Any economic activity must involve "people" and "things". As we all know, human life span rarely exceeds 100 years. Most people can live to 70 or 80 years old, of which about 20 years are the growth period of adolescents. After 70 years old, people have retired, so the number of years they can participate in work is 40 to 50 years.
In terms of materials, production always requires equipment. Even if we do not consider whether the general equipment is outdated, in terms of its useful life, small equipment can be used for about ten years, and larger equipment can be used for about twenty years. Even if a factory frequently replaces old equipment with new ones, large equipment can be used for forty to fifty years (for example, the life of a nuclear power plant is estimated to be forty to sixty years). If a person starts a business in his early years, the entrepreneur and the factory he sets up can only be used for about fifty years. However, in today's information age, due to the rapid development of technology and equipment, equipment is not eliminated due to depreciation, but because it is outdated. The traditional replacement schedule in the past must be greatly shortened.
When an industry emerges, similar factories are generally established at the same time. Even if there is a difference between them, it should not be more than ten years. Therefore, the life span of a traditional industry is only 50 to 60 years, while new technology greatly shortens it.
An economic system usually relies on two or three main industries. For example, the main industries of Taiwan's economy are petrochemicals and its downstream industries, electronics and information, and these industries all started between 1960 and 1970. Even if the two major industries are staggered by ten years, they can last for sixty or seventy years in total, and they will all retire by 2020-2030. Therefore, if an economic system cannot stagger the take-off period of the main industries, then everyone will retire at the same time; if one or two new industries can rise every ten or twenty years, then even if there is metabolism, this economy can be maintained for a long time. For Taiwan, the current main industries are electronics and information. The next wave should be micro-electromechanical and optoelectronics, and life science should be the next wave of industries. However, the current technological progress is too fast, making it difficult to accurately predict.
In particular, if an industry loses its competitiveness due to aging or obsolescence before the end of its lifespan, it will only support the prosperity of the economy in its first half. If this is true, then only electronic information can be regarded as the mainstay of the economy in the next ten or twenty years, and relevant departments should be vigilant.
Although we have used the economy of Taiwan as an example, in fact, every economic system needs several main supports. The United States can be said to be the "leader" of the world economy. In the past fifty years, we have also seen the successive evolution of steel, automobiles, petrochemicals, aerospace, energy, national defense, electronics, and information. In fact, each industry can only dominate for 20 to 30 years.
The Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev made a graph of the economic prosperity and decline of the West over the past two hundred years, showing a rise and fall graph of a fifty- to sixty-year cycle. This curve is called the Kondrratiev wave. From this graph, we can see that the cycle of an economy is fifty or sixty years, which is a very reasonable assumption. However, now that everything has accelerated, the rise and fall cycle may be even shorter. However, although the United States was founded only two hundred years ago, its economy has always been the world's leading economy in the 20th century. How to explain this? In fact, the United States has also had a national economic recession. In addition to the Great Depression in the 1930s, there was also a serious "ebb" around 1970. Moreover, the national strength of the United States seems to be generally rising except for small fluctuations, but the rate of increase has gradually slowed down. This situation does not seem to be consistent with the Kondratiev curve. If we only look at the large fluctuations, the Great Depression is about sixty years away from now, which is not far from the Kondratiev curve. As for smaller fluctuations, since each major industry only dominates for twenty years, how can we explain the continuous rise of the United States?
The above-mentioned main industries in the United States have also experienced ups and downs. Due to its strong national strength, it can accommodate many industries with different cycles, so the overall result is a trend of continuous fluctuation and rise.
However, if we look at the regions of the United States, the scope is relatively small, and because the main industries are more or less regional (such as steel and automobiles are concentrated in the Midwest; the aerospace industry is in the Northwest; the aerospace industry is on the West Coast; petrochemicals are in the East and South, etc.), the prosperity and decline cycles of each region are more obvious. We have witnessed the "wind and water" of each region. In the early 20th century, the prosperous New England region in the northeast was the most prosperous. Later, due to steel and automobiles, the economic center of gravity moved to the Great Lakes region in the Midwest. After the rise of the aerospace and entertainment industries, the West became the main region. Now the South is gradually rising, and the West seems to have started its second spring due to electronic information. As for the Northeast and Midwest, which were once prosperous, they have been named the "Rust Belt", especially Detroit, the former center of the automobile industry, which is like an abandoned city and is terrible. This shows the severity of the economic recession in this region.