What if we are the ones...?

Nearly all of my posts have been about details of my life since 2007. However, I intend to write about other stuff, too, now that many of the transitions into a respectable adulthood have passed. I often think of large-scale ideas, and rarely write them down. One such idea focuses on the current poor economy and the bleak forecast for the next decade or so.

To begin with, the overall social pendulum seems to be heading in the opposite direction now, towards greater uncertainties, risk, and upheaval. What I mean by this is compared with the "park yourself and prosper" approach to life in the past 75 years, the world population appears to be shifting to that of near constant migration. People who were born 50 or so years ago often did work hard for many of their achievements. But there were also many places where the path was made easy.

Houses used to cost only 2-3 times a person's annual salary. In Australia, the current average price of a house is about $500,000, and in Canada, it's about $250,000. Only in USA can a person buy a decent house for closer to $100,000 -- but that's only because the economy is especially bad in USA. Average middle class salaries are about $45,000 per year in Canada, $55,000 in Australia, and $37,000 in USA. So between these three countries, it is clear to see that someone earning a middle class income in Australia has no hope in ever outright owning a home. In Canada, house prices are about 5 times the middle class salary. So Baby Boomers were able to reach complete home ownership in much less time than people today.

Employment used to be done in a much more humane manner. Once you got a job, you didn't have to keep looking over your shoulder for the corporate ax. You could focus on doing your job well, and you could trust management to make the right decisions for the prosperity of the company and its employees. This brought about an economy where major purchases, such as a house or a car, were far less risky. People could work no more than 40 hours per week and expect that time away from work would always be theirs. Today, employment seems to have the impersonal characteristics of a livestock herd. When times get tight, the herd gets culled. The herd is grazing comfortably, when suddenly they are forced to move this way, then that way. Every minute is micro-managed. And if the owner of the herd wants to recklessly drive them all off a cliff, so what? The smarter members of the herd will choose to migrate to other companies, but the same pattern of micro-management and recklessness is quite pervasive. At some point, people just gamble and choose to stop moving around because constant moving is tiresome.

Education and health care were not priced to the edge of affordability. People didn't pay $100,000 for an undergraduate degree that ended up being worthless towards employment, nor did they walk out of a week's stay in a hospital with a bill for $100,000.

So what could these trends mean for people trying to establish themselves today? Certainly, a greater chunk of a person's life has to be dedicated to becoming established. One can no longer really be considered an adult at age 18, but rather more like age 28. If real adulthood no longer arrives until age 28, then that means stable relationships and home ownership also get delayed. More people are waiting until later in life to have children, and this choice is not out of vanity, but of economic necessity. Family stability simply isn't there unless job stability exists. These adverse social changes mean years of transience. At some point, society will simply be broken, and the transience will be nearly permanent over a lifetime for most people. Jobs will be limited, as will resources for self-sufficiency.

Where is this discussion going? As the title hints, I wonder when will this tipping point come, where it will be apparent that people find the road to becoming stably established blocked. The prosperity enjoyed by previous generations cannot continue forever, and this notion is supported by some thought experiments on the growth of energy consumption, which in turn fuels economic growth.

Therefore the question is what if we are the ones who will be the first to experience this severe downward shock of reduced prosperity? What will be the social consequences? What will be the psychological consequences once masses of people realize they are permanently stuck in a new peasant class, each day having been reduced to essential survival matters?