A “3-D hurricane” of “deficit, debt, and demography” is what fund manager Robert D. Arnott says the world will soon be facing.  Though the perils of ours and other nations’ debt and deficits are well known, awareness of the dangers of demography is now growing as we look for practical ways to deal with the first two “Ds”.

Demography, of course, is (according to the American Heritage Dictionary) “the study of the characteristics of human populations, such as size, growth, density, distribution, and vital statistics.”

What does demography have to do with debts and deficits?  It is because demographics tell us that the populations of nations grappling with debt are statistically heavy on older people.  This is going to become more pronounced in the years ahead, and will have a major impact on many nations’ finances.

Not that increased lifespans are bad, it’s just that they pose problems we haven’t faced before.  Today a good portion of the world’s debt problems revolve around pensions for the elderly. Americaisn’t the only country to have a “paygo” program like Social Security which taxes people during their working years to provide benefits to the elderly.  When a nation’s economy is booming, and especially when workers substantially outnumber retirees – as has been the case in this country since the baby boomers started working – paying benefits to the elderly isn’t a problem.  But with the first baby boomers now reaching retirement, that’s going to change.

Knowing that one will have retirement benefits provided by the government has been shown to influence people’s reproductive choices.  Traditionally, older people have relied on their children to help them during their declining years.  The fact that one can rely on younger people in general instead of one’s own children – coupled with the medical advances that have ensured most children will live to adulthood in developed countries – has led to substantially reduced birth rates.  For this and other reasons, baby boomers here and abroad have not replaced themselves.

To maintain its population a country must have a birth rate of 2.1 children per woman.  In this month’s edition of The Atlantic, author Megan McArdle suggests that because no European country has a birthrate this high and because the average age of the population is rising (in time one in three people in Europe will be retired), there simply aren’t enough younger workers to support both the retirees and pay off national debts.

McArdle points out that it isn’t just the numbers that are troubling – younger workers are different from older workers.  Younger workers have more energy and thus are more productive.  But they are also more willing to take risks.  And while many risks fail, the success of others makes up for it.  The innovation necessary to drive an economy largely arises from its younger workers.  As populations age, innovation dwindles.

Innovation also depends on the availability of capital.  As more and more people retire, more and more capital is lost as retirees begin using the money they invested while working.

The problems of aging populations, problems that have beset rural areas for decades, are now appearing in the rest of the world.  And this reminds us again of how vital it is to attract young people to rural communities.  Without their energy and innovation, small towns don’t stand much of a chance against the “1-D” hurricane of demography, let alone the inevitable problems the other 2-Ds are bound to bring…

I read recently that scientists studying the evolution of language have concluded that over time, languages become simpler, explaining perhaps why the works of Shakespeare can be a little confusing today.  Linguists also believe that originally human speech included not just the consonant and vowel sounds we are familiar with, but many other vocal sounds, including a variety of clicks, as the Bushmen of Africa still use.

One need only try to decipher a typical text message to realize that our written language is currently undergoing a dramatic simplification.  Whether or not this remains confined to cell phones has yet to be seen.  But I suspect it will spread.

But it isn’t just technology that is transforming our language.  Time, as the researchers have revealed, has always been doing this.  Yet until the advent of texting, it has done so slowly enough that we rarely notice.

A few years ago my mother gave me a book entitled Endangered Words by Simon Hertnon, which contains a number of words that aren’t used much anymore.  I’ve hardly encountered any of them before.  They include elozable, “amenable to flattery;”  perspicacious, “of acute mental vision or discernment;” schlimmbesserung, “a so-called improvement that makes things worse;” perendinate, ‘to defer until later;’ and agathism, “the doctrine that all things tend towards the ultimate good, as distinguished from optimism which holds that all things are now for the best.”  An agathistic person ‘believes things can be improved by taking action.’

This last definition calls to mind last week’s comments by the perspicacious editor of this newspaper, Jim Dickerson (who I hope is elozable), when he asked if we are ‘optimistic, pessimistic, or somewhere in between’ when it comes to the future of this area.  Specifically, he wondered if we’re optimistic enough to proceed with new housing and a new school.

I agree that whatever is decided will be a barometer of whether we as a community are optimistic and see it growing, pessimistic and see it declining, or agathistic – understanding that we face challenges but believing we have it within our power to make things better.

Nearly 30 years ago when I was trying to decide if I should start a recording studio, a friend observed that “while a positive attitude doesn’t guarantee success, a negative attitude does guarantee failure.”  In other words, unless I was optimistic about my prospects, I shouldn’t move forward because my pessimism would lead to bad decisions.  But he was realistic enough to know that optimism alone isn’t enough to ensure success – even with hard work, some endeavors fail.

I did move forward with music and continue to experience both failure and success.  Both have arisen from my agathism – my belief that if I work harder I can do better.  But my friend was right — I have never succeeded at anything I didn’t bother to attempt because I was too pessimistic about the prospects of success.  Who knows what might have happened in those instances if I’d been more positive? 

The stakes involved with expanding our housing and our school are high – no one wants an expensive schlimmbesserung!  But it’s important to consider more than just cost – we are, after all, setting our community’s course for the future.  And while tough decisions can lead us to being perendinate, we can’t afford to become velleitous (wanting things to be better without doing anything to bring about improvements).  After all, one need only text with a teenager to see what being velleitous is doing to our language.