Another optimistic belief, which is current at the moment, is the idea that “class warfare” will automatically give way, owing to the recent increase in life expectancy, to “generational warfare” (which is less divisive because everyone is first young and then old). Put differently, this inescapable biological fact is supposed to imply that the accumulation and distribution of wealth no longer presage an inevitable clash between dynasties of rentiers and dynasties owning nothing but their labor power. The governing logic is rather one of saving over the life cycle: people accumulate wealth
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