Unnerving article that says if history is any guide the 2020s could be economic and political hell in the developed world

Yep, and the world was gonna fall apart cuz a Y2K, and in 2012 cuz the Mayan Calendar, and 2008 was s'posed to be the repeat a the stock crash a 29' and so on and so forth

Did you read the article and assess the merits of its arguments r1 or just rush out a stock generic sarcastic sneer ?

Well the rise of strident leaders world wide and their inflammatory rhetoric is well underway as in the 1930s. The middle class is disappearing as the super rich consolidate their wealth at our expense.

r3 Indeed it is frightening were it could end up.The only positive I take from the article is that the turbulent nasty period in history whether it is 10 years 20 years etc will not be permanent. But the inbetween will be hell.

We were due for a correction in the 1990s. The dot com crash of 2001-2003 was really long and painful.

If we have a Turnip mismanaging things, a bad economy wont be the worst of it.

Is this preparing the excuses if Warren or Sanders win and the economy collapses?

Did I miss something? I thought we were already in economical and political hell?

History never repeats itself, but often it rhymes.

[quote]Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

r8 Much worse than now.All alluded to in the article.

Oh well, I guess I'll barricade myself in my house, listen to music and watch tv and movies from my youth.

r12 what makes you think you'll have electricity?

Excellent point r13

I could see this being true. If so, how does one profit from it?

I'm not Oracle, by any means, I think the Virginia gun rights demonstration is an indicator of a wild year ahead of us. Hostilities are boiling over and it's just a matter of time before violence breaks out. On a unrelated note, the NYSE is past overdue for a correction; the government keeps pumping in big money to keep it high.

I'm not Oracle, by any means, I think the Virginia gun rights demonstration is an indicator of a wild year ahead of us. Hostilities are boiling over and it's just a matter of time before violence breaks out. On a unrelated note, the NYSE is past overdue for a correction; the government keeps pumping in big money to keep it high.

In about 15 years, Gen Xers will start retiring. 40 % of Gen Xers have no pension/retirement savings. Given how rapidly Medicare costs have risen over the past decade, it is reasonable that they will be spending half of their social security checks on health related costs. That is frightening.

r18 and will cripple aggregate demand and thus spending in the wider economy. In other words a potential economic disaster that leads to almost permanent economic stagnation.

[QUOTE]Factional warring after a disaster in a top-heavy society makes things much worse.

Fortunately, we all know too well that we live in a bottom -heavy society

[QUOTE],,,it can keep the population low for decades after the initial catastrophe, and may only end when elites are exhausted or killed off.

If this means the end of Zuckerberg and Bezos then BRING IT ON!

Elites, when forced, yield. Two examples from the 20th century US: the Depression and the Civil Rights movement. There was resistance to the economic initiatives Roosevelt took in the 1930's and to the fight for racial equality in the 1960's. Neither "revolution" was completely successful, nor were they without casualties, but the US survived. The current Medicare/Social Security model that was born in the 1930's (Social Security) and 1960's (Medicare) needs to be changed to meet different conditions. There will be conflict in the future, but to assume the 2020's will be "hell" is speculation based on unproven science.

Many historians are less smitten the idea we can quantify the past. So much of the data from the past is missing that the models used in cliodynamics are necessarily flawed. "What historians believe in is contingency," says Edward L. Ayers, a prize-winning historian of 19th-century America. "That means that things can always be different, and that [italic]to explain things by talking about grand laws and patterns is not to explain them at all."[/italic} He adds, [italic]"When it's all over, you can look back and see a pattern that has been carved by this contingency. But it doesn't mean that the pattern determined what happened within the lives of individuals."[/italic]

I think there's a reason 70% of the Earth is water. Time for God to raise it, flood us out and start over.

After what I've seen in the last three years, I'll never call anyone a "Chicken Little" again.

The article didn't mention Climate Change. We are in for hell and climate change will cause a ton of dislocations. Wars over resources etc.

r20 it wont just be those two wealthy men who die but many many innocents.

r24 It mentions an environmental crisis being potentially a big shock trigger for events.

"I think there's a reason 70% of the Earth is water. Time for God to raise it, flood us out and start over."

R22 - better if a deadly plague is unleashed upon the earth that will destroy only humans. That way the earth's flora and fauna can recover and take over.

[quote] Take me back to 1985!

OK, but you’ll lose gay marriage, legalized weed, 4K television screens, and every new technological and social development since then.

But you'll have Madonna in her prime, The Over Our Heads era of The Facts of Life, porn theaters and most importantly, the debut of The Golden Girls!

R22 - The reason why God doesn’t bring another flood is that the first one didn’t accomplish anything.

R22 - The reason why God doesn’t bring another flood is that the first one didn’t accomplish anything.

R2 nothing I can do about it anyway.

I refuse to be scaremongered. I don't need the excitement. I think things will be fine and if not, oh well!

[quote] 40 % of Gen Xers have no pension/retirement savings

Do you have a credible link to this information?

Also, why is it that so many of them don't have a pension or retirement savings? That doesn't make a lot of sense.

R28, gay people were probably psychologically healthier in 1985 than today. Technology doesn’t equal happiness. I remember people being happier and better looking too back in 1985. What social developments? People messaging their virtual friends while eating Doritos in front of their computer screens?

This coronavirus development is really making me fear this prediction for the 2020s is likely to be true.

Hell is people obsessing about hell and not being able to shut up about it.

[quote]flora and fauna can recover and take over

If anyone can save the planet it'll be those two chicks. Tons of ideas, energy and motivational techniques. Plus they're good little dancers. I look forward to working with them.

R33: These figures are 7 years old and show 18% of Americans covered by pension plans in 2013. That's higher than the "less than 13%" that is widely used (the same number as for Fortune 500 companies a few years ago).

Of course reading this board you could think it was 1985.

Gay people were not happier and healthier in 1985, the onset of a decade of fear and death from HIV. What rock did you live under in that time, r34?

I like me some DL, but I have to say that social media has wreaked havoc across the world. With the massive amounts of disinformation that fan out quickly through FB and other sites and take weeks, months, or years of patient arguing and showing valid research over and over again to the people who have bought into error-laden bullshit because of the algorithms that feed them the information they want instead of the information they need, we now have millions upon millions of people who are convinced that their points of view are valid, even when they are not supported by any facts whatsoever. The amount of money spent by the fossil fuel industry to obscure legitimate science through the internet and "alternative websites" in the case of climate change research is just a tiny example of something that gets repeated in many fields. People have no idea how to evaluate news or information using critical thinking skills and they are suckers for anything they read on the internet. They are told not to trust reporters or the media, but they have no idea who is behind the information they are getting from the internet. The amount of disinformation being promoted on DL right now (January 29) on immigrants and refugees and on the coronavirus is astounding and this is a relatively benign website. We didn't get millions of people believing in Pizzagate in 2016 by accident.

I don't think we can put the genie back in the bottle, but I wish we could. I think we'd have a happier and healthier world and more stable nations and governments.

Good. The apocalypse is overdue.

r41 So when do you think it should have been due then?

R42 Sometime around the late 80's.

r43 Why that particular period?

If Jesus was ever coming back to earth, he would’ve done so during the disco years.

R44 Best time for the apocalypse. The 80's was when humanity became truly irredeemable.

I disagree with R46. The late 80s were a time when Democracy flourished worldwide, and triumphed over the Soviet block and elsewhere. And it happened without a nuclear exchange and was mostly peaceful. IIRC, such as...

South Africa, Brazil, and Ukraine volunteering to abandon their nuclear bomb programs. (I’ve always thought that Israel worked with South Africa to co-develop their nuclear programs.)

Freedom for Eastern Europe from foreign interference, as promoted by Pope John-Paul II and President Reagan.

Nuns praying in the road while blocking military convoys in the Philippines.

Argentina returning from military governance to civilian rule. Same for Malta, Peru, and Chile.

The end of the Soviet Union.

The Vela Incident (fall of 1979).

There was an article or book published about “The End of History”, postulating that democratic capitalism was the natural state for many disputes.

[quote] The Vela incident, also known as the South Atlantic Flash, was an unidentified double flash of light detected by an American Vela Hotel satellite on 22 September 1979 near the Prince Edward Islands in the Indian Ocean.

The cause of the flash remains officially unknown, and some information about the event remains classified. While it has been suggested that the signal could have been caused by a meteoroid hitting the satellite, the previous 41 double flashes detected by the Vela satellites were caused by nuclear weapons tests. Today, most independent researchers believe that the 1979 flash was caused by a nuclear explosion — perhaps an undeclared nuclear test carried out by South Africa and Israel.

Hold me, David I'm frightened!!!

How can they hide a nuclear explosion! But still, it figures. Israel has had the bomb for a long time, and they do need to be tested.

R47 I picked the 80's for completely opposite reasons. 1979 was the beginning of humanity's descent into the manure pile. By 1989 we were practically begging to be taken out. Greed, selfishness, and discrimination took root in us like never before in the 80's.

R51 oh god, get a history book. Talk about buying into the 50s American Dream and watching Wall Street on a loop. Humans have been much worse throughout history than the time after WWII.

r51 So how do you see the near future playing out?Any predictions? Do you think the article is on the money as they say?

R53 I think there will be a massive recession as a result of all the shit Trump has gotten us into as well as inflation, but anybody could tell you that. I predict mass immigration as climate change gets worse (the lower east cost will become almost uninhabitable because of hurricanes and such), which will be the issue that gets the GOP back into power after Trump is unseated. I predict more political division amongst Americans until Civil War erupts. Most of all I predict more monolithic corporations stealing and cataloguing people's every move (here's looking at you, Bezos). I strongly predict that Disney will start manufacturing technology and once that succeeds they will start branching into other fields.

r54 But will that ultimately create a violent backlash?I cant see inequality and the rich just findings ways to manage and supervise the populace carrying on without pushback and backlash at some point?

R55 After Trump's election and the "outrage" that inspired I realized something: the wealthy and powerful are never going to have to worry about that pushback because the common american doesn't care enough to revolt. Think about it. Trump has gotten away with so much bullshit in his time as president and nobody's rioted, barely any protests, nobody seems to care. The American people have proved that we don't care about corruption that goes on above our heads. So no, I don't think there'll be any violent pushback, because we as a people have grown docile and lazy in the past ten years like never before. I think the rich will never have to worry about a revolt unless something truly special happens, like a Che Guevara-style martyr comes along and whips everyone into a frenzy.

Thanks for reply r56

So do you think the articles prediction is wrong then or do you envisage deaths,social ,economic and political chaos manifesting in a different way or context?

I think there is a reason we see a struggle right now between the "Populist"/ (hidden)Tyrannical style leaders we are seeing right now a la Trump/ Bolsinaro/ Johnson and the last vestiges of Democratic leadership that is trying to hang on around the globe. I think frankly that governments know that the REAL Enviromental/Economic/Population data IS MUCH WORSE than we know- say 20- 30% worse. And there is one other group that shares this information , namely the the uber wealthy Billionaires. My point is- everything that is happening across the globe from this point on, be it in elections, military actions, the stock market, and what legislation if ANY gets passed, is only to benefit the the very few wealthy that are going to survive the coming years. Populism is a farce. Brexit is a non-starter. And I fear the vast majority of us, including the middle and " upper" middle class, even if we survive, will just be cogs in the wheel. It's the Billionaires at the helm now.

r58 How did we allow ourselves to get into such a state?

R57 I don't think it's wrong at all, I just don't envision it manifesting itself in such "fire and brimstone" ways. Modern America will not die with a scream, it will die with a pathetic, barely audible whimper.

The US has been in steady decline for 50+ years and most of us are in total denial about it.

Our economy keeps shrinking, we have massive amounts of debt and the very thing we need to keep the fires going - fresh new US citizens - is the thing we're now shutting out of the country.

We make next to nothing here in the US......there's nothing supporting the suburban middle class in this country. It will all collapse, roads and bridges will crumble, and each little neighborhood will turn into its own Flint, unable to maintain basic water/electricity/gas systems.

I appreciate all the recent comments and replies but would just like to point out that the article and predictions are not just about the USA but about the western and developed world in general. The UK would definitely be another country were the analysis is apt.

Isn't this the same shit Steve Bannon was on about?

hmm, DL didn't like that link, lemme try again

Letting the junk food industry write public nutrition policy was literally like letting the fox in the chicken coop.

Manufacturing is not the only source for generating income. America, for a very long time, has been much more a center for finance, and in the past 30 years in the monetizing of information. Our information, our dining habits, shopping habits, medical information, travel patterns, internet searches, car rentals, sports and entertainment preferences is being sold thousands of times a day, that is, the information on each and every one of us is sold thousands of times a day. However, the US is still one of the largest agricultural producers on the entire planet. We are uniquely favored in climate for the growing of a good many staple crops - not to wet, not too dry, not too hot, not too cold. Even with climate change, we are more likely to have food to sell to a starving world and that, believe me, will have more value than washing machines or cars in the next 25 years. We do still manufacture a LOT - but people are probably not that aware or clear that Europe's manufacturing was decimated in WWII and so was Japan's, South Korea's, and China's manufacturing. So the US basically had the 1950s all to ourselves to build an enormous manufacturing-based society. After all those places rebuilt, partly as a result of the Marshall Plan, our piece of the world's manufacturing pie has diminished and diminished ever since. However, I'm not naive. The next 25 years are going to be pretty for any of us. I hope to be dead before the worst times roll in, but if I'm not, I'll be in that group that they start putting out on rafts to float adrift on the ocean. I grow a lot of my own food on my own land, and I plant a lot of stuff that other people don't realize is edible, so I might survive for a while until people figure out why I'm still alive and start stripping my land.

Seems to be becoming truer by the day.

Don’t worry. Billionaires have the money for their own armies, drones, rockets, satellite tracking. I’m sure we’ll be ok.

I was rather hoping that in the 2020s we would emerge from the hell we've been in since Reagan and Thatcher took the reins. It's still their voices crying, "Save the economy at all costs! Get out there and play Nearer My God to Thee while you're cranking up the engine of State!"

Behold!

Count me among the group that thinks we are all fucked. I cannot speak of the rest of the world, but I do agree that there is a large segment of Americans who are too docile and willfully ignorant to change anything. For decades, the Right has bred a group of voters who refuse to listen to science & facts, but rely on charlatans and God (don't get me started on the hypocrisy). The system likely won't change because of gerrymandering and campaign finance.

If there is a next time, hopefully we get things right.

[quote]For decades, the Right has bred a group of voters who refuse to listen to science & facts

And they still won't as humanity dies worldwide. It's actually hilarious, how callous humans are towards each other. How much we really, truly don't care about anyone but ourselves hahaha.

Anyway, fuck it.

Religion is the thing that keeps us firmly looking backwards to the Bronze Age. But it is human nature that created religion.

Human nature remains fairly constant. So, yeah. We are consigned to forever live this life that is a physical manifestation of the battle of our darker and lighter nature.

It bites, but there it is. Secure your helmets, kids.

How much longer can DeBlasio afford to spend taxpayer funds on public housing, medicaid, food stamps, and public assistance in NYC on a scale so generous (he supplements federal aid) that people from all keep coming from other places for his generosity. At some point the middle class will be gone. What will happen when these people are told the well is dried? He asks nothing from them to stem the benefits such as not having more children. So sad for everybody.

R74 has obviously never been in any NYC Housing Authority projects. There is a waiting list to get in, but only because so many people are the desperately poor as the investor class continues to suck all the money out of our economy. The apartments are unpleasant, on their very best day. They are poorly maintained and have been poorly maintained for decades. Flush a NYCHA toilet at your own risk. And at the risk of anyone who lives below you. They are over run with rats, roaches, ants, weapons, drugs, despair and any other form of pestilence you can imagine.

You can house these people or kill them all. But you can't have the 400,000, plus, current NYCHA residents turned out onto the streets with no permanent place of their own. Fully a quarter of the residents are over 55 years of age. Of that number, more than half are over 65. That anyone would try blame Bill de Blasio for a housing program that was founded in 1934 is simply absurd.

Generosity? You have never been inside a NYCHA building, R74. I suspect you are just as disgusting as your ignorant comment.

I'm convinced the U.S is in the opening stages of a civil war. A constitutional crisis is what kicked off the last one, although it ended up being fought about deeper issues that dated to almost a century before.

At last, an excuse to start wearing everyday casual chainmail and a sleeveless jean jacket. Now all I need is a hatchet, a long chain and an epic guitar solo to take me out..

I don't pretend to know when Trump will leave office, but I do know the United States will have collapsed, or on the verge of collapse, when he does.

R75 Under Bloomberg and other mayors the money was not as poorly managed. Today, NYCHA is a cesspool of waste. You have generations not working and adding to the problems there. Take a look at the NYCHA parking lots. Cadillacs, Lexus, and other luxury cars are there and why? Because the tenants pay practically no rent. They revolted when NYCHA asked them to pay a nominal amount for parking. They want everything free, not free for the taxpayers. Many NYCHA residents also own property in other part of the USA or Caribbean. Something is very wrong. How do I know, I work for NYC govt as a fraud investigator. Rampant abuse by too many, I will always have work.

[quote]I'm convinced the U.S is in the opening stages of a civil war.

I don't buy this fully because back then Americans actually fucking cared and mobilized. They didn't do it online.

What we NEED to worry about is a local ISIS. I mean, we basically have one via the various militia groups now uprising and our pack of lone wolves, but patriotism then is not what patriotism is now.

Back then they had a genuine purpose. They believed in a human connection greater than themselves (for the most part), and actually managed to accomplish things, but we're not the same way now. Patriotism's goddamn bumfuck flyovers and the man they elected to power.

Are these people gaining in numbers? How plentiful is Trump's base/support?

Nah, I don't see civil war. I see [bold]class war[/bold]. Now THAT would be a fucking FUN ONE!

But r73 lots of societies and countries manage this battle much better than the USA. Not perfectly but far less toxic. Eg Scandinavian countries, many European countries like Ireland , Switzerland. Also New Zealand and Canada. The dystopian depressing hopeless feel we get from the USA is not an inevitability of human nature.

I think America may be crumbling. Seriously. The myths of the greatest country on earth and the American dream cannot stand much longer. I hope something better emerges.

r82 All empires end I guess but is the american psyche ready for that adjustment?