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"some sort of improved welfare system" Retirement is culturally new and also is no longer something you do right before you die, but if you examine the numbers, soon a rather large fraction of the population will be retired. Much as childhood used to mean short manual labor on the farm or sweatshop factory, but now means sitting in school for 20 years. I find it highly likely that both ages will grow toward the middle, and much as joining .mil and being a soldier is seen as a young person's game, or dare I say being a software developer is seen as being a young persons game, everyone will "get used to" the idea that you only work from age 30 to 40, perhaps. Sit in school, maybe national service, raise your kids, until maybe 35, then retire at 45. If everyone (at least female) has kids in their 20s, that means we wouldn't need much if any day care, and we'd be retired in time to play with / supervise grandkids. Culturally I bet we'd see a bifurcation of work. "real work" would be what grunt labor still exists, stereotypical millwright work on robots at industrial plants, and writing boring TPS reports and CRUD websites. AKA "the grind". Retired work would be passive income lifestyle businesses and arts n crafts. Personally I'd probably go full on FOSS development rather than everything being the property of my employer. My grandmother would likely go full on knitting, selling $400 sweaters similar to but better than the ones at Nordstroms. My wife seems to enjoy traveling and as a FOSS guy all I need is a place to charge my laptop and the occasional network connection so I'm good with that. I would imagine no small number of people would get really into religion, exercise, watching youtube videos... |