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The Coming Storm
Only in its third decade, the 21st Century has already been battered by several economic storms. The new millennium might have opened with the easy optimism of the early 2000s, yet even these years were punctuated by a series of financial crises as well as rapidly rising inequality. The disparity between rich and poor only intensified after the 2007–2008 financial crash, a generational rupture that echoed the Great Depression of the 1930s and which briefly seemed to threaten the existence of capitalism itself. The weak recovery that followed was accompanied by harsh austerity measures in many nations and a proliferation of low paid, precarious employment for millions of workers. At the same time, the wealthiest in society somehow managed to get even richer as the growth of inequality accelerated in the 2010s. A culture of opulence and greed continued to persist among the elite, a trend that was — for all intents and purposes — promoted by government policy.
In 2020, a new crisis struck. First arising in China at the end of 2019, the Covid-19 virus soon spread throughout the world, overwhelming health systems and condemning millions of the most vulnerable citizens to painful deaths or long-term illnesses. The pandemic forced public authorities to implement harsh lockdowns that saw entire economies grind to a halt and countless workers face unemployment and/or social isolation. But the widespread roll-out of the vaccine (in the developed world at least) allowed for an easing of these lockdown measures and there were tentative signs that things might be improving. As the economies of the west began to rapidly recover from the pandemic-linked downturn, the wage of the average worker began to rise.
The optimism was short-lived. In early 2022, Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian military to invade Ukraine. Within days, it was clear that this war would be long and bloody and would have global as well as regional consequences. The war sparked a surge in the price of commodities such as oil and gas, and resulted in high inflation that plunged millions of people into destitution. Across the west as a whole, the cost of living rose at a faster rate than at any time since the 1980s. By October 2022, almost three quarters of Europeans were skimping on everyday items, while in the UK the winter fuel crisis risked becoming so severe that local authorities set up so-called “warm…
