No Looking Back

We shouldn’t yearn to return to the past

We are now over two months into most of the United States being under some type of lockdown order. Here in the state of New York, we are currently required to wear masks if we need to go out in public and we can only begin to reopen some businesses if we have two straight weeks of decreasing hospitalizations.

A lot of Americans have started to get used to the current situation, whether it’s working from home, being unemployed, or now being counted on as an essential worker. These are difficult times for everyone, so it’s understandable that many just want to go back to the world before the coronavirus.

That isn’t the mindset we should hold. Our country had a wide range of problems before the virus and we should be doing whatever it takes to correct them as soon as this over. There are many politicians and business leaders who would love if we just returned to our previous lives of living paycheck to paycheck, going into debt, and buying up all the consumer goods we can.

It is clearer than ever that the United States is essentially a wealthy nation with a lot of poor people. Wealth inequality in America is at historic highs and wages have stagnated for forty years. The 1% dominate policymaking allowing themselves to garner more and more of the wealth. Meanwhile, the average…