<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><p style="margin: 0px 0px 11.2px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">New York Times April 9, 2020</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 11.2px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(18, 18, 18); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(18, 18, 18);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class=""><b class="">Why the Wealthy Fear Pandemics</b></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 11.2px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">The coronavirus, like other plagues before it, could shift the balance between rich and poor.</span></p><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">By Walter Scheidel</span></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 2px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff" class="">Mr. Scheidel is a professor of classics and history at Stanford University.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 11.2px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none; color: #333333" class=""><<<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/opinion/coronavirus-economy-history.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage" class=""><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 238);" class="">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/opinion/coronavirus-economy-history.html?</span></a>>></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 11.2px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""><b class="">Excerpts</b></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 11.2px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Because of this “destructive plague which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish,” the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun wrote, “the entire inhabited world changed.”</span></p><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #fffb00" class="">The wealthy found some of these changes alarming.</span><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""> In the words of an anonymous English chronicler, “Such </span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #fffb00" class="">a shortage of laborers</span><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""> ensued that the humble turned up their noses at employment, and could scarcely be persuaded to serve the eminent for triple wages.” Influential employers, such as large landowners,<b class=""> </b>lobbied the English crown to pass the Ordinance of Laborers, which informed workers that they were “obliged to accept the employment offered” for the same measly wages as before.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; text-align: center; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); min-height: 17px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 11.2px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">But as successive waves of plague shrunk the work force, hired hands and tenants “took no notice of the king’s command,” as the Augustinian clergyman Henry Knighton complained. “If anyone wanted to hire them he had to submit to their demands, for either his fruit and standing corn would be lost or he had to pander to the arrogance and greed of the workers.”</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 11.2px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">As a result of this shift in the balance between labor and capital, we now know, thanks to painstaking research by economic historians, that real incomes of unskilled workers doubled across much of Europe within a few decades.<b class=""> </b></span></p><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Looking at the historical record across Europe during the late Middle Ages, we see that elites did not readily cede ground, even under extreme pressure after a pandemic. During the Great Rising of England’s peasants in 1381, workers demanded, among other things, the right to freely negotiate labor contracts. Nobles and their armed levies put down the revolt by force, in an attempt to coerce people to defer to the old order. But the last vestiges of feudal obligations soon faded. Workers could hold out for better wages, and landlords and employers broke ranks with each other to compete for scarce labor.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""><br class=""></span></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 11.2px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Elsewhere, however, repression carried the day. In late medieval Eastern Europe, from Prussia and Poland to Russia, nobles colluded to impose serfdom on their peasantries to lock down a depleted labor force. This altered the long-term economic outcomes for the entire region: Free labor and thriving cities drove modernization in western Europe, but in the eastern periphery, development fell behind.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 11.2px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">In looking for illumination from the past on our current pandemic, we must be wary of superficial analogies. Even in the worst-case scenario, Covid-19 will kill a far smaller share of the world’s population than any of these earlier disasters did, and it will touch the active work force and the next generation even more lightly. Labor won’t become scarce enough to drive up wages, nor will the value of real estate plummet. And our economies no longer rely on farmland and manual labor.</span></p><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class=""><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; background-color: rgb(255, 251, 0);" class="">Yet the most important lesson of history endures. The impact of any pandemic goes well beyond lives lost and commerce curtailed. Today, America faces a fundamental choice between defending the status quo and embracing progressive change. The current crisis could prompt redistributive reforms akin to those triggered by the Great Depression and World War II, unless entrenched interests prove too powerful to overcome.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); min-height: 17px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 11.2px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 238); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class=""><<<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/opinion/coronavirus-economy-history.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage" class=""><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 238);" class="">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/opinion/coronavirus-economy-history.html?</span></a>>></span></p><div class="">
<div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;" class=""><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><b class="">~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</b></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><b class="">A core question: What is “resilience”?</b></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><b class=""><br class=""></b></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;" class=""><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><b class="">2018</b> — “Resilience is a popular narrative for conservation and provides an opportunity to communicate optimism that ecosystems can recover and rebound from disturbances.” (Emily S. Darling<span style="vertical-align: 4px;" class=""> </span><i class="">and </i>Isabelle M. Côté, Science, March 2, 2018). </p><div style="font-size: 14px;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12px;" class=""><b class="">2014</b> — “Emerging from a wide range of disciplines, resilience in policy-making has often been based on the ability of systems to bounce back to normality, drawing on engineering concepts. This implies the return of the functions of an individual, household, community or ecosystem to previous conditions, with as little damage and disruption as possible following shocks and stresses” (Tanner et al, Nature Climate Change, December 18, 2014). </span></div><div id="m_-1046162086629656228gmail-AppleMailSignature" style="font-size: 14px;" class=""><div class="m_-1046162086629656228gmail-ApplePlainTextBody"><div style="font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;" class=""><b class="">1938</b> — Resilience.<span class="m_-1046162086629656228gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span>1- The act or power of springing back to a former position or shape. 2. The quantity of work given back by a body that is compressed to a certain limit and then allowed to recover itself, as a spring under pressure suddenly relaxed.” (Funk & Wagnall’s New Standard Dictionary of the English Language, vol.2, M-Z 1938</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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