Get Comfy: Summary

No need to await the new normal — it’s already here and wants to stay forever

The new normal arrived in mid-March at the peak of viral contagion.

We can see evidence for this in social attitudes and government policies.

The change is permanent unless we collectively decide otherwise.

I find that television allows me to reminisce about the good old days.

I see people there who talk and engage and even laugh with each other, if it is a light hearted show, with not one mask, excessively clean hand, or nasty stare to be seen.

It doesn’t take more than a few moments of television watching to see just how out of kilter our current world is with the place that came before it.

With this realization that yesterday is no more, and coming after only a few months of a pandemic-fueled social crisis, I think we can only conclude that we are already living a new normal life.

How can we know with any certainty that the new normal has arrived?

One approach is to track what people are saying and doing.

For example, I googled “new normal” and was overwhelmed with over 100 million results, a true sign of the times.

Actions, of course, speak louder than words, and what we see everywhere is a reluctance to drop anti-pandemic procedures in favor of just behaving naturally.

This can be seen in growing preferences for mask wearing, continuing universal adherence to social distancing, widespread fidelity to all Covid regulations and restrictions, and a certain comfort with the new routines for work, school, travel, and play.

Another way to identify the new normal is through public policy, especially when it is supported by strong majorities in the polls (as is the case in most places).

Measured Covid cases may be up here or there but the danger of the pandemic, as seen in illness, hospitalizations, and deaths, is at negligible levels in most places.

This would therefore justify easy old normal policies, but we instead see a continuation of the fearful attitudes formed in March.

A further policy dimension that is here to stay is the attitude expressed by central bankers and finance ministers towards the economy and markets.

Central banks have expanded their balance sheets by over $6 trillion, at least three times the magnitude of the reaction during the Great Recession of 2008.

On top of this, government deficit spending in Europe and North America alone will increase by over $4 trillion this year, equivalent to 10% of the economy.

These fastest-and-greatest-ever financial decisions are set to remain in place for years. Politicians usually pretend that such emergency measures are temporary, but even that pretense is gone in todays’ environment. Government will be more powerful and interventionist than ever in the new normal.

So, what is the big deal if many people want to fundamentally change how society works, if they generally support government actions, and if government responds with extraordinary interventions and massive spending?

The issues are really ones of balance, proportion, trade-offs, and rationality, and what we believe to be the natural state of our society.

At the end of the day, it is something that can only be resolved through our collective democratic process.

The end result of that messier-than-usual process will determine the extent to which the new normal becomes either a temporary blip in history or an unprecedented new direction for our societies.

An absolute prerequisite to getting the best answers is to allow all questions to be posed and all perspectives to be aired.

The current environment of social censorship, name calling, groupthink, and partisan politics is not promising in this regard.

Nevertheless, it is for us to decide: new normal, for only today or forever?

The full article can be found here.