Cornered animals always behave in the most unexpected ways. Today, the US and EU have been cornered both by the Wuhan virus' utter devastation and the 100% certified losses in commerce and technology. Both US and EU purchasing power has declined drastically as majority of citizens are struggling to get decent jobs. Don't be surprised if some of the nations in the west introduce an universal basic income (i.e. a minimum income paid to all citizens). Elon Musk has already warned that most people in the US will remain long term unemployed as technology continues to displace jobs. To me, the pandemic marks the beginning of the end of the western civilization. These nations will just become technology suppliers to growing developing economies (they lack scale now to commercialize R&D in their own countries - hyper loop, driverless cars, EV cars, 3D printing, FinTech, 5G, computing etc. will all scale in the developing world only) owing to their current R&D lead. We already see signs of this - Tesla sells more cars in China than in the US.
The biggest wild card is what the defeated poor/middle class citizens of these western nations will actually do as their economic utility drops quite close to zero and the only jobs they can work are the minimum wage ones such as in in retail/hospitality; or dangerous ones such as in mining, oil exploration. I said in some other thread - there will be a massive reset in the west in one way or another (revolution, new forms of governance, secession, wealth taking flight etc.), as 60-70% of the population is cornered into a "nothing to lose" position. And, I will close with what I began with - cornered animals behave in the most unexpected ways.
