Aging, Health, and the Economy: Challenges and
Opportunities
The Age Wave will transform all of society as baby boomers storm their way
into what has traditionally been the retirement years. As gerontologist and psychologist Ken
Dychtwald points out, instead of retiring, many will break into new areas of
interest and pursuits, both for the money and for the joy of new experiences.
Opportunities abound for this new wave of "agelessly aging" individuals. (See
"Ageless Aging: The Next Era of Retirement.")
Yet, there are still many challenges to an aging society, note Richard
Lamm and Robert Blank, and particularly in the United States,
where resistance to health-care rationing could lead to ruin in the future. They argue
that a new moral vision for health care is needed in the United States that weighs the
needs of individuals against the future security of all citizens. (See "The Challenge
of an Aging Society.")
Society will also face difficult moral choices for closing the wealth gap,
a factor frequently blamed for the world's conflicts. Attempts to narrow the gap usually
focus on raising the incomes of those at the bottom. But few pundits (other than
professional sports team owners) dare to suggest that incomes should have a ceiling. In
this issue, labor journalist Sam Pizzigati proposes a maximum wage law
that would heavily tax all income that exceeds 10 times the minimum wage. (See "The
Rich and the Rest: The Growing Concentration of Wealth.")
Another facet of economic change and its impacts on society will be seen
in the world of work. Jobs are disappearing to automation and outsourcing, so what will
workers do in the future? One solution, suggests consulting futurist David Pearce
Snyder, can be found in the open-source movement that gives more workers access
to the knowledge they need to add more value to the work they do. Calling this new
phenomenon "extra-preneurship"—the creation of virtual networks for
collaboration as well as self-actualization—Snyder shows how the trend will affect
all levels of worker, from experts and executives to rank-and-file employees. (See
"Extra-Preneurship: Reinventing Enterprise for the Information Age.")
Click to order the July-August 2005 issue of THE FUTURIST.
