Also in the process, realizing that if we all... reduce our activities... cities like ... which has never seen... clear sky for many years... can hav… - Ha-Joon Chang

[W]e will need to rethink our priorities... not just at the individual level, but at the social level... In Britain we had these weird Thursday evenings... when we clapped for the NHS workers while the government was not willing to pay even a single more penny to them. That kind of thing has to change... We need to have the confidence to say that "Yes, there are things that are more fundamental, that are more important, that are not necessarily going to be rewarded by the market, and... the society has to find a way to make... [those] people... more rewarded, including... people who do unpaid care work at home." We need to rethink the ... [A] lot of scientists say... [as] an inevitable consequence of human encroachment in nature, we need to rethink our balance with nature, part of which is... that due to the unequal nature of many of our societies... There are a lot of countries where you have these farmers doing... and... encroaching into nature when there are fallow lands that are owned by s. So we need to rethink all these priorities...

It's not just about the current economic environment. History shows that slashing budgets always leads to recession.

I have a six-year-old son. His name is Jin-Gyu. He lives off me, yet he is quite capable of making a living. I pay for his lodging, food, education and health care. But millions of children of his age already have jobs. Daniel Defoe, in the 18th century, thought that children could earn a living from the age of four.
Moreover, working might do Jin-Gyu's character a world of good. Right now he lives in an economic bubble with no sense of the value of money. He has zero appreciation of the efforts his mother and I make on his behalf, subsidizing his idle existence and cocooning him from harsh reality. He is over-protected and needs to be exposed to competition, so that he can become a more productive person. Thinking about it, the more competition he is exposed to and the sooner this is done, the better it will be for his future development. It will whip him into a mentality that is ready for hard work. I should make him quit school and get a job. Perhaps I could move to a country where child labour is still tolerated, if not legal, to give him more choice in employment.