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I am no prophet. I would not attempt to replicate the famous BC Pires, who used to write a column with predictions for each new year.
He noted: “Some of my predictions are included only to make you laugh; the others are deadly serious and, if accurate, will make anyone with any sense weep. The perennial Trinidadian challenge is to distinguish fantasy from reality.”
I share my thoughts about 2025, which are not definitive but seek to provoke us to question our assumptions and plans. Why? Because we are facing unprecedented challenges in an election year.
We must first acknowledge that there is no going back to the old days. The days when life was simple and we all lived happily together are gone. We have been facing a ‘polycrisis’ for some time.
Edgar Morin, a French theorist of the complexity school, coined the term in the 1990s, and it was adopted by the former European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in 2016. Complexity theory emphasises interactions and the accompanying feedback loops that constantly change systems.
Our lives have been stressful and disoriented. If it is not one thing—like the Covid -19—pandemic, it is another. If it feels like you cannot catch your breath from the cascading events, you are experiencing a polycrisis. However, you are not alone.
Let us listen to our psychiatrists and psychologists who tell of our emergent mental health crisis.
The former US Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers remarked: “This is the most complex, disparate and cross-cutting set of challenges that I can remember in the 40 years that I have been paying attention to such things.”
At the time (2022), he called for action from the IMF and the World Bank. He had earlier warned that inflation would become a persistent headache in the United States. He said policymakers must act on several fronts to address an ominous outlook: ensuring financial markets operate smoothly, increasing lending and easing debt burdens for poor countries, and accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Have we done so locally? We may pay the price for inaction in 2025.
Photo: Allan V Crane/ CA-images/ Wired868
Adam Tooze, a US historian, defines a crisis as: a problem that challenges our ability to cope and thus threatens our identity. When we ask ourselves, “what have we become as a nation?”, we acknowledge that we are in a crisis.
A polycrisis occurs when the crises are different but interact, and the sum is greater than the parts. For example, we feel overwhelmed by the crime situation, but at the same time, we face rising prices in the supermarket. At the same time, we get higher gas prices.
The rising prices may be partly caused by supply chain problems and partly by predatory practices of local business people. External forces influence local events. Expect more blaming or boasting by our politicians for events outside our control.
(via Newsday)
What do we expect in 2025 when Finland accuses Russia of disrupting its power supply to Estonia? Or what about the plane allegedly downed by Russia? Or China’s misinformation drive in the US elections?
The world will be plagued by uncertainty, and economic conditions will continue to be complicated. What can we expect if the impulsive, unpredictable Donald Trump exits NATO? Gas prices may rise, but other downside problems, like inflation, will occur if they do.
Should we not expect misinformation in our election year?
Price increases affect different sectors of our population unequally. Have we ever wondered how a maid or a handyman survives on a fixed minimum wage? Equip a child for school? Pay rent?
Different households have different consumption baskets. The effects of higher inflation on the welfare of lower-income households tend to be stronger when the prices of energy and food increase relative to average inflation and when inflation is more volatile in general. This situation reflects the higher spending share of low-income households on necessities.
The rising prices may have led some to believe that the source of wealth lies in the bosom of particular ethnic groups. The opportunistic ones will take a chance at robbing those perceived as wealthy yet vulnerable.
We will cry for the police to do more. But can they do more when there is a veritable crime factory spewing out criminals? We cannot arrest our way out of this problem.
We should beware of anyone who promises to fix crime in 2025. We should learn the lesson that we hope Dr Keith Rowley learnt. Crime is a whole-of-society problem. Economic inequality contributes to crime.
While the media may focus our attention on one group of criminals and one location, there are other criminals whose role is minimised. We do not identify and highlight those who feed guns and drugs to other criminals. The power brokers remain hidden.
The media highlights the dead soldiers, not the generals. Those go on to fight with new soldiers.
We will continue to lose the fight until we tackle the formidable structural barriers that give rise to the new criminals. More policy and community actions are needed to help our citizens understand the complex relationships between race, socio-economic conditions, and crime.
The spectre of corruption stalks the land. How can we deliver an institutional response to raise poor communities from despair? We cannot if there is a constant hide-and-seek game going on. It is not the poor stealing from the state. Wealthy retailers and others find ways to outsmart social services.
How do we deliver pensions or old age grants when some among us desire to game the system? Can anyone guesstimate the quantum of money lost through fraud by our Ministry of Social Services? The poor will remain poor, and crime will continue in 2025.
When our administrations execute bad deals, money is not left to do good work to change our economy’s structure. Last Sunday, Gregory McGuire courageously identified one such event.
He proposed “a dividend policy that places limits on the share of dividends the shareholder can extract from the company in any given year”. Anyone paying attention to the National Gas Company’s dividend policy from 2010 to 2015 would appreciate this advice.
How many other bad deals are still being done in our names?
Tooze used an analogy applicable to us as we enter an election year: “It’s like riding a bicycle. The bike is inherently unstable. It should fall over; if it falls over, you get hurt.
“On the other hand, if you learn how to ride it, it’s God’s gift. It’s a good image for the challenge of modernity.”
We could choose leaders who can ride well or throw coins into the fountain and wish things would change. We will be grappling with polycrises in 2025.
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