“After more than two centuries of expansion, the global economy has inflected into contraction, meaning that prior growth in material prosperity has gone into reverse. By 2040, aggregate prosperity is projected to be 13% lower than it was in 2019, implying that the prosperity of the world’s average person will have fallen by about 26% over that period. Meanwhile, his or her real cost of energy-intensive essentials is likely to have risen by around 40% in real terms, except that the definition of ‘essential’ will have to have been changed in order to keep that number within the upper limit set by prosperity. Discretionary (non-essential) consumption will have collapsed.” Tim Morgan, A tale of two economies, 28.4.2023