The Demographic Cliff: How to survive and prosper during the great deflation ahead. By Harry S. Dent, Jr

The Demographic Cliff was recommended to me during one of my online seminars from a person who “likes that 30,000 ‘ view of things”. Harry Dent, Jr is an economist with that global view.

For me this was a bit too much filled with graphs, charts, data, but I did pick up a number of good take-aways from it.

1. How bad Japan’s economy is because of their aging society and the lack of younger Japanese coming up. They don’t tend to integrate lots of new people into their country thru immigration so they are really struggling.
2. Germany is another country that has a lot of Boomers driving their economy and how they deal with it in the next few years will be very interesting as they are the strongest European economy right now.
3. Real estate will NOT be a good investment in the US like it was for my parents in the 50’s and 60’s. Millennial’s are renting more and he calls it the “dyers exceed buyers” model. More and more Boomers will be trying to sell their homes and there are less and less younger people to buy.
4. Dent has lots of facts regarding cycles such as the average real estate cycle of 26 / 27 year olds rent, 31 /32 y.o. buy starter homes, 41-43 y.o. ‘trade-up houses’, 65 y.o.’s buy vacation / retirement homes.
5. He has MANY other cycles such as the commodity cycle and financial cycles. Many.
6. Most bizarre theory had to do with tying sun spot cycles to the economy. I skimmed this section 🙂

Dent has much to offer and I have to agree on a number of his points. One being that, if Boomers would accept the truth that they should retire in their early 70’s (our current concept if retirement was set at a time when most people died in their 60’s) we would solve the massive entitlement crisis that we have with fewer and fewer workers.

He also suggests that small businesses (like me) need to develop a clear definition of my customers and realize that it is NOT what I think I do for them, but what customers get from me that has meaning.

Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a monthly newsletter for career practitioners. Peak-Careers offers discussion-based online seminars for career practitioners focused on meeting continuing education needs for GCDF and BCC certified professionals as well as workshops for career practitioners and individual career coaching.

Sign up for our monthly newsletter at www.Peak-Careers.com