The Post-Boomer Economy

The history of capitalism is, not surprisingly, the history of the moneyed class borrowing money to hire workers to build more capital, whether it be coal mines, oil wells, steel mills, factories, rails, roads, skyscrapers, houses, office towers, ships, trains, cars, airplanes, satellites, computers, smartphones, or restaurants.

But if the peak age labor force has stopped growing, then we don’t really need to build any new physical capital to handle future population growth, all we need to do is replace existing capital when it wears out or becomes obsolete. And economic growth increasingly seems to be heavy on intellectual capital rather than physical capital — cloud-based infrastructure and data systems, not railroads, roads, or skyscrapers.

Here’s a very interesting take on the post-boomer economy by Conor Sen, a former hedge fund analyst.

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