Bloomberg New Economy: How the Pandemic Shoved Us Into the Future

To an extraordinary degree, disease shapes human destiny. The Plague of Justinian (A.D. 542 to 755) decimated the enslaved across the Roman Empire and triggered a new era of feudalism. The Black Death’s toll centuries later sparked a social revolution that broke up the estates of feudal overlords and propelled the rise of new technologies—the iron plow in the countryside and, in cities, labor-saving devices like the printing press and water pumps.

Of course, history never repeats itself exactly. This pandemic hasn’t been nearly as deadly as those that depopulated the ancient world. And the novel coronavirus turns the Black Death paradigm on its head: rather than acting as a social leveler, it’s dramatically increased inequality. U.S. billionaires added almost $1 trillion to their fortunes during Covid-19, even as the new laboring underclasses face economic hardship and hunger.