Covid-19: We shouldn’t give priority to sustaining the GDP over the wellbeing of the people

If we handle the coronavirus crisis right, we can come out of it better than we went into it, says Richard Layard

 
We are in a very difficult situation. But I do believe that if we handle it right we can come out of this better than we went into it. We can come out of it with a society in which people are caring more for each other and in which they are taking better care of themselves.

So, let me start with the care for others, obviously, we are going to have millions of people self-isolating, not just to protect themselves, but to protect others. We are going to have lots of healthy people looking after frail and lonely people, either directly or remotely. We are going to have millions of people looking after other people’s children, who are not in school and of course we are going to have millions of health-care workers risking their lives on our behalf.

Now, all of these kinds of actions went on every day in the Second World War – there was an unprecedented level of fellow feeling and what’s important is that it went on for years and decades after that. So, I think we could emerge from this with a society in which we are valuing co-operation a lot more strongly, relative to competition.

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Πηγή: blogs.lse.ac.uk