TIME TO MOVE AND AVOID RHYMES AND RHYTHMS OF PAST
FIGURES released last week indicate that Australia is now in recession (per capita). Based on this alarming headline, it suggests we are heading for slower economic times and the prosperity that Australia has enjoyed for well over three decades is over.
Many parts of our economy look awfully fragile right now. Retail trade fell over December and January. House prices are still falling nationally. Construction activity is drying up and wages growth is grim.
We can feel sweeping changes across the world with political turmoil, a rise in racial tension, begging the question whether we are on the verge of another historical financial crash? Coupled with this uncertainty, sociologists feel that modern society is suffering from ‘temporal exhaustion’ – where everyone is out of breath all the time from dealing with the present and there is no energy left for imagining the future.
Yet, if we look back in time when the world felt a similar unease, it seems this current period is not dissimilar to the Great Depression, but hopefully with the mechanisms in place to prevent this destructive period to civilisation in our current times.
There is no single accepted theory for why collapses occur, historians and others have proposed various explanations.
Inequality has widened dramatically in the past generation with the Davos World Economic Forum earlier this year reporting that the 26 richest people on earth had the same net worth as the poorest half of the world’s population, some 3.8 billion people. America’s three richest people own more than the bottom 50 per cent and Australia’s top 1 per cent own more wealth than the bottom 70 per cent combined.
It is this inordinate disparity between rich and poor, that keeps the world in a state of instability, virtually on the brink of war. Few societies have dealt effectively with this situation and a fresh look at the problem is required. This means consultation with experts from a wide spectrum of disciplines, devoid of economic and ideological dispute, and involving those directly affected in the decisions that must urgently be made.
Times are very different to the 1930s, where the pace of change and rectification was much slower, yet there was a collective will to effect change. Today we contend with many issues that are global, humandriven, quicker and more severe.
Mark Twain, is reputed to have said that “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.”
And if some echoes of the 1930s are faint today, there are many contemporary trends that are equally alarming with the most obvious parallel of economic nationalism.
We know what needs to be done. Inequalities levelled, emissions reduced, environmental degradation reversed, innovation unleashed and economies diversified. The policy proposals are there, only the political will is lacking.
If we advance blindly we will only march into collapse. It is time to open our eyes, heed the lessons of the past.