America and the World in 2030

[Warph]

America and the World in 2030

"Its soul, its climate, its equality, liberty, laws, people, and manners. My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!—Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Monroe, June 17, 1785

Christian and American customs around the country are under attack by atheist minorities and groups with anti-American agendas. Institutions, freedoms, and traditions that we had previously taken for granted are threatened. The church, turning left and complicit, clamoring for new membership and revenues, has chosen to remain silent in defense of life, liberty and Americanism. Conservative groups have abandoned their principles in order to be popular and liked. The future of our country in general is irrelevant to most who selfishly live in the bubble of the moment.

The majority of Americans are either asleep, lulled into a false sense of temporary well-being and abundance, or have resigned themselves to their fate because it is hard to have spring with one flower. Those who are keenly aware of negative transformations and have seen this movie play before are shaking their heads in disbelief and speaking in the wind like mythological Cassandras.

Few seem to worry about future generations, except in empty posturing rhetoric. Lost in egotistical self-indulgence, our collective elected officials continue to make decisions predicated on the Me Generation. The Lost Generation must fend for itself when the time comes.

Since the low-information reality show spectator voters have elected the most "transformational president" in history to a second term of lavish spending and punitive socialist redistribution of wealth, if the U.N. Agenda 21 and the ginned-up class warfare succeed, the thinking Americans will watch powerlessly as the U.S. will no longer be a Constitutional Republic and a superpower, becoming a second rate nation in the dustbin of declined and fallen "empires."

What will the world be like and what kind of country will America be in the next 15-20 years at the rate of the fast-paced involuntary and hopeless change that is aimed at pushing us "forward" to disaster?

The "unprecedented change" will drive "60 percent of the world's population to mega-cities by 2030, and competition for food, water, and energy resources could increase the possibilities of violent conflict." (Frederick Kempe, President and CEO, Atlantic Council)

"The United States must urgently address its domestic economic and political dysfunctions." The Atlantic Council, a think tank, wrote a 57-page report, "Envisioning 2030: U.S. Leadership in a Post-Western World," to "help prepare the Obama Administration and its global partners for unprecedented change."

The report predicts a future of "vast economic and political volatility, environmental catastrophe, and conflicting, inward-looking nationalisms that would be unlike any period that the United States has seen before." "President Obama will be setting the tone and direction for U.S. policy in a post-Western world." (Atlantic Council, Executive Summary, p. 5)

As the powers that be are actively and speedily working to affect this outcome, the global order champions "predict" that wealth will shift from west to east. Learning Mandarin may be a good idea - China is recognized in the report as "the most crucial single factor that will shape the international system in 2030." (Atlantic Council, Executive Summary, p. 7)

Is a post-western world a world without the United States as the economic superpower, benefactor, and military protector of the globe's ungrateful nations? The 20th century economic guru of the liberal elites, John Maynard Keynes, said in 1937, "...the idea of the future being different from the present is so repugnant to our conventional modes of thought and behavior that we, most of us, offer a great resistance to acting on it in practice."

The National Intelligence Council discusses in its December 2012 166-page paper, "Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds," the mega trends, game-changers, Black Swans, and potential worlds in the next 15-20 years.

Food, water, and energy sources will become problematic due to growing populations in emerging markets and policies adopted at home that favor expensive green energy, wind, solar, and biofuels, preventing exploration of existing cheaper domestic resources of fossil fueled energy. As one commodity becomes an issue, it will affect the supply and demand of the others. Water needs will grow by a predicted 40 percent.

Energy supply may be obtained from fracking. Hydraulic fracturing (fracking), developed in the 1940s, could extract oil and gas from shales at much lower cost. However, the environmentalists' objections over the contamination of water, earth quake inducement, and methane emissions, have slowed down the use of hydraulic fracturing, particularly in Europe. China, with the largest shale reserves, does not have enough equipment and water to extract gas through fracking.

The EPA will set back any logical resolution to addressing human needs as it will interfere with its myriad of regulations via the Clean Air Act in the misguided effort to protect some tiny fish to the detriment of humans.

NIC modeling predicts that prices for agricultural commodities will rise, impacting poorer countries the worst as they depend on corn which is also used for biofuel. Crop disease, drought, and bad weather events could compound the problem. (p. 34)

Genetically modified crops could be the only way to provide sufficient and affordable food and fuel by using transgenic technologies and precision agriculture via drought-tolerant, salt-tolerant crops, micro-irrigation, and hydroponic greenhouses. Pricing water for farmers in order to discourage waste could be implemented. Currently, farmers pay one-tenth of the price that households and industry pay for water. (NIC, p. 97)

Poverty will be reduced as the result of the U.N.'s efforts to re-distribute wealth across the globe to third world nations, carbon-taxing and punishing developed nations for their success. In the U.N.'s view, the wealth created by the west was achieved at the expense of the rest of the world. These retrograde totalitarian regimes bear no responsibility for their endemic corruption and constant religious and tribal wars.

There will be a diffusion of power without hegemony, dominated by control of regional coalitions. China, India, Brazil will be major players. China will become the largest economy. Europe, Japan, Russia, U.S. will continue to decline. Countries like Colombia, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Turkey will remain "second-order players."

Aging countries like Japan and Western Europe, who are committing demographic suicide by having less and less babies, below the replacement value of 2.1, will experience economic decline and loss of national identity. Russian men die at relatively younger age because of alcohol abuse, tobacco, and related accidents.

There are 80 countries currently with a median age of 25 or less. Eighty percent of all ethnic and armed conflict comes from countries with youthful populations. By 2030, there will be 50 countries left with youthful populations. Fertility rates range from 4-6 children per family.

Clusters of projected youthful states are:

Equatorial belt of the Sub-Saharan Africa
Middle East
Americas: Bolivia, Guatemala, Haiti
Pacific Rim: East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands
Pakistan, Afghanistan, southeast Turkey (Kurds)
Israel (Orthodox Jews) (NIC report, p. 23)
Rapid changes and a shift in power could overwhelm governments. A "governance gap" may evolve that could be replaced by regional governance of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), a rich individual, or a group of powerful elites.

Natural disasters such as staple crop catastrophes, tsunamis, hurricanes, erosion and depletion of soils, and solar geomagnetic storms might cause governments to collapse. (NIC report on Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, p. 52)

NIC's models show an augmentation of the global middle class, health care advances, new technologies, new communication, and poverty reduction. NIC analysis predicts the most rapid growth of the middle class to occur in Asia - India and China. (NIC report, p. 9)

Pathogens crossing from animals to humans can and have caused political and economic turmoil.
Respiratory pathogens can travel very fast across the globe. Prion disease caused Creutzfeldt-Jakob in humans; a bat corona virus caused SARS in 2002. Black Death killed one third of the European population; measles and smallpox killed 90 percent of the native populations in the Americas; the 1918 flu pandemic killed 50 million worldwide. HIV/AIDS jumped to humans almost fifty years before it was recognized. TB, gonorrhea, Staphylococcus Aureus (staph) could re-emerge with a vengeance. Genetic engineering could release new pathogens in addition to those occurring naturally. (NIC, p. 14)

Nationalism is likely to intensify in regions such as East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East based on territorial disputes, religious beliefs, tribal vendettas, and theocratic ideologies. Although planners expected urbanization to promote secularization, the opposite occurred in many settings; it encouraged religious identity, particularly among Muslims.

NIC's modeling sees Russia as fighting the battle of "integrating its rapidly growing ethnic Muslim population in the face of a shrinking ethnic Russian population." The changing ethnic mix is already a source of growing social tensions. (p. 83)

The flow of human capital from the poorest countries, to middle-income, and to rich countries will cause social disruptions, unrest, and problems for urban governments. Increased urban population from internal migration and external immigration will cause food and water shortages. (p. 31)

Patterns of trade reveal the following major economic clusters: Europe (EU), Asia, North America (NAFTA), and Latin America. Two-thirds of European trade takes place within the EU; NAFTA encompasses 40 percent of U.S. trade. East Asian intra-regional trade is 53 percent. Latin America intra-regional trade is 35 percent (excluding Mexico). Latin America is pursuing EU-type regional governance, the Union of Latin American Nations (UNISUR). (Atlantic Council report, p. 26)

National Intelligence Council's (NIC) modeling for 2030 includes four potential worlds:

"Stalled Engines" (globalization stalls and interstate conflict grows)
"Fusion" (China and U.S. cooperate; it does not look promising so far)
"Genie-out-of-the-bottle" (U.S. is no longer the world's policeman and pocketbook, inequalities explode, no more international welfare, some countries prosper, some countries fail)
"Nonstate World" (NGOs, multinational businesses, academic institutions, wealthy individuals, megacities such as those envisioned by U.N. Agenda 21 become the leaders; "increasing global public opinion consensus among elites form hybrid coalitions"—a page right out of the U.N. Agenda 21 goals)

The 2030 global modeling points to potential Black Swans such as Euro/EU collapse due to "unruly Greek exit causing eight times more collateral damage than the Lehmann Brothers," nuclear war, WMD, cyber-attacks to the power grid and the Internet, solar geomagnetic storms, a democratic or collapsed China, a reformed Iran (wishful thinking), and global anarchy, if U.S. power collapses or retreats and no other power is willing, capable, or able financially to provide international order.



Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh, ( Romanian Conservative) ( Romanian Conservative) is a freelance writer (Canada Free Press, Romanian Conservative, usactionnews.com), author, radio commentator (Silvio Canto Jr. Blogtalk Radio, Butler on Business WAFS 1190, and Republic Broadcasting Network), and speaker. Her book, "Echoes of Communism, is available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle. Short essays describe health care, education, poverty, religion, social engineering, and confiscation of property. A second book, "Liberty on Life Support," is also available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle. Her commentaries reflect American Exceptionalism, the economy, immigration, and education.Visit her website, ileanajohnson.com.

[Warph]

June 12, 2030 started out like any other day in memory... and by then, memories were long. Since cancer had been cured fifteen years before, America's population was aging rapidly.  That sounds like good news, but consider this: millions of baby boomers, with a big natural predator picked off, were sucking dry benefits and resources that were never meant to hold them into their eighties and beyond.  Young people around the country simmered with resentment toward "the olds" and anger at the treadmill they could never get off of just to maintain their parents' entitlement programs.

But on that June 12th, everything changed: a massive earthquake devastated the whole West Coast, and the government, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, was unable to respond....

Whoops.... i'm getting ahead of myself here.  The World in 2030 is about presenting news and analysis on what's happening now and how it may affect us in the years to come.  Of course we hope that world will last longer than 17 years.  It may be somewhat arrogant or ignorant to think we can say how the world will look in 2030.  But it will be fun to try.  Lets see now... I'll be a young 92, one of "the olds."  

...Warph


So what are the questions we're hoping to delve into?

What will the workplace look like in 2030? Our coffee-shop office. For the last 200 years, industrialization depended on workers assembling in a common location to build things together. In the future, this will change. There is no reason that knowledge workers with laptops, WiFi access and videoconferencing should commute to offices in the future. Perhaps manufacturing and retail will require a physical presence to do a job, but most "office" jobs will be spun out to homes and coffee shops. Unfortunately for baristas, they may still have to commute to their place of work.


Will rampant inflation destroy the American economy? Since the Fed started printing money in the aftermath of the financial crisis a lot of hands have been wrung. Gold prices have surged on worries about the debasement of the US dollar. What will actually happen? With unemployment high, a wage-price spiral is unlikely. But gas and other commodity prices seem to rise even with wages stagnant. A debased currency will chase returns. Like a volcano erupting, all that lava has to go someplace.

Because of unemployment, globalization and technological advances, this money will not chase wages. But since a lot of dollars put into the system are bought by exporting countries like China, expect their reserves to jump while pushing up liquidity. The US is exporting inflation to China, where wages are surging.

But when China stops accumulating US dollars, inflation will take off in the United States, including in wages while unemployment drops. The Fed will allow this for a time to help inflate away our debts – devaluation by stealth. But when the party really gets going, far higher interest rates will be followed by a sharp recession.


Does rising inequality matter? Will it reverse? Rising inequality probably doesn't affect economic growth as much as democrats claim. Equality doesn't necessarily mean more consumption – just ask Western European countries. But the character of a vastly more unequal American society will be very different. People are generally less happy when there's more inequality. So expect rising crime, social unrest and even socialist movements to take form if current trends in inequality continue.


When will we see our next financial crisis? Soon. One result of rising inequality is vast amounts of dollars accumulated by the rich to invest. Those dollars, instead of chasing wages in productive industries, chase assets causing bubbles. With low returns across the board on most investments, expect large sums of cash to chase the next hot thing. This could be social media or commodities.  

More hot money will follow, credit will increase, but eventually the story will end badly, over and over again.


What does a Paul-Ryan-budget America look like? America has some serious problems that require public investment. Infrastructure is on the fritz, health care costs are soaring, and public education is not preparing children for the new knowledge economy.

Without these investments, America will look more like a Latin-American country in terms of transport, boom-bust economic growth, wages, immense inequality and social services. Heaps of elderly will languish in poverty and die early without the protection of government health insurance. They will certainly need help from their children. Expect the return of the extended family, proper slums of homeless in an economy that, while more dynamic, doesn't provide high-wage jobs.


Does Brazil have what it takes to become a second American superpower? Around 200 million people who speak Portuguese and earn the same amount as your average South African at $10,700. But with growth at 7.5%, Brazil is already taking its place on the world stage.


Where should you invest in the future? Check out the map below from a CIA publication on changing demography. See the beige areas marked "youth bulge"? A youth bulge will eventually become a productive-worker bulge, resulting in huge economic gains over time (think Asian tigers). So invest in Brazil, Chile, Australia, North Africa, Central Asia and Southeast Asia.




Where will wars happen in the future? One simple answer – where water is at risk. Watch out for conflict between Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, or between South Africa and its neighbors. Also, India and Bangladesh will experience severe tension over the Ganges River.