It is very popular among economists to bring up the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. Notably when assessing the challenge of China and India, to the old world economies of Europe and the United States.

In case you have forgotten. Alice and the Red Queen

The Red Queen is Regent of a “Fast” country.

In the book the queen is somewhat puzzled by Alice’s “Slow sort of country“.

The Red Queen tell Alice “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” .

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Based on this the Call to arms we hear from economists usually goes something like this:

The western world needs to pull up its collective socks, fix its educational system, think long term and reallocate its resources into less frivolous, less instant gratification endeavors. We must stop dilly-dallying and act like a grown up if we want to preserve our privileged position in the world.

This is not true, we are in great shape.

As a society we have climbed the hill and we can now pretty much coast for the duration.

Few economists and fewer politicians have realized it, but we have entered a new economic phase. Now the current structure of the economy combined with Moore’s law is giving the economy such a tail wind that a substantial yearly growth in the standard of living is not only secure but accelerating almost regardless of what we do, bar nuclear doomsday.

Let me explain.