4 - Prospects for the Twenty-First Century

Summary

Aspecter is haunting the OECD nations. It is not the specter of poverty or class warfare, as was the case a century ago, when leisure was the privilege of the very rich and workers toiled from sunrise to sunset to earn enough to purchase meager amounts of food, clothing, and shelter. In 1890, retirement was a rare phenomenon. Virtually all workers died while still in the labor force. Today, half of those in the labor force, supported by generous pensions, retire in their fifties.

To many of today's political leaders this situation, the realization of the dreams of reformers a century ago, is a potential disaster. With the baby-boom generation of 1945–65 now approaching retirement, they are confronted with the choice between defaulting on commitments to retirees, delaying the age of retirement, or increasing the taxes borne by young workers. The specter that now haunts OECD nations is not class warfare but intergenerational warfare.

The Impact of Technophysio Evolution on Work and Consumption

How did this crisis arise? The brief answer is technophysio evolution. Over the past century, technophysio evolution has permitted the average length of retirement to increase by five-fold, the proportion of a cohort that lives to retire to increase by seven-fold, and the amount of leisure time available to those still in the labor force to increase by nearly four-fold.

Since technophysio evolution is still ongoing, it is likely that improvements in health, life expectancy, and average income will also continue.