A never-seen-before decline in world demographics will require innovative adaptation. What are the must-haves that will determine if a country emerges successfully post the pandemic or not? That the future of work is hybrid is a given, less clear are the myriad of consequences. The consequence of culture wars is not always actual physical conflict, but the latter never occurs without the former. Lockdown fast-food habits could be lasting.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“A paradigm shift is necessary (…) Countries need to learn to live with and adapt to decline.” (Frank Swiaczny, former UN chief of population trends and analysis, about global population decline.)
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
Damien Cave, Emma Bubola and Choe Sang-Hun, Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications
(The New York Times, 22 May 2021)
Almost all over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust. This reversal is dizzying but doesn’t have to be seen simply as a cause for alarm. Demographers now predict that by the latter half of the century at the latest, the global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time, implying in the process hard-to-fathom adjustments. Take the example of China: if the trend doesn’t reverse, its population will fall from 1.41 billion now to about 730 million in 2100, implying that the population pyramid would flip (instead of a base of young workers supporting a narrower band of retirees, China would have as many 85-year-olds as 18-year-olds). Mind-blowing! (reads in about 10-12 min).
Click here to read the full article
Nouriel Roubini, Leaders and Laggards in the Post-Pandemic Recovery
(Project Syndicate, 24 May 2021)
Some major economies like the US and China are recovering fast from the pandemic, but others like the EU or Japan are slower or languishing while most of emerging and developing economies remain in a state of acute crisis. This article reads like a checklist: it enumerates the main economic, social and geopolitical factors that will determine the way in which the global economic recovery takes shape in the coming months and years (reads in 5-6 min).
Click here to read the full article
What executives are saying about the future of hybrid work
(McKinsey, 20 May 2021)
The future is hybrid! According to a recent McKinsey survey, 9 out of 10 organizations are switching to hybrid working., de facto combining remote and on-site working (interestingly, the survey confirms that productivity and customer satisfaction have increased during the pandemic). The majority of executives expect that (for all roles that aren’t essential to perform on-site) employees will be on-site between 21 and 80% of the time, or one to four days per week. Consequences will be manifold (reads in 6-8 min).
Click here to read the full article
Zach Stanton, How the ‘Culture War’ Could Break Democracy
(Politico, 20 May 2021)
This is an interview with the sociologist James Davison Hunter who 30 years ago popularized the concept of culture war. Today, he sees a culture war that has expanded from issues of religion and family culture to take over politics, creating a dangerous sense of winner-take-all conflict over the future of the country. His warning: “Culture wars always precede shooting wars. They don’t necessarily lead to a shooting war, but you never have a shooting war without a culture war prior to it, because culture provides the justifications for violence” (reads in about 12-15 min).
Click here to read the full article
Kara Baskin, The pandemic saved the fast food industry
(Experience Magazine, 20 May 2021)
This article claims that the fast-food industry had reached its nadir in 2016, derided as nutritionally suspect. But this changed with the pandemic: fast food’s draw is standardization and recognizability, and its quaintly defining features – the low contact, the familiar menu items, the ability to feast in the comfort of our car – suddenly became assets. Will this endure? Possibly. Some experts predict that some features of fast food could become lasting habits. Read on (7-8 min).
Click here to read the full article
