My feelings basically coincide with Lord Feldon. People tend to forget over time and go back to old habits.
Exactly, it has further accelerated the decline of the US as a global power; Germany is emerging as the leader of the West. The virus and its fallout have also further exacerbated tensions between red and blue America, now red state politicians are explicitly talking about punishing blue state America. The rift is permanent and widening.
I also think this is the end of the white boomers as the hegemonic cultural force in the US.
I’m going to ignore the swipe at Congress. I do think the resort type business meeting has been on its way out for a while, the 2008 financial crisis definitely helped escalate that.
At the company I was working for in 2009, some of the VPs held meetings announcing layoffs, a hiring freeze and giving a hunker down speech letting everybody know that bonuses and raises were gonna suck or be nonexistent.
A couple days later one of the admin people ‘accidentally’ forwarded an email to my entire department with the itinerary for an upcoming executive VP meeting in Arizona. It consisted mainly of events such as a wine and cheese reception, horseback riding and golf at an exclusive resort. The actual work seemed to consist of a couple of talks from authors who churn out bullshit business books as well as a few PowerPoint presentations from company executives.
So, yes, I do think that type of business travel is dead. Not because of COVID risks but for the bad public image from such trips. That goes triple for any company taking bailout money.
What the hell are you talking about? What about the 99.99% of meetings that aren’t at resorts?
I’m afraid I’m really going to have to disagree with you.
The rise of China started with Nixon going to China, the death of Mao, the world realizing you couldn’t just ignore a massive nation of almost a billion people and pretend that Taiwan was the only China. Starting in the 1980s, China made a decision to develop a modern economy while trying to keep an authoritative form of government.
There have been left and right wing movements in the West since the development of the nation state and decline of monarchies. What examples do you have of the rise of the left? Obama and Trudeau got elected, yes, but they both are in the political mainstream for their respective countries.
I can see the rise of the right in Europe as a backlash against immigration. That’s nothing new, it’s been an issue since recovery after WW II. And, the EU and the Euro will always be a popular punching bag for populists. I’ve got no doubt that Russia has their dirty hands among some of the authoritarian instincts in Eastern Europe.
Perhaps the upcoming recession will lead to actual right or left wing ideologues gaining power, it’s too early to tell.
The financial crisis had no effect at all on how people behave day to day. The theory that it helped China become more powerful is interesting but has no effect on the life of the average American. That’s what the OP was asking.
The GWOT made it a bit more inconvenient to board an airplane.
Effect of GWOT is definitely a matter of perspective. I said before (I think…) that for everyday life in the US it’s really mainly a matter of certain rituals at the airport and elsewhere. COVID will surely have its legacy rituals also, and these will impose costs of debatable value like the TSA etc legacy of 9/11. I also said if you exclude the foreign policy aspects which are arguably greater, but I think it’s an exaggeration to say either the fin crisis or GWOT had a big effect on China’s rise which is really the main reason the world won’t be unipolar, the EU has become less of a credible power poll if anything in recent years, the temporary stabilization of Russia’s decline also much less a factor than China.
And everything affects everything else to some degree but China’s rise, GWOT US policies and 2008 crisis are relatively unrelated IMO as things go. From perspective of countries near the center of the Islamist militancy problem and also aligned with China maybe that looks different but that’s a tiny portion of the world in economic terms. China is a big deal in all terms, the intersection of its rise with GWOT and 2008 crisis not much. But it goes to show another of my earlier points: people will have their own takes in 10 yrs on COVID also, and while they may not be entirely unreasonable from certain perspectives, I’ll probably also find some of those to be exaggerated more broadly.
Again I generally tend toward the low side on ‘change our lives forever’ for COVID. But your argument I think has run the risk in some statements of devolving to just ‘human nature won’t change because of this’. And of course it won’t until or unless biotechnology makes it change and that will have nothing directly to do with COVID.
Back to world economy, yeah the 1930’s had a big lasting effect. It’s pretty theoretical now, but was very real for quite awhile after. The run up in world debt due to COVID could have a very significant effect in the following decade or few, and on a potentially much different level than ‘lots of malls closed’ or some other sector based thing which really doesn’t amount to much in the big picture beyond the short term (people get different jobs, capital is deployed to different places, some industry is always becoming less/more important, or entirely obsolete). But it won’t be heavily covered by general media (for no nefarious purpose, just too ambiguous), and the great majority of ordinary people’s economic opinions are just political. Few people are actually interested in what effect that debt load will have separate from electoral politics, which is one reason debate tends to come back to one country…and its politics, but this won’t be a one country thing.
And, I can see there’s an argument to be made that the GWOT caused more immigration into Western Europe, helping to flame tensions and aid the right. How much is directly the result of the GWOT is definitely up for debate.
Effects are going to be odd. The OP asked about the USA, which is going to be affected differently to most other countries, because it isn’t like most other countries.
In terms of how upheaval affects people, I would suggest that there is a simple rule. People will go back to doing things they enjoy and miss, and will have learnt how they don’t need to do many things that they didn’t enjoy, and realise they don’t actually need to do, so won’t.
Businesses that had the mark of death on them will have an accelerated demise. No doubt, bricks and mortar sales will take a mortal hit in many areas. Those retailers that have managed to build a strong on-line presence will be OK. Those that have let Amazon eat their lunch are toast.
Work practices that have successfully changed to an enforced work from home pattern will find it hard to undo expectations. And those expectations will come from both sides. Workers and employers may accelerate the model. Expensive office space may not recover if there really isn’t the need for lots of it. So technology based work may be irrevocably changed. Others will not notice any difference.
Politics is always in flux. Germany might be showing the Northern Hemisphere how it is done, down here in the South ,New Zealand rules the waves. 
Politicians have extraordinary opportunities right now. Some are squandering them. Some are making hay. I doubt there will be any sort of universal change in the political landscape. If someone in power clearly screws up, they will pay a penalty, and their associated political colour will wear the taint. Doesn’t matter if you are red or blue or whatever. (And in the rest of the world, those colours are reversed. Which makes the US even more difficult to understand.)
So, things that will persist? What is it that you have discovered you enjoy? What don’t you miss doing?
Has staying home for week made a lasting change to the expectations of housekeeping duties? Or has the modern two income household already put paid to that? There are no Rosie Riveters this time. Compared to the social upheaval the West saw after each world war, this is trivial.
Will people get upset as the skies turn brown again? Probably, but as always, if their personal comfort is derived from actions that pollute, little will change.
Possibly the biggest question will be about economic recovery. Some countries will recover very quickly. Some will take a lot longer. There is evidence that those countries that shut-down harder and earlier will recover quicker. Then there is the question about government support during the shut-downs. Here countries differ significantly. I don’t know how well the US businesses are weathering the storm. Or how well people are. Here in Oz the strugglers are mostly doing OK. The government significantly increased benefits, and acted to ensure that nobody was going to starve or lose their house. Overall they have done OK at this. An interesting question is going to be how easy it is for them to unwind this level of support. Expectations may be hard to change. Also, it isn’t impossible that the economics of much higher levels of social benefit might actually make sense. That is a big unknown.
The US may come out of this a step behind the rest of the developed world due to poorer management of the economy. This may be permanent setback. Slower recover of businesses and slower recovery of confidence. Places that have kept the money moving by explicit government intervention may recover very quickly. At least that is what we are hoping. The notion of using policy developed by career professionals in the field, rather than by political religion, may make big strides in those constituencies where it has been used.
The biggest impact is that no other nation is going to look to the US for solutions. We’ve gone from the nation that landed on the moon in the 20th century, to the nation that’s a warning to others in the 21st.
Umm, that’s a bit drastic. Kinda like then old patent office quote from 1889 about every thing that can be invented has been invented.
Exactly. I’ve been on business trips to Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Albuquerque, Richardson (TX), and Waco (TX). None of the meetings were in any way at resorts.
Well, if this is ever “over-over” (successful vaccine or herd immunity) I honestly think that almost everything will go back to “normal” as if we hadn’t learned a damn thing. Can you name a bunch of things that permanently changed when the Spanish Flu? I can’t, and they weren’t a bunch dummies that didn’t know shit about diseases.
Some companies that didn’t allow people to work from home but now are, may continue doing that. We were trending that way anyway. Some won’t. Fact is a lot of employers like playing overseer and neck-breathe and that’s best done in person.
I don’t see people wearing masks in perpetuity. Americans are too vain for that, and uh, FREEDOM!
Sporting events, concerts, etc, will come back in full glory.
Restaurants, barbershops, etc. will all go back to normal.
Malls that were gonna go under anyway, will go under sooner. I can tell you for a fact the mall near me isn’t going away anytime soon. Sales-tax free Delaware won’t allow for anything else.
My biggest hope for all this is that we ACTUALLY have a PPE, ventilator, and other stockpiles fully stocked, forever, for another event like this. I think that ALL life-or-death products and should be made at home from now on. And that we convert hospitals to be able to quickly ramp up for another such events.
No, it’s accurate. You don’t live in the country that sent men to the moon, that country no longer exists. You live in the country that watches Honey Boo Boo and elects people like Trump and McConnell and Cruz.
People were watching Green Acres in 1969, Spiro Agnew was VP and Claude Kirk was governor of Florida. I think we’ll be fine.
Explain that one to your grandkids.
Two things:
1 - Everything will be MUCH more expensive.
2 - Many many people have been triggered to hoarding.
~VOW
Canadians and Americans have already had a certain amount of personal space (I remember my son talked about how close people would stand in line in Germany, he liked the country but that really bothered him), anyway I suspect personal space will in fact be longer.
60000 dead in a month and a government that is stealing medical supplies to the point that states have to sneak them in is not ‘fine’. A political party that exists solely to siphon money into its owners’ pockets being allowed to do whatever it pleases to the gross detriment of the society it’s supposed to be governing is not ‘fine’. You’re not fine, you’re coasting.
Sure there will be changes- but nothing earthshaking.
Hand sanitizer stations in large stores and mall. Meh.
Other than that- Already dying malls will die faster. Teleconferencing and working at home will increase the rate they already were. Malls that survive will have to have entertainment and nice restaurants, not just a food court. You will go to the mall to have a nice lunch- and shop.
Changes already occurring will just occur faster.