basic of needs such as food and shelter.

As we sit here in December 2020 I don’t hear governments in the Western World talking about this as their single track focus is on the pandemic. If they do talk about it, they are mostly talking about how they will repay the debt they are raising.

However, if we were to recognise the obvious, that by mid-2021 we will be in a terrible recession that will hit those with the least the hardest, we (and those who lead our governments) would raise absolutely massive debt (which is, effectively, “free” when they can raise permanent bonds and pay interest only at ~0.5% annually).

They would then use that debt to not only address public health on a physical level but also mental health by supporting all people to stay in their homes, to have meals to eat, to put clothes on their back. Oh, and not to have to beg to get these benefits of living in a wealthy country.

If we recognised what will be obvious in six months time, one solution would be an emergency universal basic income to support the “have nots” to have a dignified life in 2021, one that allows them not to spend so much of their waking hours worrying about basic needs.

I also single out my home country of the Cayman Islands, which has addressed Covid masterfully, but their “Covid controlled” bubble now means many Caymanians are out of work as their sector (tourism) is shut down. Many of those people are lower earners and Cayman holds rigidly to having no direct taxation, so there is no simply method of income and asset redistribution. So, as many of my friends in Cayman post pictures on their boats and canalfront homes, they are also donating to food kitchens. What if, instead, they created a movement to propose introducing income tax? Sorry, I digress, but I am passionate about addressing inequality.