My generation’s luck has run out. Let’s be smart preparing for the next shock

There are ways to bolster the economy so we aren’t so vulnerable

A flyer in downtown Sydney, Australia.SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty Images

Call us Generation L — the Luckiest Generation.

As a cohort, those of us making a run at 60 ― and those a few years past it ― have had it all too good, compared with our parents and grandparents.

We didn’t grow up with the privations of the Great Depression and the shared sacrifices of World War II. Bringing up the back of the baby boom pack, we were too young to be shipped off to Vietnam. Unlike my father, I didn’t have to watch one of my children die at 2½ from leukemia, or my wife’s life end at 42 from breast cancer, because effective treatments had yet to be developed.

But my g-generation’s luck has run out.

The US government, Congress, and the intelligence agencies missed or ignored warnings that could have prepared us better to thwart the 2001 terrorist attacks. Greed and laissez-faire regulation caused the housing crisis and subsequent recession in 2007-2009. And the director of national intelligence’s own threat assessment report for 2019 waved this red flag about a pandemic: “We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support."

At the risk of trivializing 9/11 and the Great Recession, the coronavirus crisis has the cataclysmic power that could derail this country more profoundly than those earlier events. In its wake, we must set a better course. It can be a defining moment.

The immediate negatives are painful and painfully obvious: loved ones dying, paychecks disappearing, savings accounts shrinking, people anxious and isolated.

Despite all our technology and knowledge, the limits of modern medicine and the fragility of our modern economy have been exposed.

It will get worse.

Somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 Americans will die, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday. Economists estimate that as businesses scale back or shut to contain the virus’s spread, unemployment could within months easily exceed 11 percent, the post-Depression record set in the early 1980s. Three million people filed for jobless benefits in the week ended March 21.

But then it will get better. The pandemic will recede. Commerce will resume.

And it will be up to us to learn and adapt so we are better prepared for the inevitable next crisis.

Let’s hope we do a better job than we did after reckless and illegal mortgage lending nearly brought down the financial system.

Congress and regulators did a decent job requiring banks to build bigger cushions against losses and refrain from risky trading. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a creation of Elizabeth Warren, cracked down on abusive practices by payday lenders and debt collectors, among other steps.

But the fundamental flaws in our economy went unaddressed. In the past decade, we have allowed the opportunity gap to widen. We fell short of giving everyone access to affordable health care and a good education. We failed to rein in a winner-take-all system that exacerbates the financial and political extremes dividing the nation.

So what do we need to do? We need to buttress the economy against future shocks — whether caused by acts of God or by mere mortals — just like we buttress homes and commercial buildings in California against earthquakes.

The easy part will be fortifying the health care system with a massive stockpiling of masks, gloves, ventilators, and other equipment needed to fight the next viral outbreak. Also not so complicated: better testing and containment plans, so we aren’t improvising state by state like we are now.

It will be much harder to make permanent the short-term safety net enhancements in the $2 trillion stabilization package Congress approved and President Trump signed last week.

We need unemployment insurance that is more generous, lasts longer, and comprehensively covers part-time, self-employed, and gig workers.

We need to make big companies provide paid sick time and family leave to all workers, and subsidize smaller employers who could otherwise not afford such benefits.

We need universal child care.

We need to begin the transition to universal health care, understanding that it can’t be implemented overnight.

We need to stop thinking about a minimum wage, and instead must legislate a national living wage that allows families to build wealth, not just get by week to week.

We need to improve public schools and make getting a college education without going deep into debt a reality.

If this reads like the progressive playbook, I’m guilty as charged. We’ve seen trickle-down economics fail for far too long. The policies outlined above are not just for national emergencies; they will soften the blow for many of the emergencies we encounter in our personal lives — injury and illness, ailing parents and sick children, the sudden job loss — and all the obstacles that make it so damn hard for people to enjoy a stable life.

The hardest part of all: doing this without ignoring climate change, a true existential threat that we know is coming. We can’t social-distance our way out of this one. No bailout package will be big enough.

We boomers had our chance. It’s no longer a matter of luck.

The next generation needs to be the Smartest Generation.