Covid-19 has exposed failed economic system for what it is

THE EU proposes to provide €750bn for immediate relief of its beleaguered economies.

Quantitative easing, bond purchasing, loans and every trick in the book will, over the next seven years, be used to raise the level to €3.2trn.

If all is spent trying to restore an economic system which technology has rendered redundant and entirely inadequate to manage an entirely transformed economic world, the end situation will be immeasurably worse than the present.

For Covid-19 is not the cause of this economic mess.

It is simply the catalyst that exposes a failed and teetering economic system to catastrophic collapse.

The money will certainly be needed; but unless directed towards changing from “growth” to “sufficiency” ideology, with emphasis on restoring local commerce and revising employment towards sharing wealth rather than creating it, the huge sum will be entirely wasted.

It will, in fact, create an ever worse economic situation than confronts us at present.

Technology can, with diminishing dependence on human input, produce practically everything in great abundance.

If “growth” economics persist, gross overproduction will cause stagnation of markets, elimination of historic supply chains and reduced employment, which were the means of trickle prosperity down through all echelons of society.

While security of the majority diminishes, wealth and power will be allowed to concentrate in fewer elitist hands. Padraic Neary

Tubbercurry, Co Sligo