Will the US collapse economically?

[PsychoSerenity]

Nobel Prize winning economists can't predict next month, yet some people think they've got the next 30-40 years worked out.

Some of us are in touch with the gods of fate. (not me by the way)

The future will involve bacon!

Try it, it's fun!

[Ian]

Nobel Prize winning economists can't predict next month, yet some people think they've got the next 30-40 years worked out.

Some big things can be predicted. A great deal of economics comes down to demographics. Demographics is a much more predictable subject of study.

[Warren Dew]

China, meanwhile, is due for a very, very rough time before or during the 20s. China's economic growth has been phenominal for 30 years now, but no nation in human history has perpetually sustained that sort of growth. It's also politically fractuous, highly dependent on coal and oil, and terribly unequal on the Gini index and growing worse. More than one billion of China's population lives below $2000 a year, and it's only a small percentage (mostly in a few select cities) who manage over $20k per year. In other words, except for a very thin sliver, China remains a vastly impoverished Third World country. It's coastal production cities are more tied to foreign economies than they are to the interior. Many Chinese companies can't sell much to interior China any more than they can to sub-Saharan Africa. Ultimately, China's economy is much more dependent on trade with the US than vice versa; the deficit alone should be proof of that. With growing (regionalized) income inequality and some major bumps ahead (demographic, energy, foreign influence), China will be ripe for a good amount of upheaval, both economic and political.

The coast doesn't have to sell to the interior. Most of the interior population can migrate to the coast. That's what happened in the U.S.

That said, China is in for a rough time for one reason only - a shrinking labor pool due to two generations of the one child rule.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

Of course it will, with enough time. Every economy collapses at some point.

In the near future?

Could be tomorrow, could be a week, could be fifty years. Who knows?

Uri Geller.

Yep, he'll predict it with 100% accuracy...






















...the day after it happens.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

...But the 2030s and probably 40s will see incredible growth as that issue passes, and as other things come up (not getting into details here)...

I want details!

[Ian]

...But the 2030s and probably 40s will see incredible growth as that issue passes, and as other things come up (not getting into details here)...

I want details!

It'll be a combination of a new immigration policy (ironically, the US will actively encourage immigrants to come here, including from Mexico), the boom of the post-oil world (I'm a big believer that photovoltaic solar power will keep growing exponentially more efficient - or maybe fusion will come and surprise me), and benefits from a few key technological advances (singular AI @ 2029, biochemical advances, etc.).

But don't listen to me. I'm far more convinced that China's in for a very rough time over the next twenty years than I am of the US hitting a boom twenty-plus years from now. China over the last couple decades has been doing what Japan did in the few decades before that: rapid growth fuelled by artificially cheap money. Conventional wisdom 20 years ago said the Japanese were going to take over by now. China has been acting like 1970s/80s Japan on steroids. It is approaching the physical limits of its rapid growth, and the correction will be more intense than what Japan experienced around 1990. At that time, Japan's government faced a choice of suffering through a sharp and painful recession, or muddling through stagnation and hoping for the best. It chose the latter option, and has yet to fully recover from the "lost decade".

[Trolldor]

I can't help but read all that and thinking either you're laughing as you type it, or in 2030 you're going to be standing there with a coffee in one hand, sunrise over the horizon and thinking:

"Huh. Never expected that."

[Ian]

I can't help but read all that and thinking either you're laughing as you type it, or in 2030 you're going to be standing there with a coffee in one hand, sunrise over the horizon and thinking:

"Huh. Never expected that."

One thing I'm very confident about, at or about 2029:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

My opinion: that's the expected time when a supercomputer will equal human levels of cognition. Able to improve its own design, and given the means to do so, this means that it'll very quickly attain a tremendous level of intelligence. It'll be the last invention mankind is required to make on its own.

[Trolldor]

My opinion: that's the expected time when a supercomputer will equal human levels of cognition. Able to improve its own design, and given the means to do so, this means that it'll very quickly attain a tremendous level of intelligence. It'll be the last invention mankind is required to make on its own.

I can't let you do that Ian.

[Ian]

My opinion: that's the expected time when a supercomputer will equal human levels of cognition. Able to improve its own design, and given the means to do so, this means that it'll very quickly attain a tremendous level of intelligence. It'll be the last invention mankind is required to make on its own.

I can't let you do that Ian.

You won't be able to stop me. The computer will be called "Skynet" and it'll control my gigantic army of robots.

[Trolldor]

My opinion: that's the expected time when a supercomputer will equal human levels of cognition. Able to improve its own design, and given the means to do so, this means that it'll very quickly attain a tremendous level of intelligence. It'll be the last invention mankind is required to make on its own.

I can't let you do that Ian.

You won't be able to stop me. The computer will be called "Skynet" and it'll control my gigantic army of robots.

I'd prefer it be called Gerty. I like Gerty.