The world economy is getting slower day by day.?
Apart from the fact that the central banks have contributed to a massive debt fuelled binge (also known as bubble) across multiple asset classes, the economy is also undergoing a fundamental change. Employment is hardly a measure of productive capacity any more. As technology is proving, we can continue to have newer and more awesome products and services without employing a bunch of people at a high cost. So the notion of a good economy vs. bad economy is not as universally valid as it was a few decades back. No matter how high the unemployment, Apple or Samsung (or someone else) will continue to churn out newer products every year, sometimes with radical improvement, sometimes marginal. You have awesome start ups springing up from Bay Area to Austin to Bangalore to Singapore, giving people on click access to food, transport, massage and whatnot! We have ever increasing choices at our super markets or online, things being delivered at my convenient time. We had (the proverbial) one percent of the population having internet access, as recently as 1995. Today, the number is 40% and there is every reason to expect it to rise over the medium term (a decade or two). It is particularly true given that eight new people are getting connected to the internet every second. Let that sink in. Eight new people who never experienced it before, are connecting to this awesome global information highway to exchange knowledge, idea, service, product etc. Every day, a few villages in Africa or Brazil or Cambodia are getting connected via electricity, or internet, or bitcoin giving them the freedom of choice and some taste of how the outside world lives. The world is getting better. Employment? Yeah, sure, they are not growing. So what? People are becoming micro entrepreneurs, selling massage, food or some other service over the internet. A guy armed with an internet connection from a backwater African village can enjoy the privileges, knowledge and information once exclusive to a college graduate in California. Now, if you were a privileged western middle class well in your comfort zone of a lifetime job with benefits, probably you will not like it. (But, remember, you were the one percent you keep talking about!) So I will just say the age of lifetime employment is coming to an end. I wrote a marginally relevant answer in What, if anything, does the fact that corporate profits are at an all-time high while worker wages are at a record low, tell us about the state of the American economy? Now, central bank fuelled loan crisis? I could fill pages talking about how the central banks damage the economy, but that is for another time. I will just say that every crisis has a silver lining, if you know how to profit. There was this little known guy called John Paulson who betted against the mortgage backed securities at their heights in 2006, when the Fed was cheerleading the roaring economy. He made billions out of the crisis, because he had the skill to hedge against it rather than crying crisis and blaming others. Every crisis is essentially a massive redistribution, but it is up to you to be on the right side of the redistribution. Otherwise, you will be left (pun intended). Do not expect that other people will care for you. Think about how can you make money by creating value and hedge your bet against the future. The world is your oyster. Look at people like Tom Cruise, a hedge fund manager, a venture capitalist, or examples in the book Freelance Millionaire. The winners in today's economy do not look for an employment.