The Age Of Decay

Drawing on seemingly isolated instances of essential worker shortages developing around the world, investment analyst Shamil Ismail joins the dots to build a compelling and well-researched narrative explaining why aging and declining birth rates are leading to a shrinking workforce of essential workers that will massively disrupt our everyday lives. Essential jobs maintain the structure that upholds society. Ismail argues that there is a tipping point of a minimum proportion of essential workers needed to maintain societies, and when countries pass that tipping point, societies will start to unravel, and a cycle of decay will set in. These unfolding trends will make most of the topical issues of today—the rise of AI, geopolitical tensions, and climate change—pale in comparison. When are we likely to see the first major signs of this new reality? Which countries will be first impacted, and by when? What can we expect the world to look like in the decades to come? And what will this mean for the future of our children and grandchildren? The Age of Decay attempts to answer these intriguing questions and will, hopefully, allow us to prepare for the incredible transformation that lies ahead, including what Ismail foresees as the “African Century”.

Shamil Ismail is an investment analyst and qualified as a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Financial Analyst. Over the past thirty years he has been involved in various aspects of consumer markets, first working at retailers and later as an analyst researching the markets. He founded Prima research in South Africa in 2015, a specialist research firm focusing on consumer companies. The global trends in demographics and how this will impact consumer markets are of particular interest to him, culminating in this book.

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