I do not think that COVID will destroy children or young people's chances. To begin with the problems affect almost every child at school or university student.
We have had so many previous incidents when everyone has been knashing their teeth and pulling out their hair because a generation's chances are all destroyed. 1973 and the great oil crisis and three day week, the whole of the 1980s during the destructyiton of our industry by Mrs Thatcher, the 2008 financial crisis, but plenty of people born in the 1960s and 70s have had successful lives, I am not talking riches, merely being comfortable. the same will happen to this generation as well.
As for who pays the costs. We did not finish paying for WW2 until 2006, 50 years after the war ended. Most of those paying, by the end, were not even born when the war was on. I was 18 months old when it finished and retired in 2003. I spent my whole working life paying for WW2. Its the way things happen.
We have been lulled into a sense of false complacency, we all think life owes us a living, nothing nasty must ever happen to us or ours (or anybody else), we should never face any difficulties as we climb the ladder of success. Well, life isn't like that, it kicks you somewhere painful when you least expect it.
COVID is part of the human condition, look back and see what our parents and grandparents lived through, far worse things than us.
Economies are dynamic entities, the economy will grow back, jobs will return. They may be different jobs. But COVID or not we were all facing an unstable jobs market,anyway before COVID with the shrinking of retail and the effect of technology on many jobs. COVID has certainly changed the job market, but it was changing anyway.
Good Morning Wednesday 24 April 2024
