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I’d rather think about solving this in the middle of a crisis. But I don’t have the knowledge and skills for that. Fortunately, during the corona crisis, most people trusted what virologists had to say. I can stay inside and think about the future. And when you think about the future, it’s hard not to project your wishes into it.

Somewhere at the beginning of 2020 I was in a project group philosophizing about “post-corona”. What will the economy and society look like after the epidemic? Can we learn from this that a different balance is needed between nature and humans? Do we need a stronger state? Will the economy further globalize or deglobalize?

At that moment I thought everything would change. Naive perhaps, because I am from 1983 and so I consciously went through the financial crisis of 2008. That didn’t change everything. The relationship between state and society on the one hand and the financial sector on the other has changed accordingly. But no more.

Corona is over and we are in the next crisis. Most people don’t want to look back either, so you’re unique while reading this column.

Meanwhile, the economy began to function as before in many areas. There was a lot of talk then about people leaving cities. “The Great Exit”. If you have to work from home, why would you do it from a very expensive house in Amsterdam? That is also possible from Groenlo.

However, house prices in Amsterdam continued to rise. Buyers left. And no matter how far the tenants are, they have already returned. Landlord Pararius had previously reported an increase in rents. The same is happening in other capitals. Besides the inhabitants of Groenlo, they are probably also expats.

Rising purchase prices, rising rents, and therefore increasing inequalities: exactly the same evolution as we already know.

There was another important turnaround: fewer and fewer employees had flexible working relationships. This peaked in the third quarter of 2020: there were 295,000 fewer flexible employment relationships than in the third quarter of 2019. That in itself is the idea behind flexible working: difficult times are easy to get through. For someone who is on call or with a temporary contract, you simply plan zero hours in the coming week. You cannot extend an annual contract.

But perhaps this crisis was different. What if employers tried to lose their flexible workers because of the crisis, but couldn’t get them back after the crisis? Permanent jobs may increase again after the crisis, for example due to a tight labor market or changes in legislation and regulations. Then flex workers will not come back.

However, CBS figures are mainly: hardness not for permanent jobs. The number of employees on duty is decreasing, the number of temporary jobs remains the same. And the number of employees with a temporary contract of more than one year is increasing. In itself it is positive, but the total number of flexible employees continues to increase as the number of permanent jobs increases.

The idea that a crisis changes everything only works if you have the institutions that take over the crisis to change everything. The European Union is a good example, whether you accept it or not. We have received the European Recovery Fund because of Corona. The EU is militarizing because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Netherlands has not seized the opportunity of the corona crisis to tackle fundamental inequalities in the housing and labor market. And this too is a choice.