An ageing society might not cost too much

Jul 9th 2026|5 min read

The year is 2100. It is a grim time to be of working age. Not only must you put up with rising sea levels, rampant rogue AIs and colleagues who, 80 years after the pandemic, still do not know how to mute themselves on a video call, but your take-home pay is meagre. Taxes to finance state support for the vast grey population take an ever-larger chunk of your wage. After a century of health-care spending growing faster than the economy, there is little for anything but pills, hospital beds and nurses.