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Mauro Guillén: "Whoever wants to see the future of the world has to travel to Africa"

2021-04-04T17:43:45.986Z


The professor at Wharton warns of the changes that will transform the world in a decade: there will be more grandparents than grandchildren, more robots than workers and more currencies than States


Mauro Guillén, professor at the Wharton Business School (USA).

Prospective economic trials are almost a genre unto themselves.

They are, in many cases, futurology treatises in which the probability is less remote.

Others, however, have expectations more anchored to reality and not to distant probabilities.

That is the case of

2030: traveling towards the end of the world as we know it

(Deusto), in which Mauro Guillén (León, 1964), professor at the Wharton business school (Pennsylvania, USA) and as of September dean of the Cambridge Judge Business School (UK), tries to show that not only the economist lives with groundbreaking forecasts and that it is possible to draw a credible projection for 10 years.

By then, he says, there will be more grandparents than grandchildren, more industrial robots than traditional workers, more computers than human brains, more sensors than organic eyes, and more currency than states.

Question

.

To say that the future is around the corner is an understatement.

Are we sufficiently aware of these changes or does immediacy prevent us from looking beyond what is in front of us?

Answer

.

We are aware, but we are not willing to adopt solutions.

Measures like raising the retirement age, for example, create a huge fuss and politicians have no incentive to adopt them.

His horizon is the next elections, instead of 10 or 20 years, which is what we would need.

P

.

We face 21st century problems with 20th century remedies.

R.

Without a doubt, but the situation is not the same everywhere: there are countries that are taking measures and others that, since they did not make certain promises, are not facing such a serious situation either.

And it is very different to face these problems when your economy grows at 6%, as in Asia, than when your economy is stagnant, as in Japan or Europe.

  • The EU economy suffers in 2020 the biggest collapse since its creation

P

.

Demographics are changing everything.

The case of China is paradoxical: it has gone from being the country that contributed the most to world population growth to being the one that is experiencing the most accelerated aging process of the population.

A.

China still has several advantages: its economy continues to grow, it did not make the promises that were made elsewhere to those who reach retirement age, and it still has about 300 million people in rural areas below the poverty line. that can still be incorporated into the urban workforce.

Unlike the United States and Europe, it does not need international immigration, but to lift all these people out of poverty and provide them with the services they need.

In Europe, without immigration, everything collapses.

P

.

Why does the negative outweigh the positive in the public conversation about immigration?

In the book he stresses that they do not compete for jobs with the locals and that in the long term their arrival is beneficial for the economy.

R

.

We are human beings and sometimes we are not rational: we allow ourselves to be carried away by prejudices.

And when you have political movements that exploit those prejudices at a time of middle class stagnation, the result is the explosive cocktail we have.

P

.

In a decade, the largest generation will be those over 60.

But companies continue to look to youth as the target of their advertising campaigns.

R.

It is a big mistake.

Brands are positioned in the market to attract people in their 20s, 30s, or at most 40 years old.

They do not realize the turnaround that the population is giving.

The numbers are not deceiving: in Japan, Europe and the US that group is going to be the largest market segment.

We are talking about between 35% and 40% of the population, with a lot of wealth and purchasing power.

It is a huge change: we have never had that consumption structure by age group before.

P

.

We will also see, he says, a turnaround in the middle classes: the European and American classes will be displaced by those of the emerging countries.

R.

The issue of the middle class is key.

It is the central element and is the backbone of a system like the current one, in which 70% of GDP is consumption.

And it is also politically so: if we now have populisms in Europe and the US, it is because the middle class is stagnant or shrinking and because the prospects of children are worse than those of their parents.

In the emerging world, on the other hand, the middle classes are in a very different situation: they are growing in number of people, because more and more people come out of poverty, and in middle income.

It is a tsunami.

The last 80 years the US market has been the largest in the world precisely because of the size of its middle class, but that is coming to an end.

Q.

When?

P

.

In four or five years, the purchasing power of the Chinese middle class is going to be greater than that of the United States and Europe combined.

If you add India, Southeast Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa… the US and Europe are going to be very small.

The figures are staggering.

What was an anomaly is what has happened in the world in the last 300 years: that a continent like Europe, and later North America, with such a small population, became dominant forces in the world is something that is not going to happen. more in history.

Q.

Is it all a demographic issue?

A.

Demographics are not destiny, but you can't fight it either.

And once you combine it with economic growth, there is nothing that can stop it.

We are witnessing the end of 300 years of history, since the Industrial Revolution.

This is over.

Does this mean that in Europe or in the US we are going to live badly?

No, but we are no longer going to be the hegemonic part of the world.

P

.

To what extent is this phenomenon going to change, too, the business landscape?

A.

Companies have to change.

Those who do not look at these new middle classes may do well for a while longer, but not as much as others who do manage to establish themselves in those markets.

The growth is there, and the valuation of a company depends above all on its growth potential.

Q. You

talk a lot about Asia, but also about sub-Saharan Africa.

R

.

The key is to increase the productivity of its agriculture, which is 50 or 60 times lower than in Europe.

Only by tripling it, which is feasible, would they be able to feed their entire population - today the African continent is a net food importer - and become an export power.

The recipe is clear, because we know how agricultural productivity can be increased.

Africa is a source of optimism and has great potential.

Whoever wants to see the future of the world has to travel there.

Q.

Why?

R

.

A revolution is taking place in sub-Saharan Africa.

The middle class is growing and has everything to become a very dynamic pole of the global economy.

It's going to be tremendous: five or six of the 10 economies that grow the most each year are African.

Are there problems yet?

Definitely.

But if you go to Lagos or Accra you realize that the future is there.

P

.

It hardly says anything about Latin America.

R.

Latin America is a pain.

You just have to look at the amount of opportunities it has lost: in the 1950s countries like Taiwan and South Korea were much poorer and today they are four times richer.

It has become stagnant and follows a constant pendulum dynamic.

P.

Not all the transformation of the world has to do with geography.

Also with gender: he estimates that in 2030 more than half of the wealth will be in the hands of women.

R.

That is something very important.

On average, women are more willing than men to spend on education or health: they think more about the future, in the second derivative about what can happen, take less risk with their money and change their investors less frequently, something that in the long run it ends up being better.

They do not like to play roulette and that can be very good: everything that is to give stability to the markets is positive.

Source: elparis

All business articles on 2021-04-04

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