COVID-19- Who is shaping the great reset?

Latest article by Paolo Gallo

Exhaustion from the terrible months we’ve had since we’ve been forced to live with an unwanted guest – Covid-19. Fear that a second wave is coming.

Hope that we can start again, if not at full speed at least a few steps at a time, to get going, to move forward even just to escape this sense of uncertainty.

Covid-19 has changed the world, even more than the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. It seems like a hundred years ago, not just twenty.

COVID-19: Awaiting the great reset

So we have to look at the world from another perspective. We understand the desire to start again, to reset the system before we begin again.

Just like the World Economic Forum has baptized the next Davos meeting, hopefully, postponed to summer 2021: The Great Reset.

This spontaneously and naturally brings up two questions. First, what do we have to reset before we start over? Second, Who will push the Great Reset button, who will decide, and what credibility will they have to enable them to do so?

Does the system work? Absolutely yes – and really well too – for the 467American citizens and their families who have seen their wealth proliferate by 730,000,000,000 dollars since 1 January 2020. Jeff Bezos-Amazon, whose wealth grew by 76B, Musk-Tesla +43B, Zuckerberg-Facebook +42B, Ballmer-Microsoft +18B and Ellison– Oracle +12B – I think they can certainly say they’re satisfied, don’t you?

But the system doesn’t work nearly as well for the 50 million people who’ve lost their jobs and the 27 million US citizens who’ve lost their health insurance since Covid-19 first struck.

What does it mean to have no work, no insurance, and one government check for 1,200 dollars to survive? According to the authoritative Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 82 million workers in the US earn an hourly wage and have no welfare protection (retirement, insurance, maternity leave).

Of these people around 2 million work for minimum wage, which ranges from 8 to 13 dollars an hour, depending on the state. These workers are part of the gig economy which, from the outside, is synonymous with dynamicity, but on the inside, it means no job security, no long-term projects.

The risk that we are running is easy to understand but difficult to resolve. The will and the desire to start again – sacrosanct and shared by all – is being maneuvered by the people and institutions who will continue to act exclusively in the interest of those who have benefitted up till now.

What are the problems that we need to face? The first step to change the system is to understand how it works. I found insight in a recent book called “The System” by Robert Reich, who was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton.

Reich doesn’t base his analysis on the division between the left and the right, a division which by now is obsolete and irrelevant. Instead, he starts with power – who has it and who doesn’t. In other words, the difference between a democratic system and an oligarchy.

CEOs and corporate leaders don’t come out of this analysis looking very good. It’s hard to blame the author, knowing that from 1980 to 2019 their real earnings skyrocketed by 940%, while workers’ wages went up 12%.

The real problem: power is a zero-sum game, so controlling power becomes a battleground. To understand how power works, Reich examines documents from the Business Roundtable, chaired by Jamie Dimon, the all-powerful CEO of JP Morgan.

One relevant document is from August 2019, in which members of the Business Roundtable commit “to work for the community and the society – not only for shareholders, to pay employees fairly, and to protect the environment.”

Next came the 181 signatures of the Gotha World of Finance and Industry. One of the signatories of this document is the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, owner not only of Amazon but Whole Foods. A few weeks after signing this commitment, he decided to take away health insurance for all his part-time employees.

There are countless organizations that only make empty cosmetic gestures, simple tokenism, to feed the public, to present a positive image: a typical example is a company that hires an African American as head of the diversity team but would never dream of having an African-American in an executive management position and/or on the board of directors.

From power, we turn to “non-visible” corruption: not kickbacks between two people but corruption that is systemic, so much so that the Supreme Court has defined it as “the corrosive and distorting effect of the accumulation of wealth created thanks to the role of companies and institutions that no longer serve the interests of the people.”

In 1964, 79% of Americans were convinced that the Government worked for the common good, while in 2014, 63% of citizens thought that democracy was for sale – literally – to the highest bidder.

Do you know what the most revealing indicators are that predict a person’s wealth and possibilities? Family wealth and background.

In colleges and universities like Princeton, Yale, and Penn State, more students come from the richest segment of the American population – the famous 1% on the top of the pyramid – with respect to the remaining 99%.

In his book, “The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality,” Daniel Markovitz clearly illustrates how the educational system is currently the biggest obstacle to creating opportunities for people who are not members of the elite class. Obstacle, not trampoline.

So the system that we’re a part of creating an enormous difference for a select few who continue to accumulate wealth and power, and continue to “pick” who’s included – not based on competencies but on family background and connections.

We’ve come to the point of no return, where the Great Reset is absolutely necessary to radically change the deep-rooted injustice of the current system.

The shameful accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few, with a system that replicates elitism instead of a system of opportunity and merit – it can not work. And in fact, it does not work for 90% of the human beings on this planet.

In a brilliant and moving TED talk Margaret Heffernan said that for many years the world expected Leaders to give us the answer and the solutions.

If there is something we have learned during this pandemic is that we need to re-define Leadership. No, it is not by writing a wish list of 10 skills you need to learn in 1 year, with a cute video, it is about creating the conditions in which everyone can do the most courageous thinking, together.

“The time of super-heroes is over, now is the time in which we need everybody. There is a lot at stake right now for all of us: the time of super-heroes is over. Only when we accepted that everybody has value we will liberate the energy needed to solve the problems we are dealing with.

So, who’s hitting “reset” on the global keyboard? It’s not the usual suspects, the ones who are still pontificating about leadership while doing the opposite.

There must be a reason why CEOs are trusted by less than 1/3 of the populations, with few wonderful exceptions. The Great Reset only works with a democratic system in which everyone is represented and respected, everyone’s voice is heard; instead of having a powerful minority that continues to milk the system for the benefit of the members of their exclusive club.

To achieve a better society, we need to fight with passion and integrity for democracy with civic engagement and determination, for the common good and not for the privilege of a select few. The battle for our soul and our future starts here. This is to be the real Great Reset.

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