Dead_or_Alive , 20 hours ago

The pace of technological change and innovation was always going to slow down this decade. But Covid, Ukraine and a decoupling from Russia/China has further slowed it.

You need three things in abundance to create tech. First an advanced economy, which narrows down most of the world. Second you need lots of capital to burn while you make said advances. Finally you need lots of 20 and thirty something’s who will invent and develop the tech.

For the last 20 years we’ve had all of those conditions in the Western world. Boomers were at the height of their earnings potential and their kids were leaving home in droves letting them pour money into investments. Low interest rates abound because capital was looking for places to be utilized. China was the workshop of the world building low to mid range stuff allowing the West to focus its excess Millennials age workforce on value added and tech work.

Now in the USA boomers are retiring and there aren’t enough GenX to make up the difference. Millennials and finally getting down to household creation or their oldest cohorts (Xennials) just now entering into their mid 40s and starting to move up in their careers but they probably still have kids to support. So it will be some time before capital becomes plentiful again. Gen Z is large but they aren’t enough to back fill the loss of Millennials.

Ohh I made a point to highlight that this was a US demographic phenomena. Europe and Japan do not have a large Millennial or GenZ populations to replace their aging boomers. We have no modern economic model to map out what will happen to them.

China is going through a demographic collapse worse than what you see in Europe or Japan. Only they aren’t rich to compensate add in the fact that they decided to antagonize their largest trading partners in the West causing the decoupling we are now seeing.

The loss of their labor means the West has to reshore or find alternative low wage markets for production and expend a lot of capital to build out the plant in those markets to do so.

Add on top geopolitical instability of the Ukraine and you have a recipe for slower tech growth.