The drastic shifts in “basic life path”

This is what will eventually cause safety nets to have to shift.

I got this idea from here. Let’s look at the “standard first-world life path:”

Pretty simple, yes? You start in a “safety net” — meaning your parents are economically responsible for you, then you learn (K-12, college), and then you leave the “learn” stage and can contribute. This leads you to a job/career. You do that for decades, and then you eventually fall back to “safety net,” which is your retirement savings. This has been the conventional model for about 100 years, but definitely since WW2. However, it’s changed quite a bit in the last 10–20 years. Now it probably looks a bit more like this:

Indeed, it’s all over the place. Sometimes you’re contributing, sometimes you’re back in the safety net, and learning has to happen pretty much at all stages. It’s much more about “adaptability” than it ever was before.