How the whole world can exceed Swiss living standards by 2100 (backed by data)

What would the world look like if the poorest country was as rich as Switzerland is today? It turns out we could actually see it happen by 2100, and with an economic growth that is similar to the one we have been experiencing for the past 20 years.

In this episode, we talk with Marc Canal, Senior Fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute, and co-author of the book A Century of Plenty. We unpack what a hundred years of data tells us about human progress, and map out the steps to an ambitious scenario we can build by the end of the century.

We discuss:

• How much the world has actually changed since 1925: from one in five children dying before age five in Spain, to life expectancy growing by 40 years globally.
• What it would take to make today’s Swiss living standards the world’s floor by 2100 (while richer countries grow far beyond it), from energy efficiency to birth rates and geopolitics.
• How data shows economic growth is actually good for the climate and for human happiness.
• Why achieving a prosperous world currently depends more on our collective belief that progress is possible than on resource constraints.
• How you can thrive in an AI world, where 57% of work hours can be automated, by leaning into the “messy” jobs.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Cold open

1:54 - Why the McKinsey Global Institute wrote “A Century of Plenty” 

5:20 - What was the world like in 1925? 

10:04 - The most surprising stats from 100 years of progress

16:03 - Defining the “empowerment line” vs. the poverty line

19:30 - Projecting 2100: can we make Switzerland the global "floor"? 

22:26 - The 5 conditions for achieving a world of plenty

26:14 - Can we grow the economy without sacrificing the environment?

28:23 - Economic growth vs. climate change: mitigation and adaptation 

34:05 - What are the biggest challenges to the “progress machine”? 

36:30 - The demographic crisis, and solving falling fertility rates

45:20 - Will AI speed up human innovation?

48:21 - Geopolitics: is the world really de-globalizing? 

52:30 - The crisis of hope: why are we so pessimistic?

56:26 - How different nations reach the frontier of progress

58:49 - Building a new culture of growth

1:01:09 - Does economic progress actually make us happier?

1:05:39 - How you can help make a century of plenty probable

On the Existential Hope Podcast hosts Allison Duettmann and Beatrice Erkers from the Foresight Institute invite scientists, founders, and philosophers for in-depth conversations on positive, high-tech futures.

Full transcript, listed resources, and more: https://www.existentialhope.com/podcasts

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