What Should US Financial Policies Be After Covid-19

Since the US began reshaping the tax law under Ronald Reagan to accord with the fantasy of trickle down economics the increase in our National Debt has exceeded the increase in economic growth.  Now we have a pandemic that has exposed virtually the entire US corporate sector as financially naked.  They have no financial reserves.  They have been too busy borrowing at cheap rates, often simply to fund stock buy-backs or executive bonuses.  Something like 40% of the bank bail out after the 2008 economic collapse ended up going to stock buy-backs and executive bonuses.

Now we are piling on trillions of dollars of  Federal Government debt to hand out money to every kind of business and virtually every consumer to combat the limitations imposed by the Covid-19 virus.  Our fantasy economic policies in the past make this bail out essential to avoid another Great Depression.  

But once Covid-19 is gone and we can get back to some semblance of economic normalcy we need to make a serious course correction in our financial theories.

For decades tax policy, and the policies of the Federal Reserve, have encouraged rampant incursion of debt, mosty to funnel money into the hands of people that don't need to consume much while stripping it away from people who spend almost every dollar on consumption.  

Every time the economy so much as hiccup's the Federal reserve has cut interest rates.  Historically low interest rates have become the norm.

We have taxed Capital Gains at lower rates than what working folks pay so we have cultivated a whole generation who learned the road to success was in trading assets back and forth instead of producing goods or services.  They have magnified their profits by borrowing because interest rates are so low that the profits they can make after paying Capital gains taxes can still make them wealthy, and their mutual overconfidence (the Fed will always bail us out) made them discount the fact that borrowing can also magnify losses.

Regular folks who spend a large part of their income on consumption pay the same or higher tax rate as people who make more in a year than they could spend in a lifetime.

Will Covid-19 be a catalyst for smarter economic policy making?  Of just lead to more of the same, or a pendulum swing back to policies that impoverish everyone but the heads of State?