G'day
One of the main problems with forecasting is that the basic premise is that communities and economies will remain the same.
Our modern economies are really very short term models having only been around essentially since WWII although the shift in domestic economies started or accelerated after WWI, with the gradual loss of cheap labour within the domestic economies. Domestic as in internal to the nation, local and of course, within the home or neighbourhood.
This cheap labour is now divided between volunteers and off-shore resources where labour is still comparatively cheap - compared to our own local 'cheap' labour, that is.
The world economy has changed immeasurably in the past 50 years and will continue to change. Yes, governments must plan ahead, and this is one reason the Goods and Services Tax was introduced, to distribute taxation across income earning and non-income earning segments of the population. However, GST collection relies on the consumption of goods and services and although this then provides concession to people on fixed incomes ie if you don't spend money (except on essential items) you won't be taxed, in many ways this Tax can only be the beginning.
Apart from economic change in the broad sense, in Australia we also have a deeply entrenched 'Little Aussie Battler' culture where we have traditionally mostly aspired to proudly 'work for ourselves', a select group of large companies eg BHP or Coles Myer, or to work for the Government through the Public Service.
This has created huge disparities in retirement benefit, hence the introduction of the Superannuation Guarantee scheme in 1989.
This safety net, however, does not really provide for all the 'day labourers' out there and there may not be any effective way except a government pension funded from taxation to provide for this group over time. They will reach retirement age as their predecessors did, with the clothes on their backs and the money in their pockets and not much else.
Other countries with different cultural influences have had different approaches to the Pension Fund mechanism, and of course since 1962 the British Socialist State 'From the Cradle To The Grave' has provided many working or, as the case may be, non-working (!) models of how governments have tried to address the issue of residual poverty within the population.
From where I sit, I could probably just coast along for the next ten years then put my hand out for whatever will be the benefits of the day. But economic policies must not be decided from the example of the personal to the political. Western Democracy does not turn a blind eye to the poor and disadvantaged and we owe an enormous debt to our largely Christian cultural heritage in that attitude. No, this is not a political statement but stemming as we do back to the Romans and their inimitable work ethic and strict social structuring, then the effects of the Catholic Church, and since Henry VIII (let us not forget the world shattering effect of the Property Acts of c.1513) through the Calvanists and of course the stability of the English Monarchy and the Westminster System of Parliament we seek to not only proudly support ourselves while we can we make sure the 'Work Houses' are there to support us when we cannot.
We do not chop our children's hands off to make them better beggars, we make sure they keep both hands and we teach them to write to make them better workers.
So to mathematically project that two workers will support each non-working person would place an unbearable burden on the entire community and any anthropologist could easily demonstrate that when societies come under stress and as that stress escalates to duress, the society changes in a fundamental way to deal with that duress and to bring it back to within manageable margins.
The next fifty years will see the birth of the next World Economy model. Since the Industrial Revolution which, you may recall, occupied only about 200 years of modern history, we have changed fundamental economic models a number of times and will continue to do so. Evolution in Economics is the key to our financial and economic survival and if we don't evolve we perish.
Australia no longer 'rides on the sheep's back' as I was taught in primary school. We could probably in many ways be truly self-sufficient as a Nation, after all we grow our own food and produce fuel and doo-dads in abundance. There are some things, of course, which we can't or don't produce (F111 fighter bombers) and we need world currency to purchase these things, and so we must trade in the world markets and produce commodities which other markets wish to buy, and food is a good commodity.
And perhaps at the end of the day we shall return to Burke's Backyard as an economic model. The people will decide what they want and the demonstration of those wishes will grow from the grass roots level up, not from government policy down. It was always thus.
Oh, well, back to the QuickBooks and attending to my own micro-economic climate!
Cheers
Kristine
I suspect I will either not have to worry about it (dead) or will be in an old folks home and that senile I will have no connection with reality and hence won't care. 
