Why We Need Retirement Income: Soaring Average Life Expectancy
A draft excerpt from the Chapter 1 to Ownership Revolution: How Working People are Buying Up Big Business
Our story about the connection between corporate profits and retirement income, and how big businesses are being bought up by working and middle class people, begins with the matter of age.
So, what changed? How did human life expectancy in the same countries go from less than 30 years then, to the high 70s and low 80s now? Well, it changed because of the Industrial Revolution, which began roughly 200 years ago (depending on which country, which region, and so on).
The Industrial Revolution made us what we are today. It's a story that starts with short lives and poverty, then a gradual, but sustained, increase in lifespans and living standards, leading to general prosperity among working and middle class people today. It's a transformation on an epic scale, and would have been unimaginable just a few generations ago.
Had you been born anytime before 1800, you would hardly recognize yourself. First, you'd be far poorer in just about every material way. Yes, you've heard lots of arguments about the stalling or declining wages among working people in the last few decades of the 20th Century, but compared to 1800, you're immensely richer.
If you could see yourself in 1800, you might first be shocked by your lack of cleanliness. You wouldn't bathe often, perhaps never at all. You'd wash your clothing infrequently, if ever. If you bathed, or washed your clothes, you would do so in a river, stream, lake, or sea. Your home would be dirty and drafty, and no doubt smell of smoke as well, because you'd be cooking on an open fire.
There's no telling how many family members would live in your house, but undoubtedly there would several generations. Regardless of how many of you there were, you'd all share one modest-sized room, sleeping and eating together. And, it's quite possible farm animals might live with you as well.
To imagine what it would be like to have lived 200 years ago, or more, think of the stories of Charles Dickens, of the lives of impoverished working people in Victorian England. Think of life in poor villages in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
With those images planted firmly in your mind, perhaps you might grasp why average life expectancy was so low before the Industrial Revolution. You might understand why your ancestors mostly lived short lives, tragically short by our modern standards.
Next: Welcome to hard times at work, whether in the factory or on the farm. Click here: Work Life Quality
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Thanks!
Robert F. Abbott
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