They ask us to get used to a “new normal”. In my mind, new and normal never married. What is new – good or bad – is hardly normal. Maybe it was better to ask us to get used to living in abnormality. Better and more real.
This comes with regard to some ideas contained in the yearbook of The Economist, which looks at the world in 2021. And it assumes that it is difficult to predict the unpredictable.
Unpredictable because of the Pandemic, the Economic Crisis and the complicated geopolitics, which in recent times has been dictated by the turbulence in the relationship between the United States and China. These are all factors of great uncertainty.
The cover is a “Slot Machine”. The world is at stake.
The next one will be the year when the vaccine distribution begins, but it will not be the year when it becomes universal, when it reaches everyone. One year is not enough …
The alliances will tend to strengthen with the presidential change in the United States. Multilateralism may be back
There will be deniers and those who really want it, but are still waiting for the vaccine.
This will have difficult-to-measure economic implications, but it should not differ too much from economic predictions for world growth in 2021. They are negative.
How negative is – not necessarily just for the economy – the maintenance of tension between the United States and China. Countries that seem committed to making a new “Treaty of Tordesillas”, disputing the world.
The alliances will tend to strengthen with the presidential change in the United States. Multilateralism may be back … we have also failed to predict the consequences of this in the current circumstances.
The year 2020, at least in Portugal, served to get rid of some “dictatorships”. The “dictatorship” of the deficit, rating agencies, market power … And these are opportunities for progress. These are opportunities to start discussing the essentials. And the essential thing is people’s lives.
*Platforma Director
