Living in an Age of Permanent Crisis-Let's Stop Planning for a "Return to Normal"

 Whatever "normal" means to you.  I would say it would refer to that time of life before the pandemic was declared and the government shut down the world and told everyone to stay home in order to "flatten the curve".  12 months later there were still millions of Americans staying home.  2 years later we still see people wearing masks at airports.

Today we read about huge problems that are happening, seemingly all at once.  This article we see today says we are living in a permanent crisis and to stop planning to return to the "normal" life of pre-Covid.  This author is from the UK and it's written for the Guardian so is more than left leaning.  I was just attracted to the headline for blogging purposes.

We’re living in an age of permanent crisis – let’s stop planning for a ‘return to normal’

Temperatures in Britain hit 40C. Runways melt at major airports. The London fire brigade reports its busiest single day since the second world war as fires rage around the city. The Met Office warns of temperatures so high they “could lead to serious illness or loss of life”.

Meanwhile, inflation grinds inexorably upwards. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is part of it, but other pressures were already apparent. Staples such as coffee saw price rises as a result of extreme weather disrupting harvests. Even silicon chips have been affected, with droughts in Taiwan putting the hugely water-intensive production of semiconductors at risk.

The environmental crisis isn’t going away. The best available projections from climate forecasters point to greater instability – more heatwaves, more floods, worse shortages of food, even an increased risk of future pandemics. Yet this unavoidable and hugely costly instability, now becoming a part of our daily lives, scarcely seems to register with the institutions charged with managing the economy.

We’re living in an age of permanent crisis – let’s stop planning for a ‘return to normal’

Current plans predicated on stable growth seem foolish when we know that shocks such as global heating aren’t going away

Official forecasts, prepared by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), actually show inflation fading away rapidly over this year and a return to normal inflation and rates of growth over the next two years, as “output grows broadly in line with the economy’s productive potential”. Similarly, the latest Bank of England report predicts that the external shocks we see will wane, and inflation will return to its normal 2% target level in two to three years.

The government’s own plans for the immediate economic future are built around this belief in a strikingly rapid return to normality, with the Treasury using the OBR’s forecasts for its planning. Its only recognition of “higher than usual” uncertainty comes from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not environmental instability.

This isn’t some quirk of the official forecasters. The assumption of a certain kind of stability over time is hardwired into many of the kinds of economic models used today. That even if the economy is temporarily knocked off-balance, it will swing, eventually, back to its steady growth path, plodding on into the future. “Shocks” such as sudden hikes in the price of oil, or wars in eastern Europe, may happen, but, like a roly-poly toy, the economy springs back to where it was before.

Worse, if the environmental shocks keep coming, creating further shortages and pushing up prices, the Bank’s own models – incorrectly predicting a rapid return to “normality” – will be leaning it towards further rate rises in response. Meanwhile, plans for public spending and future investment, drawn up in the Treasury, will seriously understate the amount of either needed in a world of frequent environmental shocks – risking, in this case, higher than expected government borrowing, as additional emergency spending is pushed through.

It’s past time for a new approach, from the fundamental design of our economic models to the kind of economic management pursued by government. A starting point would be to focus on the requirements of protection, rather than the assumption of future growth. Focusing on things such as support for incomes, including real-terms pay, pensions and benefits increases, as a monetary insurance for households against future environmental shocks. And to invest hugely, not only in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but in building in the kind of protections against extreme weather, from flood defences to home insulation, that are now tragically necessary.

Here;  We’re living in an age of permanent crisis – let’s stop planning for a ‘return to normal’ | James Meadway | The Guardian

Clearly this dude's worldview believes that global warming is about the absolute worst thing threatening mankind.  So his worldview would be drastically different than ours.  But the interesting thing is that there is a whole, wide, broad class of people on planet earth that think something is going really wrong.  They are going to start looking for SOMEONE, ANYONE who can unite the world, fix the chaos and lead the world.

Can you see how the world is being prepped for the Antichrist?  Please remember that the Antichrist can't be revealed until after the rapture of the church.