pcr has some interesting thoughts centering on the current situation;

Economic Effect of Coronavirus Could Be Revolutionary

Paul Craig Roberts

Coronavirus and globalism will teach us vital lessons.  The question is whether we can learn vital lessons that do not serve the ruling interest groups and ideologies.

Coronavirus will teach us that a country without free national health care is severely handicapped. Millions of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.  They cannot afford health care premiums, deductions, and copays.  Millions have no insurance.  This means millions of people infected with coronavirus who cannot get medical help.  The morbidity from this is intolerable in any society. 

Shutdowns associated with efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus will deny income to millions of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck.  What do they do for food, shelter, transportation?  You don’t have to think very long along these lines to see a very frightening scenario.

Globalism has taken down the ladders of upward mobility by exporting American middle class jobs to Asia.  A population once able to save now lives on debt, the service of which is interrupted by recession/depression and by debt service absorbing all net disposable income.

Globalism has also reduced the survivability of our society by making it dependent  on externally produced goods, the supply of which can be cut off by disruptions in other societies, by policy disagreements leading to sanctions, and by an inability to export enough to pay for imports, which is what the offshored production of US firms is............read more..........