The coronavirus pandemic is changing everything. Liberal partisans confidently predict the pandemic conveniently confirms their long-held beliefs about the need for a larger and stronger central government, with less discretion for local and state governments, much less private actors. They decry Trump for not setting one-size-fits-all federal policies on testing and reopening and belittle the ability of everyday people to make risk-benefit decisions for themselves. The Left argues the so-called self-evident need for a single-payer health system to test and treat millions who might otherwise infect others, especially as record-high unemployment rates threaten employer-provided health insurance. Though COVID-19 will certainly have long-lasting impacts, liberal pundits should temper their predictions with a dose of reality.
When confronted with large-scale catastrophic events, it is tempting to extrapolate short-term consequences in a linear fashion into the future. The short-term transformative changes they bring about appear to be even more consequential and permanent. Liberals see the temporary expansion of government welfare spending and police powers and assume a new permanent baseline has been set. Yet, whether due to resiliency, complacency, or inertia, people have returned to many of their preexisting habits after previous natural and man-made disasters.
Though the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 gave us longer security lines at airports and Hurricane Katrina resulted in fortified flood walls and stronger elevation requirements, both New York and New Orleans defied the skeptics predicting their doom and rebounded strongly. The habits that outlast these exceptional events often reflect an inherent logic accumulated over time. New Orleans, for example, was originally settled due to its advantageous location on relatively high ground near the mouth of the Mississippi River, providing compelling benefits for trade and later offshore energy exploration.
The coronavirus has already disrupted daily routines, and some of these disruptions will outlast even the deployment of a vaccine. The strongest effects will occur where preexisting trends are strengthened and quickened.
De-densification: Elevators, mass transit, and air-conditioned spaces, all critical components of urban living, will be rendered safe again one day. Yet, the nation’s most successful cities were already victims of their own success, with the rising cost of living pushing working families to the suburbs and exurbs. Workers are going to demand more flexible work arrangements and less time wasted commuting. Remote work and virtual meetings will allow many office workers to be productive in the exurbs and in the country. Wealthy families will join them with getaway homes, and companies will require less-dense and smaller offices. Smaller communities near urban centers will benefit and become more economically viable for their permanent residents. The economic efficiencies that have driven urbanization will still continue to be compelling, and first-tier cities especially will reinvent themselves and continue to attract immigrants and new businesses.
Digital acceleration: Amazon, Netflix, and Expedia were already driving large parts of the economy online and away from brick-and-mortar businesses. Consumers will quicken their conversion to e-commerce, though leisure and convenience will sustain many physical locations, and even many business-to-business interactions will deemphasize personal contact and move online for both efficacy and worker safety reasons. Sectors thought to be insulated from digitalization will be transformed. Just as Uber and Amazon increased the efficient use of physical assets, such as cars and warehouse space, distance learning and telehealth will allow schools and healthcare providers to deliver services with reduced capital investments. Retailers and restaurants will deploy frictionless self-serve and touchless payment systems; companies will rely on digital technologies for meetings, purchasing, and project management; and various businesses will adopt automation and remote work technologies to cut costs and minimize health risks. These same technologies will allow more white-collar work to be done overseas, but automation will also allow workers to be more competitive with low-wage offshoring.
Resiliency: Just-in-time inventory and global supply chains have rendered the economy more efficient and also vulnerable to disruption. President Trump was already using tariffs and trade treaties to push for manufacturers to return jobs to the United States, or at least to diversify their reliance on China. There will be more pressure for the localization of key elements of the supply chain (for example, active pharmaceutical ingredients) and increased surge capacity to address the increased frequency of unforeseen disasters. We will need to be even more competitive in advanced manufacturing and areas critical to national security, but basic apparel assembly and other low-margin industries will continue to seek out the lowest-cost environments.
Nationalism: Mistrust of China and the World Health Organization regarding the virus’s origins and their initial responses, competition for scarce personal protective equipment and other medical supplies, massive growth in fiscal and monetary policies, top-down edicts from unelected experts, the lack of transparency, and slower global growth rates will all intensify existing trends toward increased nationalist and populist politics. Conservatives are already warning of the dangers of an encroaching centralized government violating privacy and civil liberty rights under the guise of quarantine. Though there has been more bipartisan support for government spending than after the Great Recession and fewer accusations of moral hazard, as small businesses and workers are being compensated for shelter-in-place orders they did not cause, there will eventually be a popular reaction against corporate bailouts, growing deficits, and dependence on China.
America will emerge from the aftermath of the virus changed in significant ways but still connected to the country we were before. Landlords were already looking for ways to repurpose shopping malls and department stores, politicians in both parties were already warning about China’s growing influence, and technology was already changing how people shop and work. These trends are not new, but the coronavirus pandemic will amplify their impacts.
However, voters can safely ignore liberals trying to use the coronavirus as the latest excuse to justify their long-held desires to remake society. Reports of the death of federalism and American individualism are highly exaggerated.
Bobby Jindal (@BobbyJindal) was governor of Louisiana from 2008-2016. He ran for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
