Labor economists refer to "prime-age" men and women, by which they mean those in the 25-54 age group who are in the prime age group for working. But there is half-century trend that prime-age males are becoming less likely to be in the labor force. Nicholas Eberstadt discusses the subject in "Education and Men without Work" in the Winter 2020 issue of National Affairs.
· US bond yields have been in secular decline since 1981 · Predictions of a bond bear-market have been premature for three decades · High indebtedness will see any inflationary yield surges quickly subdued
Negative rates are the destruction of money, an economic aberration based on the mistakes of many central banks and some of their economists who start from a wrong diagnosis: the idea that economic agents do not take more credit or invest more because they choose to save too much and therefore saving must be penalized to stimulate the economy. Excuse the bluntness, but it is a ludicrous idea.
When the Federal Reserve conducts monetary policy, it announces a target for the "federal funds" interest rate.
Back in 1848, John Stuart Mill made a classic argument that money was insignificant to the essential nature of an economy, because it was only a facilitator for what really matters--the actual transactions. Mill wrote (Principles of Political Economy, Book III, Ch. VII):
A century ago, John F. Carter wrote an essay about “These Wild Young People’ by One of Them,” in the Atlantic Monthly (September 1920, pp. 301-304, an excerpt is here, although as far as I know the entire essay isn't freely available online). It offers a useful reminder that complaints from young adults about the terrible world they are inheriting, so much worse than any previous generation ever inherited, are nothing new. Enjoy the 100 year-old version of the classic young-to-old intergenerational rant: