Welcome to the State of Abundance
At the beginning of 2020, I moved to a small beach town in California from Brooklyn. It seemed like a good idea to be closer to nature, my meditation community, the beach. Then the pandemic hit.
The events of the past four months have been the ultimate stress tests, the ones they’ve been always warning us about. We’re seeing the old structures in the financial, healthcare, education, retail and food industries cracking under pressure in real time. The supply chains are crumbling. The brand names that seemed indestructible are going bankrupt. And ultimately these systems are failing many of us who are not billionaires or private equity shops, well-armed to weather any storms and probably many pandemics to come.
At the same time, other forces are gaining power in 2020 at a speed that nobody saw coming: Generation Z especially is showing an abundance of talent and creativity, mobilizing online and taking on the biggest political stalemates of our time: the environmental crisis, racial injustice awakening. While many corporations are finding courage to boycott Facebook and put pressure on its stance on hate speech -- something policymakers and governments around the world haven’t been able to accomplish in years.
What is the ‘State of Abundance’ about?
Unprecedented times create unprecedented opportunities. As a business journalist, I’ve always been fascinated by stories at the intersection of business, technology and science.
In this blog, I’m looking to explore how we got to this breaking point and imagine the opportunities this moment presents for us individually and as a nation.
Policymakers and financiers are feeling the pressure to make the right decisions as millions of households are grappling with the financial challenges of a recession, dysfunctional healthcare system and a lack of social safety nets.
The pressure is real. Tobias Adrian, IMF’s Financial Counsellor and Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department, warned in a speech last week that “the recession could be deeper and longer than currently anticipated” given the very real threat of the second wave of Covid-19 infections and rollback of reopening plans across the country. The pandemic, and the stress tests for each of the industry sectors, are far from over.
What we have to ask now is who will benefit from the push to reopen the U.S. economy? And who will be the primary beneficiary of the stimulus checks and other government assistance?
A recent report by the Institute for Policy Studies found that U.S. billionaires’ combined wealth jumped by $584 billion even as 45 million Americans became jobless.
“The big criticism of the government stimulus in 2008 and 2009 was that it directly stabilized financial markets and let the market get back but didn’t prevent home foreclosures that affected ordinary people,” says Robert Gordon, professor of economics at Northwestern University, told Barron’s.
And several economists are sounding the alarms that the latest recession and the fiscal measures undertaken so far may lead to worse inequality.
Take it from a former Greek Minister of Economy, a country that knows something about crises, and an economics professor from my alma mater Bard College:
"The pandemic crisis will widen the already worrisome levels of income, racial, and gender inequality in the U.S," says Dimitri Papadimitriou, President of the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College, and former Greek Minister of Economy and Development.”
Who is this blog for?
For many journalists, it’s been disheartening to witness how many publications have lost trust of their readers and how many have turned against the media as a whole.
This misinformation warfare doesn’t serve anyone. Many are angry that the leading business media doesn’t serve their interests. In part, they are right. A lot of leading publications serve stock market investors, and the stock markets are not a good indicator of the economy’s health.
Still, the need to sort through the noise and misinformation is more acute than ever before as is being able to navigate this new reality.
For me, abundance is the opposite of any sense of lack, having exactly what you need when you need it.
What does abundance mean to you? For some, it means walking into a hospital and not worrying about paying their bills. For others, it’s saving for retirement or a college fund for their children. Some may define abundance as the freedom of not bothering to go to college or thinking about money at all.
As we grapple with the impact of this pandemic on our lives, I will talk to financial experts, healthcare analysts and other industry specialists about how they are navigating this recession and how we can all make more educated decisions related to finances, the environment and our communities.
Ultimately, this blog is about claiming the state of abundance in your life regardless of the kind of family you were born into, the color of your skin, sexual identity, education you received or the type of business publications you can afford to subscribe to.
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