Derek Thompson

That's a function of the fact that

that older managers in those companies are living longer, working longer, staying in those chairs, not vacating them to either become a pensioner or join the C-suite.

And as a result, those middle management chairs just aren't opening up at the same rate that they were 30 or 40 years ago.

I think that's a really profound point that I think pushes back against some of this analysis that basically says all of the outcomes of young people are essentially chosen by young people.

You know, young people are a function of the world, too, and they're reacting to and being pushed around by the world.

The other thing that's made me think of, and this is what I want your brain on in a second, the presence of older workers, the idea that that can harm the labor market outcomes of younger workers, I think is...

a bit of a scary one, because you know what's not going away is old people.

And that's not like my beginning of like a swifty and modest proposal here.

I'm just saying like they're not going away.

Like people are living longer, jobs are getting easier, people are often staying in those jobs for longer.

And two phenomena that I really don't see going away anymore are number one, fertility decline, and number two, life expectancy.

And when you put those two phenomena together, fertility decline and longer lives,

That is a recipe for companies getting older every decade

Infinitely.

Yeah.

Which means the phenomenon that you've described and that you're telling me these Italian economists have discovered, that's not going to get better anytime soon.

In fact, it seems more likely to get worse.

Have you thought about this?

Did you talk to them?

How do you make sense of the fact that this is definitely a trend that is going to accelerate as we move forward?