Predictions and estimates of where the United States and the West in general will be in 20 years?

[Mr King]

Just curious what's the general consensus of the grate site for what the future holds. Myself, I am not too optimistic. One of my biggest fears is the powers that be are going to intentionally provoke and incite violence to use as a justification to bring in sweeping reductions to civil liberties and further divide people so they can strengthen their grip over the general populations, all in the name of fighting "right wing domestic terror". And the majority will go along with it, just like the did with everything after 9/11. I believe on the other side of 20 years the establishment / deep state will openly wield power over the western populations that rivals China's grip on its domestic population.

[Murph]

I think we are doomed.

[Sinistar]

well you always were in a losing game

anything gained is lost

entropy and decay and death are always present

only suckers bet on the future thinking that there is something there that is for keeps

 

that said enjoy what time you do have in the present moment

and the simpler and easier your pleasures the easier your life tends to be

 

much as you might have done when you were a kid

running around and jumping around and playing and having a good time

did not really require much to get with it

what problems did you think you really have

 

then at some point you had to take all of this seriously

invest in the future

or prepare for tomorrow

that is where it gets started and where it begins

 

mike tyson said that he was never more free than when he did not have a cent to his name

and so that is realizing what all of this really is

the more you are invested in it or get involved in it then the more you have to lose

 

this is where i say the busy bodies and do gooders who think it is their right or their duty to somehow change the world

are piling more garbage on top of the pile

they often create the most problems and refuse to see otherwise

[lucklucky]

 10 minutes of speculative thinking.

Europe will be Lebanon in various zones specially central axis London,Paris, West Germany, Milano, possible that white people emigration would be noticeable  to eastern Europe and Iberian Peninsula. US will be a banana Republic also in several states. 

There are chances that next world war will be a world civil war.

If China continues to grow and be at tech forefront, democracy will not last in the West but probably that will happen after your 20 years window.

Wildcards: technology (robot, AI, medicine, energy).  USA-China war, an USA defeat can precipitate a big change including in US political system.

[seahawk]

Hard to say.

For Western Europe, I have no hope. It will be mostly Muslim by the time and dominated by leftist libtard dictatorships.

Eastern Europe could survive, if they form an alliance with their natural partner Russia.

China will the dominating power, as they have strength and unity.

The USA is difficult to say. If Trump does the Lord's work in his 4 years and it is made sure that no leftist will be president in the next 2 decades, it would be the last bastion of freedom. If the leftist take power, it will a big Venezuela.

[FALightFighter]

For a more positive outlook, try “The End of the World Is Only the Beginning” by Zeihan. It get’s pretty ugly for the next 15-20 years, but the US (augmented by close physical, commercial, and cultural connections to Mexico and western Canada, as well as special relationships with UK, Australia, and Japan) is one of the best positioned places to recover. Sweden-Poland, Turkey, and Uzbekistan are also potentials. China, sub-Saharan Africa, Russia and some other areas look to be even worse off.

 

i guess we’ll see, in time.

[X-Files]

4 hours ago, FALightFighter said:

For a more positive outlook, try “The End of the World Is Only the Beginning” by Zeihan. It get’s pretty ugly for the next 15-20 years, but the US (augmented by close physical, commercial, and cultural connections to Mexico and western Canada, as well as special relationships with UK, Australia, and Japan) is one of the best positioned places to recover. Sweden-Poland, Turkey, and Uzbekistan are also potentials. China, sub-Saharan Africa, Russia and some other areas look to be even worse off.

 

i guess we’ll see, in time.

Huh. Can be had for dirt cheap

The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Coll | Inspire Uplift

The End of the World Is Just the Beginning - Wikipedia

 

Cool. Thanks for the pointer.

 

[futon]

Sometimes the US looks strong. Sometimes it looks fragile. Same goes for China. And Europe. And Japan.

Different kinds of weak points in each. In the US, its social cohesion, Rhetorically very combative against each other. And too many milking style programs.  In China, it's sustaining economic performance when weak points emerge such as property or over capacity. Later the age demographics will hit them. For Europe, its EU sovereign cohesion. If each state drifts apart in its interest, then they become a bunch of little countries that won't be able to compete with emerging countries. In Japan, it's the demographics now. Following the lost decade, some satisfactory adjustments were made but the demographics is holding the country back. 

The Ukraine War was a real test on Russia's economy which looks quite resiliant. In the ME, Iran's network of militant organizations has been thrashed. So Israel's position is looking better. Although internationally in the Islam world, the West reputation took a big hit. That includes places like Indonesia, so not just the one's allowed in the UK to be pardoned, thus geopolitically consequential. I don't think the claims on Canada or Greenland helped US reputation. Even if just face value with a more balanced approach waiting underneath, in general it's too unnerving for many people. 

How it all plays out is difficult to see. There are too many unseeable details. 

Corporate based technology advances may continue to advance or stutter. In 20 years, average people may have a computer inside a finger ring. Or maybe it reachers maturity with the smartphone.

Edited January 13 by futon

[Stuart Galbraith]

Where will we all be in 20 years? Its really very simple.

 

[Tim the Tank Nut]

in 1973 the future 20 years ahead looked pretty bleak.  You could pick dozens if not hundreds of years worse than now.  The trick is to make the most of the time that you have.  I am well aware that it is easier said than done.

[Ivanhoe]

I figure there's a 5-10% chance the US goes into an economic depression within 10 years.

Massive public debt, massive regulatory burden, failing schools, lack of skilled labor.

If there is a sharp and frightening recession or other economic shock*, whoever is POTUS at the time is likely to bend the knee to the ballyhooed experts at Treasury and the Federal Reserve. The same geniuses that got us into this mess. If you look at the American economy 1929-1939, we could see an echo. Republican WH trying to manage the economy and failing, Dem sweep of the WH and both houses of Congress, authoritarian measures instituted, etc. This time around, the federal government will not only confiscate gold but also cryptocurrency. CBDC will be imposed along with social credit scores and all that neo-Maoism.

Such a scenario won't last, as the Dems found out in 1920.

I do not think we will have any kind of meaningful large-scale civil war, as the fault lines now are urban versus rural. The big blue cities can wall out the rednecks, but they cannot wall in the water, food, and fuel they need. In blue states, I can imagine a scenario where the big blue cities work with the state government to use eminent domain to seize nearby water, farmland, oil/gas wells, etc**. In flyover country, that isn't going to happen I don't believe.

 

* Pandemic seems most likely, at this point. The authoritarians keep trying to spin up H5N1, and now we have HMPV running amuck.

** We now have a whole generation of waitpersons and baristas with "Studies" degrees that would stand in line for days to apply for a job with the 21st century National Recovery Administration.

[sunday]

Say hello to becoming the new Argentina. 😬

 

[Ivanhoe]

Well, with AOC we've already got our Evita.

[X-Files]

6 hours ago, Tim the Tank Nut said:

in 1973 the future 20 years ahead looked pretty bleak.  You could pick dozens if not hundreds of years worse than now.  The trick is to make the most of the time that you have.  I am well aware that it is easier said than done.

 

 

[Ivanhoe]

 

[futon]

An online meeting between Xi and Putin a few days ago:

 

[futon]

With global economics, there's a ying-yang effect. A give a take.

Even though the US wants to recover lost manufacturing, it doesn't change the fact that the US is already a very large GDP country with high GDP per capita and a currency that is the global dominate currency.

Countries with lower gdp per capita and currencies that are naturally weaker because of not being a global dominant currency will naturally sell for less, whether its govenment backed companies like the PRC, or any others, like bananas from the Philippines.

So in order to build up all those lost industries, then come the tariffs. But then it also means shutting off the world in order to be self-reliant.

To what degree of self-reluance is necessary is up to as much as taste. The US is one of the only few countries that actually can achieve a high class economy that would be structured for near complete self-sufficiency; big population, lots of land for food making, natural resources. So it would just need to have the main industries to reach self-sufficiency. Most countries though need to trade to make up for key sectors that they lack.

The globalists probably either over done it, or corrupted the idea, but a super economic zone that includes the US in its heart would exercise that total amount of self-sufficiency with no one country, including the US, being fully self-sufficient, but rather all complimenting each other.

But instead, its looking like the US is going to thoroughly pursue self-sufficiency. So in order to maintain lower tier industries at US per capita pay rates, its going to limit its economic sphere to for the most part the US only. 

So a lot of the other countries are going to deepen their complimentary trade tie ups further as a result. As an economic zone, it'll be big.

[Ivanhoe]

1 hour ago, futon said:

To what degree of self-reluance is necessary is up to as much as taste. The US is one of the only few countries that actually can achieve a high class economy that would be structured for near complete self-sufficiency; big population, lots of land for food making, natural resources. So it would just need to have the main industries to reach self-sufficiency. Most countries though need to trade to make up for key sectors that they lack.

The US hasn't been 100% self-sufficient since ever. The recent trade interaction with Vietnam illustrates that the buzz and the reality are far different.

And it is wise to ignore all the bleating in the press. Both pressies and purported experts are largely in panic mode, because they've had it rather cushy and are now facing uncertainty.

https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/modern-chickenshit-monetary-theory
 

Quote

 

Wharton Professor Emeritus Jeremy Siegel, who has a longstanding presence as an economic commentator and author laying chalk on the modern monetary system and reliably "predicting" the heavy favorite that the market would always continue to go up, humiliated himself this week on national television.

However, in the process, he offered important perspectives on how truly dopesick our stock market and its participants have become.

On Monday, which as of Thursday night has turned out to be the only day with serious volatility to the downside this week, Siegel was on CNBC before the market opened clamoring for 150 basis points in rate cuts.

You can watch the video of him, where it sounds like he’s about to cry, making his case for “emergency cuts” here:

 

 

Quote

There was no counterbalance to the rest of Monday’s idiocy on financial news, however Fast Money’s Guy Adami did a great job cancelling out Siegel’s white noise after the trading day by making a couple very simple points about Jeremy Siegel’s protest - namely: “There’s no emergency. The stock market can go down, too.”

 

Quote

Siegel’s appearance, and his imploring of the Fed to cut rates, was a perfect cross-section of how addicted to total euphoria market participants have become. This “emergency” not only displayed our massive dopamine deficit with regards to market performance, but also took a page directly out of the impotent political and central banking playbook in the sense it was completely reactionary and incredibly hastily put together.

 

The "tell" is that all the folks squawking about the stock exchanges, rates, etc. are talking about money things, not actual economic things. Which implies that their concerns about tariffs has nothing to do with economics or business, and everything to do with their ox being gored.

I will restate the reminder to ignore everything in a news story after the word "could."

 

[sunday]

5 minutes ago, Ivanhoe said:

The "tell" is that all the folks squawking about the stock exchanges, rates, etc. are talking about money things, not actual economic things. Which implies that their concerns about tariffs has nothing to do with economics or business, and everything to do with their ox being gored.

Wall Street vs. Main Street, as one blogger put.

[rmgill]

Some are also the same people who want to tax the shit out of stock portfolios, so their hand wringing is just disingenuous. 

[Ivanhoe]

3 hours ago, sunday said:

Wall Street vs. Main Street, as one blogger put.

Precisely.

Goods and services, vice arbitrage and rent-seeking.

[futon]

8 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

The US hasn't been 100% self-sufficient since ever. The recent trade interaction with Vietnam illustrates that the buzz and the reality are far different.

And it is wise to ignore all the bleating in the press. Both pressies and purported experts are largely in panic mode, because they've had it rather cushy and are now facing uncertainty.

https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/modern-chickenshit-monetary-theory
 

 

 

 

The "tell" is that all the folks squawking about the stock exchanges, rates, etc. are talking about money things, not actual economic things. Which implies that their concerns about tariffs has nothing to do with economics or business, and everything to do with their ox being gored.

I will restate the reminder to ignore everything in a news story after the word "could."

 

The proponents for the mass tariffs seem to be angling towards idealism of self-sufficiency. And the idealism might be more about harnessing political power than top economic performance.

Reduced regulations related cost and letting the drilling happen seemed plenty enough on its ownbut now will be working to make up for sustaining mass tariff damage.

Foreign goods are verbally attacked as stealing wealth. That's what it de facto makes it sound like a call for self-sufficiency, but only not realizing that it is. When really it's just simply that low gdp per capita and currency strength result in natural price undercuting. For price undercutting to end, then the gdps of other countries are to raise to where gdp per capita reaches equalibrium. Which means the workers in the same industry across multiple countries has roughly the same salary. But that is framed as wealth stealing, pillaging. Any currency manipulation factored out would still show this natural price undercutting reality of economics. Surgical use of tariffs could help protect a degree of some key industries. Set a quota limit for preservation. But mass tariffs is economically inefficient. Wealth can't be pushed up more when its already at the high tier.

And the concern about supply chains is partly from two things. (1) Too much shipping off supply chains. The mass tariffs looks like a reactionary extreme to the other extreme of being too careless about letting too much of industries going abroad. And (2)  building supply chains in adversary countries --China. It's just sloppiness across the whole board. 

The proponants don't give the full context of economics just like the shrilling media.

[sunday]

29 minutes ago, futon said:

The proponents for the mass tariffs seem to be angling towards idealism of self-sufficiency. And the idealism might be more about harnessing political power than top economic performance.

No, nope, no sir, absolutely not.

It is a matter of balanced trade.

Quote

The key problem is mercantilism—the ancient and continuing efforts of countries to twist mutually beneficial international trade to a one-sided advantage. The fundamental answer we seek in these pages is how a principled country—which believes in the benefits of mutually beneficial trade—ought to respond to the predations of mercantilist trading partners.

Quote

Many economists assume that mercantilism is just a developmental strategy —that it will eventually be abandoned by its practitioners once they develop… It is true that mercantilists eventually abandon mercantilism. Mercantilism becomes pointless once their trading partners are too poor to be able to buy more imports than exports or once trading partners refuse to cooperate.

But the fact that countries eventually give up mercantilism after destroying the economies of their trading partners is cold comfort to their trading partners. Spain never again was a world power, the Dutch never again led Europe in technology and trade, Britain is now a shadow of its former self, and the United States may never fully recover.

 

[futon]

20 minutes ago, sunday said:

No, nope, no sir, absolutely not.

It is a matter of balanced trade.

 

In the years of Trump's first administration, they concluded the USMCA and trade agreements with Japan and South Korea.

https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-reached-agreements-japan-improve-trade-nations/

A recovery from Biden years sounded legit. 

A proactive effort tie up any ends that become loose could have been expected. 

Thus all 2024 rhetoric on trade was seen to be to that extent. Still within reason.

But he's doubling down on everything now. That was contrary to expectations. Some of the doubling down, good.

- Closing the borders to illegals and drugs.

- Eliminate woke related programs.

- wipe out other waste and bloat in D.C.

 

Those are good.

 

The not good, that you all know..

- Sovereignty claims: Canada 51st state, Greenland grap intention, Gaza ownership "out of the box" idea.

-Blanket mass tariffs.

 

Those are giving the D team lots of ammunition. Why even do it. It puts risks to the things in the good list.

Edited April 5 by futon

[sunday]

No this last round of tariffs, and were you bothering to read the link I posted, you would have understood the purpose of those you call "blanket mass tariffs".

As I am tired to be the target of Stuart-like misinformed walls of text, this could be the last answer on this topic.