Let’s summarize:
1) We have a housing shortage, a worker shortage, a skills shortage, a savings shortage, and a growing cash flow shortage for the majority of middle class people.
2) The wage and income gap, however measured, has been widening almost every year for more than 50 years.
3) Government debt continues to grow. We use it as a political weapon but it continues to grow. We do not know how it will end.
4) We have over 25 million millionaires in the U.S., many or most of whom do not feel rich, and an increasing number of them are financially struggling as severely as those in lower economic status. I count myself among this last group.
5) We have a relatively small number of billionaire businesses growing rapidly that are concentrating the world’s wealth and power at ever increasing rates.
6) Half of all households could not come up with a thousand dollars cash in an emergency.
7) We are fixated on anticipated new artificial intelligence driven technology that, we expect, will upend all prior norms and further accelerate the trends above.
8) We expect ever-increasing catastrophic losses from the forces of nature. This is expected to disrupt our housing supply, our food supply, our water supply, and our air supply.
9) We see a rise of fascism, a resurgence of bigotry, racism, violence, and risks of non-democratic action both fueled by and enabled by new technology.
10) Obesity and a range of mental health problems are on the rise. Our food quality is decreasing. Most of us are getting less sleep, sex, and exercise. For the first time in our lives, life expectancy is decreasing. Quality of life in later years is decreasing faster.
11) The most optimistic among us anticipate that in the future new discoveries and technology will help us escape the perils of all of the above.
12) And yet, despite all this, we continue to wonder why more of our informed young adults are electing to not have children.
