A GREAT RESET:
The World Economic Forum Suggests a Different Post-Covid Future for The World
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he most popular topic in recent months, without the doubt, has been the one about the coronavirus and its impact on our healthcare systems, economies, and everyday lives. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives, hundreds of millions of people have lost their jobs, more than a billion children have been shut out of schools, and trillions of dollars of economic ac vity have disappeared, leaving everyone guessing and wondering what comes next. Klaus Schwab, founder and Execuve Chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), gave us an answer on this one: “Many of us are wondering when things will return to normal. The short response is: never. The world as we knew it in the early months of 2020 is no more,“ he noted, adding that while at this early stage there is no way of knowing how things will turn out in the end, there are some things that can be done to navigate the uncertain journey ahead. A lot has been talked and written, deba ng on how we should respond to the current crisis, and the World Economic Forum also suggested one way to cope with it: a Great Reset of capitalism. According to WEF, since “it is a crisis unlike any other, it also requires a response like no other — a balanced and inclusive response that makes our economies and socie es future-proof. We need a Great Reset, not just a restart or a reboot.“ The idea of the Great Reset was declared at a virtual WEF’s mee ng by HRH The Prince of Wales and Professor Schwab, followed by statements by UN Secretary-General
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António Guterres and IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva just a few months ago, in June 2020, when global leaders from the United Nations, United Kingdom, United States, Interna onal Monetary Fund and mul na onal corpora ons joined together for yet another discussion. It was announced that the Great Reset will be the main topic of the upcoming World Economic Forum’s event in January 2021, and organizers hope that it would shed some light on the unaddressed problems that leave the world less sustainable, less equal, and more fragile — such as climate change, sustainability, social jus ce, and, of course, the Covid-19 outbreak. Speaking about the coronavirus pandemic, the World Economic Forum took an interesting point of view. No ng that the world will spend trillions of dollars on repairing our economies from this disaster through debt relief programs, income support programs, fiscal s muli, and other interven ons, WEF says that it would be a wasted opportunity to then only focus on a restart, as we have fundamental issues in our society, our economy, and our environment to address as well. In other words, today we should have more ambi on than to go back to the pre-pandemic days, and instead of simply restar ng, we must find ways to reset and reform our socie es. To be more specific, WEF defines the Great Reset as a “commitment to jointly and urgently build the founda ons of an economic and social system for a more fair, sustainable, and resilient future.“
The purpose of it is to use the coronavirus pandemic as a jus fica on — a endees of the discussion repeatedly referred to it as an “opportunity” — to completely overhaul the en re global economy, including the US economy, to make a more “equitable” world and to fight climate change, which was on numerous occasions iden fied as the world’s next great “crisis.” Elaborating further, in an article published on the World Economic Forum’s website, Klaus Schwab noted that “The world must act jointly and swi ly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working condions. Every country, from the United States to China, must par cipate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.“ He also added that “This global pandemic has
