Agreed on all counts. Although I doubt it’ll be anything like “30 years of college plus a really long career,” given how quickly whole industries and career paths rise and fall these days. We’ll have to collectively get on board with life plans consisting of some kind of alternating periods of work and education, or maybe shorter worker hours per year with continuous education for skill gains.
Right now, over time we gain skills and become more valuable (but also more expensive) employees. An indefinitely lifespan would increase that, but how much depends on how long our oldest skills are still valuable. I imagine much of what made a 1950s new employee very valuable in the 1970′s as an experienced employee would be much less useful (or even detrimental) in the 2040s in many lines of work.
About the old guard: one of the reasons this is such an issue today is because wealth increases with age and, in wealthy families, across generations. An indefinite lifespan could basically eliminate inheritance as a thing, and rich people *do* still want their own children to succeed and have opportunities, so what will happen there? And if people don’t need to retire, but still become wealthier with age, then capital accumulation could go way up, and that might finally shift real returns on capital down from their 4-5% historical rate (which, and I think I first saw this pointed out somewhere on this site, just so happens to correspond to an economic doubling time of ~14-18 years, aka one generation).
Agreed on all counts. Although I doubt it’ll be anything like “30 years of college plus a really long career,” given how quickly whole industries and career paths rise and fall these days. We’ll have to collectively get on board with life plans consisting of some kind of alternating periods of work and education, or maybe shorter worker hours per year with continuous education for skill gains.
Right now, over time we gain skills and become more valuable (but also more expensive) employees. An indefinitely lifespan would increase that, but how much depends on how long our oldest skills are still valuable. I imagine much of what made a 1950s new employee very valuable in the 1970′s as an experienced employee would be much less useful (or even detrimental) in the 2040s in many lines of work.
About the old guard: one of the reasons this is such an issue today is because wealth increases with age and, in wealthy families, across generations. An indefinite lifespan could basically eliminate inheritance as a thing, and rich people *do* still want their own children to succeed and have opportunities, so what will happen there? And if people don’t need to retire, but still become wealthier with age, then capital accumulation could go way up, and that might finally shift real returns on capital down from their 4-5% historical rate (which, and I think I first saw this pointed out somewhere on this site, just so happens to correspond to an economic doubling time of ~14-18 years, aka one generation).