Last week we examined the linkage between a society’s wealth and its military strength—two of the four leadership power sources. This week, we examine a different linkage—that between its wealth and its population.
We can see the link between a society’s wealth and its population today by looking no further than the Covid crisis. The Covid crisis has hit America hard: GDP has fallen at a 33% annualized rate, over 30 million Americans have become unemployed, and five years of economic growth has been wiped away. Long-term recovery prospect may be slow as well: business investment dropped by 27%, homebuilding (a leading indicator) dropped 38%, and oil prices cratered. Industries related to petroleum, sports, entertainment, hospitability, and restaurant industries have shed millions of jobs. And if anyone thinks this event is a fluke, one doesn’t have to look back too far to see that it has happened before, only on a smaller scale. By 2015, the opioid crisis had had a similar impact on the American economy. Opioid dependency had caused over 900,000 people to be chronically absent from work, which put an annualized drag on the US economy of over $40B. Employers struggled to fill vacancies—both during and after the Great Recession.
These tragic events illustrate the linkage between population and wealth. Population and wealth work together to support a society and generate leadership power. Furthermore, these tragedies illustrate that numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. That over 200,000 Americans have died is horrendous; but the primary drag on the economy has been the far larger number who cannot work because they are sick or have the potential to make others sick. A large population creates the potential for wealth, military strength, and even foreign reach, but that population has to be healthy enough (and educated enough) to do the work that needs to be done—to build the economy through labor, to strengthen the military, and to express itself into other cultures.
When viewed from a broader perspective, one thing becomes clear: keeping a population healthy is not only a humanitarian issue but also a national security issue.
Reference:
Lucia Mutikani, “What to know about the report on America’s COVID-hit GDP,” World Economic Forum, 31 July 2020, accessed from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/covid-19-coronavirus-usa-united-states-econamy-gdp-decline/
Katie Zezima, “Study: Nearly 1 million not working because of opioids,” Washington Post, 28 Mar 2018, A9.