Interesting thread. If I may add to the mix.

Jim writes:

> ...so since the

> effects of population decline and aging will be more deeply

> felt, and sooner, in developed societies rather than in

> developing and undeveloped nations. This raises the spectre

> of a global conflict over diminished productive capacity that

> is more likely to deepen the impoverishment of all.

Discussions of production and productive capacity seem to casually assume that (increased) production is inherently "good" and every improvement in productivity is to be welcomed. Rarely do policy makers challenge this by asking: what are we making? and, what are we getting better at making? If it were a simple case of we are becoming better at making more of the essentials to feed and house more people then the assumptions may be fair; but isn't it rather the case that we are simply becoming more productive at making the non-essentials and trivial. Yet the use of both labour and capital to produce trivia (and the endless "upgrades" and enhancements to perfectly good existing product versions) is recorded in the positive.

The business pages regularly provide the numbers showing growth of the economy and politicians speak of these numbers all the time. Whether we're making more bread or more bombs is omitted or rarely discussed, any qualitative distinction does not register. Isn't it that the spectre of conflict is over competition for those resources to fuel ever greater production since our measure of economic success relies on it?

> ...This (political/social instability) will certainly be the

> case if productivity improvements cannot support existing

> social infrastructures for a much enlarged non-productive

> population with a greatly reduced workforce.

The last sentence in your paragraph above is interesting because it is so loaded, in view of what I've mentioned above. As long as our expectations remain as they are, as long as demand is continually stimulated for ever more trivial non-essentials, and as we export such an economic model to developing nations, then a day of reckoning must surely be arrived at. As developing nations may want to emulate us, then the current model is surely unsustainable? Isn't a point reached at which it is simply not within the resource capacity of the planet to ensure that every single individual over the age of 10 has a mobile phone and every adult has a car? Along with all the other paraphernalia of modern life - the stuff presented as being so essential for existence yet we didn't even know we needed until an advertiser told us we did? It appears that this is the model we're exporting to developing nations so, whilst we can debate the anticipated outcomes of population changes, migrant fl
 ows and
 competition for resources, perhaps the very basis of production needs re-considering. The kind of review that is usually reserved for times of economic catastrophe when, suddenly, a whole other set of values appear which were irrelevant or ignored when the economy was in good health.

Admittedly, I'm no expert in this, just that as I get older I become more aware of all the things that seemed so essential, the must-haves, that after purchase or consumption didn't really mean much at all. Yet the qualities of life that are truly valuable and worthy of improving - our relations with each other - are little more than tokens invoked by politicians whilst their every action and policy decision undermines them.

Richard



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