Virus delivers a universal hit

Helen White.

Back to normal sounds comforting, when a virus has upended our world. But returning to pre-Covid-19 days isn't possible, our Prime Minister warned on Monday.

Others are hopeful. Economist Amanda Janoo calls this global hibernation The Great Pause, a time to rethink. In his Voices column, Dunedin businessman Ian Taylor was thankful for ‘‘time, space and opportunity to focus on ‘‘what might be’’, particularly the future of work.

I'm all for rethinking; we're told there simply won't be enough jobs.

As a student, I did paid holiday work for an accountant, in a rest-home, as a nanny, and on orchards. I helped (unpaid) older siblings by child-minding, cooking, preserving and sewing curtains.

Nowadays, the task of updating the accountant's depreciation records (like a later interloans job in a library reference department) would be computerised; the sub-matron and nannying jobs filled by professionals; the orchard jobs by labourers from the Pacific. But the housework?

Historically, paid and unpaid work was split between genders. That split endures. Moreover, modern ‘‘working’’ women might be trained/paid for the same eldercare or childcare that other women do for free.

Paid and unpaid jobs are now cast as real work and non-work.

It's time to question if all ‘‘essential’’ jobs are rewarded by the benefits increase, wage-subsidies and mooted one-off cash injection, generous though they may be.

I am one of the lucky ones, those over-65s who have New Zealand Super imprinted fortnightly on their bank statements. Because of that security, we can do whatever we like; like many, I choose to work.

In the week to March 1, I'd taken services in three different churches, and started planning which Fringe Festival acts I'd review; my ‘‘normal’’ now is slower than my normal, then: I read the ODT, because Martin Luther King recommended you preach with Bible in one hand and newspaper in the other; read the book(s) I'm reviewing; exchange family news; do laundry; cook meals; admire what my husband, John, has achieved in the garden, sort weeds into ‘‘evils’’ and compostables; check buckets of harvested fruit before filling more.

Up the ladder I direct super-sized pears to fall somewhere other than the cranberry bush, or pick apples coming on — Peasgood Nonesuch, Cox's Orange, Sturmer, Golden Delicious — mow lawns; make new paths; clear under the biggest tree so that when pears fall they're visible (and clean); sort fruit to store, donate or preserve, bottling in my mother's neighbour's jars; harvest the veges I grow around the edge of John's flower-paddock — purple potatoes, cauli, broccoli, celery, beans, tomatoes, zucchini — shop for essentials; stack kitchen shelves; give/receive pastoral care by phone.

Little of this is paid. Then again, all of it is paid, for I'm over 65. Not having to worry about money, I've time to consider how much fairer it would be if there was a universal basic income (UBI), to cover the thousands of people losing jobs. Like NZ Super, it wouldn't be means-tested, but create a level playing-field for each child, woman and man. The Government has the means to do it, through quantitative easing; the Reserve Bank governor has our backs.

The UBI has recently been explored by New Zealand financial journalists and columnists, in social media campaigns and by politicians. It has even been endorsed by libertarian economist Milton Friedman and tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.

It may answer the hopes of ODT columnists Chris Trotter and Greg Turner that we come out of lockdown, in Turner's words, ‘‘with a world view that recognises the economy is there to serve society’’ and not the other way around.