My former professor and Nobelist from Columbia, •Teddy• Phelps, on the top problem of capitalism below. Aging.
But read it with this lens: can’t we solve it? Ahem, robots and AI are stealing whose jobs again? Japan is onto this already.
> If we start with demographics- we have the huge wave of retirement coming up in the next ten years. The United States will be, to an appreciable extent- much more than before- a country of older people. These people will be drawing on retirement and medical benefits. More than that, they will be withdrawing their labour services from the economy, and they’re not being replaced by a new-wave of young people coming up. Capital is going to find itself with less labour to work with so I’m afraid business investment activity is going to be weak ten years from now… and is weak already in anticipation of that. The decade beginning around 2020 will not be a good time for capitalism.
Thought Economics: Modern Capitalism | Lawrence H. Summers
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