{"id":50086,"date":"2020-07-27T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-18T18:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/?p=50086"},"modified":"2022-11-01T15:58:14","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T22:58:14","slug":"the-future-of-financial-services-4-highlights-from-salesforce-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/au\/blog\/the-future-of-financial-services-4-highlights-from-salesforce-live\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future Of Financial Services: 4 Highlights From Salesforce Live"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

1. A new normal: How economics, financial services and social cohesion are evolving<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If this had been an in-person event there would have been a ripple through the audience as Brett King spoke \u2014 \u201cdon\u2019t get me wrong, I\u2019m not a socialist\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s tough to discuss the challenges the world is facing today and Brett\u2019s possible solutions without sounding a little socialist \u2014 traditional capitalism and the free market are just not part of the answers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of challenges are emerging, economically and otherwise,\u201d Brett told us. \u201cBut what are the lessons from history?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

King discussed the changes seen after the black plague in Europe \u2014 including improved living standards off the back of higher rates of pay for in-demand labourers, and pushes to change urban architecture \u2014 and after the Spanish flu \u2014 national healthcare programs and the idea of the hospital as similar to wartime field hospitals rather than palliative care or long-term convalescence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, King said, we\u2019re seeing a correlation between a health crisis and an increase in the number of protests in US cities, driven by inequality, economic uncertainty and general uncertainty about the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the past 50 years we\u2019ve seen a dramatic increase in the gap between the rich and the poor \u2014 King points to this as a stressor, as well as pointing out that COVID has impacted on those in lower to middle income brackets more than it has on wealthy people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Housing anxiety and food anxiety is increasing in the pandemic \u2014 but over the past 30 years homelessness had already been increasing, despite strong (outside the GFC) economic growth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is counterintuitive to the way capitalism is supposed to work. The pandemic has introduced stressors, but capitalism has not provided a safety net \u2014 in that sense, capitalism has failed us. A different form of incentivisation for markets, King hypothesised, may have led to an adequate stockpile of PPE, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe market is not incentivised to mitigate social problems.\u201d<\/p>