Zur Erinnerung: Die demografische Entwicklung wird zum bestimmenden Faktor
Demografie ist Schicksal. Das klingt übertrieben, charakterisiert aber sehr gut, was uns bevorsteht. Sie führt zu einem Zeitenwandel in der Wirtschaft, den die Politik nicht versteht, weshalb die falschen Prioritäten gesetzt werden:
→ Demografie, Zins, Inflation und Ungleichheit
→ Die Demografie dürfte die Realzinsen deutlich drücken
→ Zur Wirkung der Demografie auf die Finanzmärkte
→ „Wie die Demografie-Falle Ihr Vermögen bedroht“
Deshalb heute zur Erinnerung ein Kommentar von Roger Bootle, Chairman von Capital Economics im Telegraph, der ein neu erschienenes Buch zum Anlass nimmt, das Thema nochmals zusammenzufassen:
- “It is now widely believed that depressed aggregate demand, accompanied by ultra-low inflation and near-zero interest rates, is the new normal. (…) Some distinguished economists suggested that we were in an era of secular stagnation. What’s more, they said, there was no obvious end in sight. There came to be pretty general agreement that the world was suffering from an excess of desired savings in relation to desired investment: the so-called savings glut.” – bto: Ich nenne es ja “debt glut”, aber das ist ja egal.
- “A new book has just appeared that proposes a single major development as an explanation of what has happened: The Great Demographic Reversal by Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan. (…) Their explanation begins with the integration into the global trading system of China and other emerging markets. This effectively amounted to the addition of more than 1 billion workers and not much capital to the world economy. The result, as you would expect, was a depression of real wages in the developed world and higher profits, leading to increased inequality, downward pressure on inflation and, given the savings propensities of these countries, deficient aggregate demand at the global level. This had to be counteracted by ultra-loose monetary policy.” – bto: Das klingt zunächst einleuchtend.
- “(…) something new (…) is their stress on demographic factors within the developed world. From 1980 to 2010, in most developed countries, the working age population was rising quite significantly, reflecting the earlier baby boom. Meanwhile, the dependency ratio – that is, the ratio of both young and old non-workers to workers – declined as the birth rate fell back and the number of retirees had not yet risen. Moreover, the participation rate in the workforce was also increasing, driven partly by the increased employment of women.” – bto: Das ist nicht neu. Die BIZ hatte das auch schon vor einigen Jahren in einer Studie, die Thema bei bto war.
- “This internal demographic factor had effects in exactly the same direction as the China factor. So the world economy experienced the largest ever positive labour shock. Goodhart and Pradhan say that between the years of 1991 and 2018, the effective labour force for the world’s trading system more than doubled.” – bto: Und dies wird gerne vergessen.
- “Because of the attitude of China and other emerging market countries to running current account surpluses, their rise boosted world savings and depressed global demand. The internal demographic factor in the West did the same because of the typical pattern of saving and spending across a person’s lifetime. The peak saving years are the middle ones. In retirement, by contrast, people typically dissave, as they spend in excess of their current income and finance this by running down their accumulated assets.” – bto: Und jetzt werden alle älter! Damit kehrt sich diese Entwicklung um.
- “They argue that we are now at a demographic turning point. In both the East and West, populations are ageing rapidly. Many countries, including Japan, Germany and China, are going to experience dramatic drops in the working age population, accompanied by major dissaving by the old and retired.” – bto: Damit wird Geld “knapp” und Vermögenspreise fallen. Gut, dass wir dazu auch noch Klimapolitik betreiben.
- “(…) during the next few decades there will be an intensifying shortage of labour that will drive up real wages and reduce inequality. Meanwhile, as this is accompanied by a revival of aggregate demand, there will be upward pressure on inflation and interest rates.” – bto: So ist es!
