Predictions On Which Nations Will Play Dominant Roles On The Economy In The Next Decade.
These predictions were a tad rushed since I wanted to make them before two birds of a feather meet in Singapore and before any results materialize from the G7 conference in Canada. I no longer see myself as anything in the political arena except an observer. The next generation will need to confront and select courses of action. They have to live with the consequences --- my generation should get out of the way. We won’t but we should.
I like predictions in that it puts someone on the spot after volumes have been written or stated by so many for so long on the global political future.
Going into the summit with North Korea the U.S. has already lost. North Korea has already had individual talks with Russia, China, and South Korea. It looks right now that these neighboring countries have agreed to a NATO like agreement with China, Russia, and South Korea agreeing to defend North Korea against any American attack and end all trade boycotts against North Korea. North Korea will probably agree to inspectors from Russia, China, and maybe South Korea, but likely not US inspectors. What inspections mean is past my pay grade. In the past we have been told we cannot knock out North Korean missile launchers since they are mobile. Supposedly North Korea already has nuclear weapons. As far as labs are concerned for further research, why can’t these labs be mobile like the launchers? Once the technology is achieved it is not clear how much inspections mean. In short, Kim Jong un becomes a major trade partner in the huge Asian market, and gets to keep iron clad barbaric control over his own citizens.
Meanwhile, China has put themselves into position to be the world’s main economic power. After a long series of horrible leaders like Mao and his successors, China has gotten serious about human overpopulation, climate change, pollution, poverty, and is able to best any agreements sought by U.S. firms on business deals with Third World / European countries.
China some years back initiated a one child policy. This was very effective to the degree now 2 children are ok, except few Chinese are jumping at this. The Chinese people are far more consumer orientated now than large family oriented. In the past 5 years 60 million people have been lifted out of poverty. The perplexing situation here is that China can implement progressive and mostly liberal policies because they are a dictatorship. They are the only country which has addressed human overpopulation. They now have universal health care for all citizens. And universal pension plans. Are they perfect yet? No. But they have power to make changes whereas the U.S. has been unable to make needed structural changes in our governance since the 70’s. Our advances in human rights have been noteworthy but the inability for the United States to stop the rapid shift of almost all our wealth to the already very wealthy is pitting large groups—like whites, blacks, hispanics, fundamentalists, non fundamentalists, environmentalists, non environmentalists, those with health care, those without health care, affluent neighborhoods, ghettos, athletes, fans, those with good pensions, those without good pensions, those with livable wages, those without livable wages, those who want to own weapons of mass destruction and those who want weapons of mass destruction banned, and so on—all theses groups being encouraged by politicians to blame each other for the reasons behind the environmental and economic stagnation or decline of their daily lives. The latter is the primary force behind all the unrest.
China doesn’t have to get popular support to attack poverty in meaningful ways, regulate capitalism, put limits on capitalism, and now that it has decided the environment and climate change are important matters, they don’t have to sell it via elections to get meaningful action. As a consequence, Chinese GDP grew 6.7% last year while the U.S. grew 2.9%. By 2020 China will have a middle class of 600 million people and the U.S. 167 million people. China’s foreign investment activities have more than doubled since 2012, while the U.S. is pursuing an angry and unsympathetic attitude toward other foreign countries. A new coalition seems to be forming with democratic countries plus China on one side and Russia, North Korea, the United States, and assorted militaristic dictators across South America, Africa, Israel, and Arab States in the Middle East on the other side. This is a truly noteworthy realignment of coalitions. Trump feels more comfortable with dictators and has already alienated the European allies.
Everywhere that counts in terms of economic growth, China is rapidly moving ahead. The United States is focusing it’s attention on military expenditures even though we currently spend more than all the other industrial powers put together. After expending all this money-- the U.S. hasn’t won any wars after Korea aside from Granada. We have won the killing fields war, always killing many times more than our adversaries have killed us.
The American electric car manufacturer says it will shortly build 260,000 electric cars. China already sold 700,000 electric cars in 2017, offers subsidies to buyers to the tune of $15,000 per vehicle and is threatening to block automakers, which don’t make electric vehicles, from selling cars. Right now China is the world’s largest automotive market. The city of Shenzhen now has 16,359 all electric buses. The whole United States has 300.
American governance hasn’t done anything effective to reduce the size and personal safety of our urban and rural ghettos for over 50 years. These huge poverty pockets have become so unsafe for the residents that the greatest number of individuals with post traumatic stress syndrome are not veterans from terroristic type conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and so on, but people—especially children in their formative years—in our urban and rural ghettoes. Chronic levels of stress hormones are doing to our huge ghetto populations what has been done to veterans in ghetto like wars abroad. The damage being done to children in our ghettos is often permanent, and this translates to poor employer choices for any kind of employment for them. What is the U.S. doing to help these economic deadbeats? We are currently reducing whatever welfare they get via food stamps and whatever else, and telling them if they don’t accept work at slave wages, they will get no benefits at all. In essence, we are doing what we can to get rid of illegal immigrants as our most abused slave labor force, and replace them with American citizens who are trapped in our urban and rural ghettoes. The ethics here is mind boggling as is the strong support all this stuff is getting from fundamentalist Christians.
China, on the other hand has a current goal to lift 1 million people out of poverty per year. Recently, in one province, the numbers of impoverished residents dropped by 25%. American farmers, in the meanwhile, have suffered a 45 percent drop in net farm income, the largest 3 year drop since the great depression.
How can China be doing so much all at once while America can’t make structural changes in our governance in these areas? Unregulated and no limit capitalism runs the United States at this point in history. We really have a corpocracy. China, on the other hand, has firm control over their capitalists. When China decides their ghetto regions are going to be eliminated, they control where companies can build new plants, or relocate—while providing, when necessary, ecological compensation, upgrading schools in the targeted areas, form cooperatives for the workers in which 30% of profits go to the villages to cover public spending, 30% goes to the company running the cooperative to expand production, and the remaining 40% is shared by the workers, who are often farmers.
China’s troops are busy planting trees (and shutting down hundreds of coal plants), not blood shed in endless foreign wars, and are spending one tenth of their gross domestic product on artificial intelligence. In 2011 85% of Chinese preferred foreign brands, while in 2017 the preference for foreign brands dropped to 40%. China is concentrating on long maternity leaves, improved pensions, strict gun control, and is going after ‘fake internet’ news (I have no idea myself how to deal with this problem or how effective they are).
All of the above are just a few of the reasons why China is poised to be the economic leader of the next decade. Europe has already established itself the leader in terms of meeting the basic needs of their citizens with universal health care, reform of criminal justice systems, vacation periods, pension benefits, living wages, dealing with recreational drug abuse, and having their citizens score highest on the yearly global ‘happiness polls’. China is copying their policies rapidly. But European countries, like the United States, are being hemmed in by democracy. Democracy is right now failing almost everywhere, whether measured by the number and quality of measures being taken to solve global problems, or in the quality of people who run for office. American elections have become endless circuses with all sorts of ignorant clowns using the forever campaigns to secure a yearly income rather than actually do anything like real work.
Notice these predictions are for only the next decade. All the major problems today are global in nature and require unified global actions, but there is little indication any such cooperation seems likely. For example, wages can hardly become livable wages for many as long as there are no global minimum wages. As long as some workers, somewhere, are willing, or forced, to work at slave wages, then workers everywhere are trapped.
Also vast military power with modern weapons of mass destruction coupled with drones and smart missiles are virtually obsolete, The days of uniformed armies fighting battles on battlefields is over. One smart bomb these days could eliminate the whole battlefield. Instead, every group, no matter how small, has access to a wide array of terroristic ways to create endless turmoil upon the society they wish to destroy or simply punish. More and more countries are finding ways to implant viruses in computers which coordinate whole vital industries, including the ability to launch a military missile attack. So far nothing real malicious has been done with these implanted viruses, but what if they decide to be malicious? All the atomic weapons in the world are worthless if they can’t be launched.
Most disheartening is this: what good can really happen in a world saddled with national leaders like Putin, Kim Jong un, Netanyahu, Omar al-Bashir (Sudan), Mugabe (Africa), Ayahtollah Khamenei, Musharraf (Pakistan), Bashar al-Assad (syria), Erdogan (Turkey), Trump, and Duterte (Phillipines), The craziest is Equatorial Guinea’s Mbasogo. He tortures and kills political dissidents, skins enemies alive then eats their testicles, brains, and livers. He claims he is in constant touch with God. This is a very poor 2 bit country and yet the United Nations does nothing. Almost all of these leaders won an election of some sort, and all are ignorant and emotionally disturbed persons who in many cases claim to be hard core religious and yet have zero ethics, if we use the only universally accepted ethical Principle: the Golden Rule.
With leaders like this— violence is in, tolerance for diversity is out; working together to help all constituents to have a better life is out, blaming minorities in their midst as the cause for all problems is in; name calling is in, reason and logic are out; justice is out, revenge is in.
Science has advanced to the point where most people could theoretically live a good and peaceful life with a good home, good schools, good jobs, adequate leisure time, good pensions, secure neighborhoods, and so on. Instead almost half the world live on less than $2.50/day; 80% live on less than $10/day, and more than 80% of the world’s population live in countries where income differentials are widening, albeit no where’s near the rate taking place in the U.S.
There are roughly 75 million refugees in the world today with no home, no job—living in raggedy-ass tent cities on barren land. In most cases they were driven out of their native countries by the kind of leaders listed above. For plenty of logical reasons, no one wants these refugees. There are more refugees without homes than at any past point of human history. If one word could best describe human relationships in this age of cyberspace communication it would be disingenuous. There is no reason to consider that the Evolutionary process will end. But there is every reason to predict that a major correction, as severe as others in the past, will take place.
Between 1970 and 2010, 52% of all of the world’s vertebrate animal populations—mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians—disappeared, and all because of activities by one species—humans. As the most advanced species yet in the evolutionary process, humans have become self-serving illusionists thinking our species is now running the evolutionary process. It is attacking this delusion that has earned me a not totally affectionate title of “Professor Doomsday” . The evolutionary process will go forward, on evolutionary time, while the near term, on human time, for the human race will not be so upbeat. The predictions in this musing are for just the next decade. The age of global terrorism is going to be a very destructive age. I seem to have, without any planning, arranged for my earthly departure, if not exactly at the best time, at least reached an age where having lived a good life is a done deal. Time of death is now irrelevant.
