A professor of political arithmetic urges us to scrap 2020 GDP data regarding it as totally useless. /Daniel Mügge, FT, 4 January/
Not at all, instead let us learn a lot from 2020.
For sure, the west failed to handle any of the three crisis –pandemic, fear, economic loss - efficiently. Asia fared much better. Both individuals and governments handled all sort of crisis better in Asia, than in Europe or in the U.S.
One of the culprits is Western liberal thinking where individual freedom is above all other values. In Asia, common good trumps all other values.
Another is the perception of time. Western thinking tends to be short-sighted, Eastern horizon tends to be much longer.
Hence, Western crisis management focused on safeguarding incomes, Asians concentrated on launching investments. Digital and green transition, electrification, robotics and all other disruptive technologies gained momentum via the pandemic in Asia.
The west tries to save the present, i.e. the past, in the meantime, the east aims for winning the future. No wonder…
Governor Matolcsy, MNB, the Central Bank of Hungary
Re “Scrap 2020 GDP data to find a path out of the harm done by coronavirus”
