Apr 20, 2020 - Only half of India’s household consumption will come through post covid

From the Editor's Desk

It's time to build

In the U.S., we don't even have the ability to get federal bailout money to the people and businesses that need it. Tens of millions of laid off workers and their families, and many millions of small businesses, are in serious trouble *right now*, and we have no direct method to transfer them money without potentially disastrous delays. A government that collects money from all its citizens and businesses each year has never built a system to distribute money to us when it’s needed most.

Why do we not have these things? Medical equipment and financial conduits involve no rocket science whatsoever. At least therapies and vaccines are hard! Making masks and transferring money are not hard. We could have these things but we chose not to specifically we chose not to have the mechanisms, the factories, the systems to make these things. We chose not to *build*.

You don't just see this smug complacency, this satisfaction with the status quo and the unwillingness to build, in the pandemic, or in healthcare generally. You see it throughout Western life, and specifically throughout American life.

You see it in housing and the physical footprint of our cities. We can't build nearly enough housing in our cities with surging economic potential - which results in crazily skyrocketing housing prices in places like San Francisco, making it nearly impossible for regular people to move in and take the jobs of the future. We also can't build the cities themselves anymore. When the producers of HBO's "Westworld" wanted to portray the American city of the future, they didn't film in Seattle or Los Angeles or Austin - they went to Singapore. We should have gleaming skyscrapers and spectacular living environments in all our best cities at levels way beyond what we have now; where are they?

Continued here

TradeBriefs: What's important, not just what's popular!

Advertisers of the day

Emeritus: PG Diploma in Digital Business by Emeritus in collaboration with MIT Sloan & Columbia Business School Executive Education | Accepting Applications

Emeritus: Accepting Applications for the Postgraduate Diploma in Leadership | 6 Months, Online

Emeritus: PG Diploma in Innovation & Design Thinking | Accepting Applications

Our advertisers help fund the daily operations of TradeBriefs. We request you to accept our promotional emails.