Need for a Paradigm Shift  ––   Part I

The economy is in precipitous decline. Until a widely available vaccine for Covid-19 is available, we’ll have to have continued waves of infections, restrictions on movement, and impediments to production to avoid a rise in debilitating cases to levels that overwhelm health-care services and a rise in the number of deaths from the virus in the United States from over one-hundred thousand, which it is almost certain to reach by summer, to over a million, which it could well approach within a year in the absence of an effective national policy of managing the crisis. We need a paradigm shift in public policy.

The appalling and destructive Inequality in wealth and income obtaining in this country has been greatly exacerbated by the crisis. Increasing numbers of people slide into insolvency every week. Of the four essential freedoms Franklin Roosevelt said should be the right of every person, two of them, freedom from want and freedom from fear, are slipping out of the grasp of most Americans. 

Though there is no chance of having a responsible national government until next January, it’s not too early to think about where a paradigm shift could take us ––  about how we could turn the tide.