So, I'm writing a story about the modern world after a mysterious event starts giving humans superpowers. While most people can only keep a couple of them at a time, there were a few that everyone over the age of 13 received permanently when all of this started, and one of them was a potent regenerative power that does the following:
- Halts and reverses aging; nobody with this power ages past their apparent twenties
- Grants immunity to nearly all diseases
- Lets people eventually fully recover from anything that doesn't kill them (an hour for minor scratches, a day for more severe wounds, a week for lost body parts)
- Retroactively heals all injuries, scars, and disabilities you weren't born with
Now one of the first things that occurred to me about this would be that the economic implications would be insane. Everyone in retirement is suddenly faced with the prospect of long outliving their retirement fund and has to go back to work, flooding the job market with highly qualified and young applicants that actual young people would struggle to compete with. All non-emergency medical care would become unnecessary for all but the youngest generation, crippling the demand. And of course, in the long term, several generations of humans with eternal health and youth would cause the death rate to tank and the population to skyrocket over the next few decades.
I'm sure there's more I missed (and please feel free to mention anything that comes to mind if I have), but I'm concerned more about if there are any solutions. While I do want to explore the cultural and social implications of what these powers do to the modern world, I don't want it to be excessively dark and brutal, at least not all the time, and not at first. So I'm hoping to find some way these darker side-effects could be mitigated, or how this could possibly be turned to the advantage of the economy.
What could a country do to keep the effects of this newfound immortality from devastating the economy, or possibly turn it to its advantage?