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Will there be enough income for the young,in the future,to be able to maintain the illusionary global consumer economy?
Bellingham Bill
2013 Dec 13, 1:04pm
illusionary global consumer economy
is it illusory?
GDP is $48,000 per man, woman and child:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/USARGDPC
granted, that's in the US, and we're something of a global charity case now:
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/international/intinv/intinvnewsrelease.htm
says we're $4.5T in the hole and still digging.
So I guess our trade deficit is the #1 problem we face:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/NETEXP
Per-capita (25-54) that's $4000/yr of stuff:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=q0o
that we can't afford but getting anyway.
But I don't think we're going to run out of $200/bbl oil anytime soon, assuming we can still kite checks to pay for it.
AGW isn't going to really hurt us until later this century, if then.
The income issue is simple; clawing back the top 5%'s 33% take of the national income via political remedies.
Unfortunately, we're going to have to go through the GOP's dead body to effect this "marxist" approach.
So they're going to have to start losing more elections again before things are going to change for the better.
Looking at the official census US population projections, our demographics are curious.
Adding the age 62 to 67 cohort and subtracting the 18 to 23 cohort gives a rough measure of the space the upcoming generation will inherit from those moving off into retirement.
But that formula stands at NEGATIVE SEVEN POINT SEVEN MILLION right now! I had to check it since I didn't believe it . . . there are 19M seniors in that cohort and 27M "junior" new job seekers.
On the intake side, things will be stabilized right around 27M young adults for the next 30 years, and on the outflow side, this soon-to-retire cohort will peak at 24.9M in 2026, close to parity with the youngsters (25.9M).
Then, oddly, things quickly get worse again with the imbalance rising to 5-6M by 2035 onwards.
So if I'm doing the math right, young people are going to have to find their own place at the table to a rather significant extent.
This is visible here:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LFWA24TTUSM647S
where we see Gen Y so much bigger than the original boomers.
FWIW, the census spreadsheet goes out to age 100 so we can calculate the dependency ratio. It's 5:1 (working age to 65+) now and will fall to 4:1 by 2020 and stay at 3:1 from the 2030s on.
I tend to like the Japanese demographics better for some reason. Less Soylent Green vibe with their population:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LFWA24TTJPM647S
'course, how they can possibly honestly monetize their 1 quadrillion yen national debt, 'it is a mystery' . . .