Do the Egyptian?
prosperity, opportunity, justice, peace
First, the megatrend view:
This is a story of aging populations and their bureaucracies versus swelling youth populations.
China, Japan, Korea, the United States, Australia and most of Europe feature the largest populations of senior citizens in history. Moreover, their children’s generation, especially Gen X (born 1965 – 1980) is not sufficiently big enough to counterbalance their representation in government and business. The demographic counterbalance of youth exists, not in industrialized countries, but in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.
Old versus young, 20th century versus 21st, Cold War versus Assymetrical War, Core versus Gap, North versus south.
All of these tensions are at play in the countries where all the young people of the planet reside.
“What we’re watching is a massive malfunctioning of the global economy.“
At the root of the problem: dumb growth.
Dumb growth is, in many ways, bogus — rather than reflecting enduring wealth creation, it largely reflects the transfer of wealth: from the poor to the rich, the young to the old, tomorrow to today, and human beings to corporate ‘people’.
Dumb growth is growth without prosperity. And it’s far from an Egyptian problem.