The World After We Are All Dead

To me, demographics and economics determine much if not all of our religious and political beliefs. They influence how we interpret historical information and which myths we choose to belief or not believe. To some extent, it is possible to short circuit the influence of demographics and economics by recognizing their presence. Seldom is anyone interested in the trend taking place at this moment and where it might take us.

I would guess that everyone who reads this has noticed how many people there are with grey hair (or hair that is grey but painted over with some other color). What would our communities be like if there were three or four times as many old people as there are now? That is the future a few generations from now.

The place I now live seems quite crowded. Recently I drove to Salt Lake City and back. Most of the time the traffic was light and that route is not over populated. If trends continue, those areas will have even fewer people and those like the central city where I now live will have more. Fargo anticipates a lot of growth as well. When the population peaks in a few generations, there will be many more in large cities and many fewer in rural area (unless current trends change).

It's fun to speculate about politics and religion when the proportion of old people is substantially larger than it is today. Will it be possible for old people to tax younger ones even more and receive social security as they do today? The votes will be there.

The link predicts that Islam will be the largest religion. But if, because there will be more old people in the future, there is even more competition for tax money than there is now it seems like the tax breaks and donations that fuel religion will be harder to come by.

Those of us today feel important. But, as they say, time will march on without us.

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