Our revels are now ended
By Alistair Haimes, The Critic
The unavoidable tide of demographics and globalisation will bring an end to the long economic boom
“I really hope you enjoyed the past three decades given we’ve never had it so good, because the next few decades are going to be horrendous. Wait, let me rewind: where are we, economically? Not day-to-day; not post-Covid or mid-war or mid/whatever-Brexit, but panning out to a longer perspective. This boils down to two macro factors, two tides you can’t swim against: demographics and globalisation.
“’The political divide of the future will be over the elderly protecting their social safety net and the working-age population their real post-tax incomes.’ This was Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan in an influential paper written for the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in 2017, which they expanded into The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival, published in August 2020 before the wheels really fell off the world economy. Life comes at you fast these days.”
