What Does ‘The Great Reset’ Mean for the US Economy?

How serious is an edict from Europe that claims the power to compel America’s economic and societal transformation?

President Donald Trump (L) shakes hands to World Economic Forum (WEF) founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab after he deliverend a speech at the Congress centre during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, on Jan. 21, 2020. Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

A rather small cluster of people in Europe—the global elite, as it were—have decided that the entire world must be “reset” in 2021.

In fact, the “Great Reset” is the theme of next year’s World Economic Forum summit to be held in February in Davos, Switzerland.

Reset or Crackdown?

But what does the Great Reset mean?

I’ll let the good folks at the World Economic Forum explain—from their own website—what it is that they have in mind:

• “‘The Great Reset’ is a commitment to jointly and urgently build the foundations of our economic and social system for a more fair, sustainable, and resilient future.”
• “It requires a new social contract centered on human dignity, social justice, and where societal progress does not fall behind economic development.”
• “The global health crisis has laid bare longstanding rupture in our economies and societies, and created a social crisis that urgently requires decent, meaningful jobs.”

There’s much more to this “reset” business coming out of the World Economic Forum than green fuel opportunities and sustainability. Proclamations from Prince Charles and other elite world leaders talk about changing the entire world all at once—and soon.

Per His Royal Highness, Prince Charles:

“We need to evolve our economic model and put planet and people at the heart of global value creation. ... We need to put nature at the heart of how we operate. We simply can’t waste any more time.”

There are so many questions that I almost don’t know where to begin.

Is the World Economic Forum proposing that the United States turn its economy over to them, or some other international body, to turn it into a green economy overnight?

It sure sounds like it.

US Social and Economic Foundations Not Good Enough?

But why is it that we have to “build the foundations of our economic and social systems” when we’ve already done that?

The U.S. Constitution is the foundation of our economic and social system, and it has outperformed the rest of the world’s other social and economic systems for centuries. Private property, the rule of law, capitalism, and individual rights—these are the values and rights of a free people.

The world—and the would-be titans of Davos—would do well to emulate those aspects, not trash them.

But, according to Klaus Schwab, founder and chief executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, we Americans shouldn’t really have a say in the matter.

If that’s the case, why are we wasting all this time with a national election to decide our next president?

For our edification, Uncle Klaus instructs us that:

“We only have one planet and we know that climate change could be the next global disaster with even more dramatic consequences for humankind. We have to decarbonize the economy in the short window still remaining and bring our thinking and behavior once more into harmony with nature.”

Really?

The entire world must do as this Klaus character says or it is doomed?

Isn’t that what Vice President Al Gore said 20 years ago, as he made millions on green-tech investments?

China Is the Problem, Not the US or UK

Is the world’s biggest problem the “unregulated, unrestrained capitalism” of the United States and the UK or is it the potential threat of climate change?

Schwab then asserts that the CCP virus hit both countries “hard,” “the pandemic has shown once again that neoliberalism in this form has had its day.”

That’s quite a stretch. The United States is the most vibrant and innovative economy in the world, while the UK is the sixth-richest nation in the world.

Besides, given that the pandemic was willfully caused and spread throughout the world by the Chinese Communist Party, it’s quite obvious that Schwab has misplaced the blame.

He should be condemning the brutes in Beijing for what they’ve done to the world, not countries that have been victimized by it.

Germany certainly blames China. So, too, does Italy, the UK, Japan, the United States, and many other nations.

How does a virus that likely came from a Wuhan lab in totalitarian China and then spread around the world via unrestricted air travel from Wuhan to the rest of the world amount to an indictment of the liberal economic order?

Who Is Klaus Schwab?

I don’t remember Schwab being on the ballot in the United States back in 2016, nor do I see his name on the ballot in 2020.

Why does he think he has the authority to dictate how the U.S. economy is arranged or rearranged?

Perhaps Schwab would be better served by remembering that over the past century, every time a European had an itch to tell the rest of the world what to do, it ends up going very, very badly for people everywhere. (Beijing and Moscow might want to keep that in mind, as well.)

Decarbonize Now—Or Else

And by the way, just how soon must we “decarbonize” the planet by eliminating carbon dioxide from our energy sources?

According to the prince of Wales, there’s simply no time to waste—even though projections for the United States to decarbonize indicate that it will take until 2050 to do so, and will cost “decent, meaningful jobs” in the process.

Perhaps what’s most disturbing about these very undemocratic diktats coming from the organizers of the World Economic Forum is that they feel eminently justified in announcing them and expecting the United States to follow their orders.

That begs the question: What do they know that we don’t?

James R. Gorrie is the author of “The China Crisis” (Wiley, 2013) and writes on his blog, TheBananaRepublican.com. He is based in Southern California.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.