The OECD released its predictions for the world economy until 2060. Capitalism will be in its fourth decade of stagnation and then – if we've done nothing about carbon emissions – the really serious impacts of climate change are starting to kick in. The OECD has a clear message the best of capitalism is over. If born in 2014, then by 2060 you are either a 45-year-old barrister or a 45-year-old barista. The middle-income jobs have all but disappeared.
The world will be four times richer, more productive, more globalised and more highly educated. It assumes a rapid rise in productivity, due to information technology. Three-quarters of all the growth expected comes from this. There is no certainty at all that the information revolution of the past 20 years will cascade down into ever more highly productive and value-creating industries. The veteran US economist Robert Gordon has suggested the productivity boost from info-tech is real but already spent.
On the other hand, by 2060 countries such as Sweden will have levels of inequality currently seen in the USA: think Gary, Indiana, in the suburbs of Stockholm. Los Angeles and Detroit look like Manila – abject slums alongside guarded skyscrapers.
World growth will slow to 2.7% because the catch-up effects boosting growth in the developing world – population growth, education, urbanisation – will peter out. Even before that happens, near-stagnation in advanced economies means a long-term global average over the next 50 years of just 3% growth, which is low. There is a fairly big risk that the meagre 3% growth projected comes closer to 1%.The growth of high-skilled jobs and the automation of medium-skilled jobs means, on the central projection, that inequality will rise by 30%.
Climate change will begin to destroy capital, coastal land and agriculture in the first half of the century, shaving up to 2.5% off world GDP and 6% in south-east Asia.
Europe and the USA each have to absorb 50 million migrants between now and 2060, with the rest of the developed world absorbing another 30 million. Without that, the workforce and the tax base shrinks so badly that states go bust. There will be not much in-between. Even to achieve a meagre average global growth rate of 3% we have to make labour "more flexible", the economy more globalised. Those migrants we have to welcome, en masse, to the tune of maybe two or three million a year into the developed world, for the next 50 years. The UK workforce is a mixture of old white people and newly arrived young migrants.
As Thomas Piketty suggests about the problem, the OECD points out, is that assets – whether they be a star racehorse, a secret bank account or the copyright on a brand's logo – tend to be intangible and therefore held in jurisdictions dedicated to avoiding wealth taxes.
The OECD report recommends more globalisation, more privatisation, more austerity, more migration and a wealth tax. The ultimate lesson from the report is that, sooner or later, an alternative programme to "more of the same" will emerge. Because populations armed with smart-phones, and an increased sense of their human rights, will not accept a future of high inequality.
The prognosis by this team of experts is that capitalism does not possess a healthy future. The Socialist Party recognises its terminal state so let us put it out of its misery and conduct a mercy killing upon it.
The world will be four times richer, more productive, more globalised and more highly educated. It assumes a rapid rise in productivity, due to information technology. Three-quarters of all the growth expected comes from this. There is no certainty at all that the information revolution of the past 20 years will cascade down into ever more highly productive and value-creating industries. The veteran US economist Robert Gordon has suggested the productivity boost from info-tech is real but already spent.
On the other hand, by 2060 countries such as Sweden will have levels of inequality currently seen in the USA: think Gary, Indiana, in the suburbs of Stockholm. Los Angeles and Detroit look like Manila – abject slums alongside guarded skyscrapers.
World growth will slow to 2.7% because the catch-up effects boosting growth in the developing world – population growth, education, urbanisation – will peter out. Even before that happens, near-stagnation in advanced economies means a long-term global average over the next 50 years of just 3% growth, which is low. There is a fairly big risk that the meagre 3% growth projected comes closer to 1%.The growth of high-skilled jobs and the automation of medium-skilled jobs means, on the central projection, that inequality will rise by 30%.
Climate change will begin to destroy capital, coastal land and agriculture in the first half of the century, shaving up to 2.5% off world GDP and 6% in south-east Asia.
Europe and the USA each have to absorb 50 million migrants between now and 2060, with the rest of the developed world absorbing another 30 million. Without that, the workforce and the tax base shrinks so badly that states go bust. There will be not much in-between. Even to achieve a meagre average global growth rate of 3% we have to make labour "more flexible", the economy more globalised. Those migrants we have to welcome, en masse, to the tune of maybe two or three million a year into the developed world, for the next 50 years. The UK workforce is a mixture of old white people and newly arrived young migrants.
As Thomas Piketty suggests about the problem, the OECD points out, is that assets – whether they be a star racehorse, a secret bank account or the copyright on a brand's logo – tend to be intangible and therefore held in jurisdictions dedicated to avoiding wealth taxes.
The OECD report recommends more globalisation, more privatisation, more austerity, more migration and a wealth tax. The ultimate lesson from the report is that, sooner or later, an alternative programme to "more of the same" will emerge. Because populations armed with smart-phones, and an increased sense of their human rights, will not accept a future of high inequality.
The prognosis by this team of experts is that capitalism does not possess a healthy future. The Socialist Party recognises its terminal state so let us put it out of its misery and conduct a mercy killing upon it.
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