The Aggregate Virtual Working Life Tenure
Copyright c, James T. Corredine, 1996
james.corredine@asb.com
Middle Island, NY 11953
January 1997
The fundamental force that drives Kondratieff Long Economic
Waves is the same force that drives us as individuals, ie. "the relative
intensity of our vitality over our lifetimes". This fundamental force
in the aggregate drives the fluctuation in aggregate economic data over
the long term. The differences in the relative aggregate intensity
of the population's vitality (and the relative aggregate intensity of
the population's leadership cadre's vitality) over time create a regime,
"The Aggregate Virtual Working Life Tenure," whose vitality fluctuates
within a range of two fundamental extremes, vigor and torpor, driving
economic phenomena that we have all heard familiarly described as
vigorous or torpid or perhaps another descriptive term to represent a
point within the range.
This regime, "The 54-Year Aggregate Virtual Working LIfe Tenure"
describes the natural change in intensity of vitality that occurs
collaterally with the changing age distribution of the population (and
the changing age distribution of the population's leadership cadre.) At
about 54 years in a working life tenure the population's (and the
population's leadership cadre's) intensity of vitality is finally
diminished to torpor, the old blood dies out ending the old regime
allowing new blood and their new regime of vigorous vitality to hold
sway.
Economics in the British/American tradition made a wrong turn at
Ricardo/Malthus. Things would be clearer had we followed the thread
of thought from Smith through Malthus and Keynes and not through Ricardo
and his successors. Malthus's demand depression is rooted, I believe,
in his idea of "effective demand" driven by his more fundamental idea of
"intensity of demand". Had he lived long enough, I think, he would have
seen his idea of "intensity" as the cause of the Long Economic Wave.
With help from Malthus, I view the 24-year Kontratieff upslope
as the "Intensity Upslope" and the 30-year Kontdratieff downslope as the
"Disintensity Downslope".
The 54-Year Economic Longwave is just the manifestation of the
underlying relative "intensity" of human vitality over The 54-Year
"Aggregate Virtual Working Life Tenure."
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