Opinion: It’s time to rethink the social contract for our rapidly changing world

This translation has been automatically generated and has not been verified for accuracy.Principal of Relentless Economics and senior fellow for economics and population change at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute

If you never studied philosophy or political economics then you may not be familiar with the idea of the “social contract.” As pontificated by great minds such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Stuart Mill, the term basically refers to the hazy set of rules that govern the relationship between individuals and institutions. Individuals give up some rights to live in society, goes the theory, but in return government and maybe business have to bear some responsibility for their well-being.

It is also a woeful reality that lifetimes are getting longer but that, in financial terms, households are saving ever less to cover their retirement years. According to the MGI data, the number of expected years in retirement for those in their 22-country sample has risen from 16 in 1980 to 20 in 2018. At the same time, both work and government pension plans have generally gotten tighter.

So, in light of these changes, how should the social contract be rethought? Well, as McKinsey and others have pointed out, a first step comes from acknowledging the economic shifts. That is, the labour market is changing in a way that some are being left behind, income polarization is only growing and it appears that every generation feels they are being denied access to the economic party.

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