The Next President Will Be the Worst in a Century

It doesn't matter whether it is President Obama or Mitt Romney. It wouldn't have helped if it had been Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, or anyone else that did run or might have run or could have run. The next four years will be the beginning of the dissolution of the Industrial Age civilization and no matter what the next President does, no matter if he has a friendly, unfriendly or split Congress, the next four years will not go well.

The problem is all that uninstalled productivity enhancing technology that I keep talking about. Over the next four years, a lot of it is going to get installed. It will stimulate the economy, create deflationary pressure and induce substantial technological unemployment. Because the initial result of productivity enhancing technology is to decrease jobs and increase profits, it will exacerbate the already significant tension between the classes. The '1%' will continue to get all the goodies.

The leadership, even with the cooperation of the Fed, will find itself in a no-win situation. If they do nothing, the rich get richer and the rest get unemployed. If they try to stimulate the economy they may decrease unemployment for a short time, but as soon as the enhanced profits seep into the Capex decision making process, unemployment and profits, will go up even faster than it was before the stimulus.

As I have discussed before, automation is deflationary. The Fed needs to do quantitative easing to counteract it. It leads to lower deficits, since the Treasury benefits from QE. However, it will appear that the Federal Debt will continue to rise, even though, after taking out 'interagency holdings' it may actually decrease. There will likely be increased rancor generated over this issue as well.

When I explain this to people they often ask, 'So what is the solution?' We are not accustomed to the answer,'There isn't one.' However, that is the answer this time. If we stimulate Information Age enterprise formation, we can ameliorate it. Essentially, people will quit their jobs before they are laid off. However, once the implementation of robotics and A.I. really get going, it is unrealistic to think that we can keep up in this manner. Also, there is an increasing lag between the time people are laid off from an Industrial Age job and the point at which they have been sufficiently trained to take on an Information Age career.

Of course, any amelioration through the stimulation of Information Age enterprise formation will first require that a proper diagnosis of the problem is made by our decision makers. It is very unlikely that even if the problem is properly diagnosed that it will, or even can, be communicated to the electorate in such a manner as to keep it from being tantamount to political suicide. It will seem that the government is creating rich people at the expense of the 'regular guy.'

The more likely outcome is that scapegoats will be found. They are likely to be 'the 1%', the Chinese, the Arabs, the Liberals or the Conservatives, Wall Street or anyone else that the media can fob off on a barely attentive electorate.

Of course, none of this will help the situation which will get worse and will get worse faster when and if they try to fix it. The next President will be perceived as incompetent, ineffectual and captive to whatever scapegoat that people are buying into.

Is there any way this doesn't happen? Only if we put such a strong penalty on productivity enhancing capital expenditures that corporations are only willing to make them outside the U.S. In that case, GDP will fall, the trade deficit will increase and unemployment, due to falling demand, will increase anyway. As I said, we can ameliorate the ill effects by enlightened monetary, fiscal, tax and economic policy, but we cannot make it go away.

This is just one of the four horsemen of the Industrial Age apocalypse. Continued cultural polarization and fragmentation along with the continued disintegration of Industrial Age corporatism and the infrastructures that served it will be emerging as problems that the next President can't handle. Over the next four years, the fourth horseman, the death of the Industrial Age metropolis, will emerge just enough so that the housing crisis will not improve. This will add to the sense that the next President is ineffectual.

Of course, Presidents are equally judged based upon their performance in International Affairs. While the 'war on terror' will continue to become less significant, China, while not exactly friendly, will not challenge the U.S. overtly and Russia and the U.S. will move toward more cordial relations. The Four Horsemen will make themselves felt on the global stage and thwart any efforts of the next President to craft foreign relations triumphs.

The Future 101, in its prediction of rising unemployment through 2016, is definitely forwarding a minority opinion. However, there are those who concur. Marshall Brain, for example, until recently, has been predicting more or less permanent 50% unemployment. Pundits here, here, and here generally concur. They do not predict it by 2016 and it will actually be into the next presidency when the peak of between 20% to 25% unemployment will become apparent and fears over 50% or higher unemployment will be quelled.

Still, during this four years, leaders and pundits sympathetic to the President's party will begin to properly diagnose the problem and begin to formulate an argument that the President is not at fault and the opposing party, through its truculence and unwillingness to compromise, are the real culprits. This rarely works and in the end, the President lives or dies upon the performance of the Economy. While the economy will grow nicely during the next presidency, like in the Carter years, it will not be perceived as positive to the majority of voters.

Is there a preferred outcome to the election? Historically, assuming a one year lag in cause and effect, the best results come from a Democratic President and a Republican Congress. That, however, is the result of the 1994 to 2000 Clinton years and may not have had anything to do with the political situation. To put it prosaically and succinctly, it is my conclusion that no matter what we do, we're screwed and the next President will almost surely get the blame.

The 2012 Election

Let me say this again.  Whichever party party has control after the 2012 elections, there is little doubt that the voters will be of the opinion that it should be seen as a mandate to do something about jobs.  However, in that regard the election is a lose-lose proposition.

If the Republicans are in control, they will attempt supply-side stimulus.  Remember AT&T's forklifts that drive themselves?  If the business is encouraged to invest in capital equipment, they will buy those forklifts and lay off their drivers.  Here is what is very, very important.  The driverless forklifts are just one example of an enormous amount of productivity enhancing technology that is out there.  The more supply-side stimulus, the higher the GDP growth and the greater the job loss.

If the Democrats are in control, the emphasis is on demand-side stimulus.  Rather than tax breaks and investment incentives driving the purchase of driverless forklifts, et. al it will be greater demand.  People will buy more stuff which leads to additional profit and simultaneously creates the need for larger capacity.  Old capacity will be retired.  New capacity will be created.  Productivity will be increased. There will be increased GDP growth, but again greater job loss.

The fact is, you cannot stimulate the economy and thereby increase GDP, without encouraging modernization, which destroys jobs.  As I say, Information Age problems do not yield to Industrial Age problems.  The solution is not to be found there.

This is just one of many, many realizations that you will come to with your premium subscription to The Future 101.  Over time more and more people are coming to understand that this graduate level understanding of the forces that will shape the Information Age is not a 'nice to know', it is a 'need to know.'

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The Premium Subscription

The future is not as you are being told.  It has been commandeered by groups that wish to forward their ideological viewpoint.  This is important because, one, it means that the public discourse and, by extension, the creation of laws, policies and programs, are based upon a future that will never happen and two, you are basing your life planning upon a future that will never happen.

By subscribing to The Future 101 and dedicating one to three hours per week to its study, you can completely solve the second problem and, if there are enough subscribers, begin to make inroads on the first problem.  If you become an ambassador for The Future 101, as many of my subscribers are, we can really change the public discourse to something far more productive.  We can create what is currently missing with our political, intellectual and cultural leaders, an inspiring vision of the near future that can be positively affected by actions we can take today.

The Transformation is a set of twelve events that will completely reshape the world and usher in the global, Information Age civilization.  Here, I provide an Abstract for each of the twelve events.  The Future 101 premium service will provide detailed and fully cited articles exploring each event in depth.  I will recommend additional reading assignments.  Here, I also provide articles that elaborate on some of the more important events and interactions.  These also will be greatly elaborated upon in The Future 101.  Again, additional reading will be suggested. 

While the next thirty years will be a complex time with much turmoil, to me, the most important message that The Future 101 contains is this.

Between 1875 and 2000 Real GDP per Capita in the U.S. increased by 1,286%.  Through the implementation of advanced robotics and A.I., between now and about 2040, a similar percentage increase will take place.  This time, nearly all of the world will catch up to the U.S. standard of living.  This will drive virtually all of the world's population up Maslow's Hierarchy so that cultures will reflect a primary emphasis on esteem, self-actualization, personal development and transcendental issues.  In other words, while counter-intuitive for many people, the Income Explosion will actually sound the death knell for materialism as a central theme of Western culture.

What does a 1,286% increase in household income mean, in practical terms?

• The average household income will increase to around 600K 2012USD.
• 80% of households will have incomes that would put them in the upper 1% today.
• The upper 20% of  households will have annual incomes above 1.5 million 2012USD
• The minimum hourly wage will be about 95 2012USD
• If the poverty level remains a constant percentage of the minimum wage, the poverty level for a family of four will be 287,421 2011USD
• The average home price will be about 2.5 million 2012USD
• Because homes will be built to higher standards of quality in material and construction and will be highly automated, the average new home square footage will increase from its current 2,400 ft² in the U.S. to about 7,000 ft²

Even a family living on the earnings of one person at the minimum wage will have a 700K 2012USD house and a couple of 40K 2012USD automobiles.  A moderate quality diet will require no more than 4% or 5% of the family budget.  In other words, they may be comparatively poor, but, in no way, will they be absolutely poor.  We will have, at last, eradicated poverty as we know it.  Again, I emphasize, these conditions will prevail over nearly the whole world.

The cultures of today are dominated by thoughts and discussions that revolve around the lower levels of Maslow's Hierarchy.  The News is full of stories about hunger, homelessness, income disparities, poverty, inadequate health care and crime.  For most people, it is extremely difficult to think outside of the box that insufficient income creates.  What happens when we are liberated from these concerns?  What happens when everyone has adequate shelter, food, clothing, health care and safety?

You should be thinking about it, because that is the world in which you will find yourself.  That is the world within which public policies will be formulated and implemented.  Clearly, we should, as a society, attempt to ameliorate current poverty and suffering within the context of our values.  However, primarily we should be considering ways to hasten this approaching Gold Age.  It is the positive and practical vision that is so desperately needed today.

The second most important message of The Future 101 is this.

Currently underpopulated regions will become the new centers of civilization.  These population centers will be comprised of a lattice of boutique villages populated by highly affluent, very mobile communities that are generally defined by a Culture of Affluence.  These areas, often coastal, tropical or subtropical and arid, will be enabled by new energy sources, desalination technologies and defarmed food production.  They will lack national identity and will have negotiated cultural independence from the surrounding remnants of the Nation States. Because of the defarming, most of the world's land areas will become either natural or engineered biodiversity parks.

What is that likely to mean for you?

• You will likely enter an Enterprise Network, undertake a new, highly lucrative Information Age career and 'jump to the Knowledge Class.'
• Over time, your Knowledge Class career will enable you to 'live anywhere.'  There is at least a 50% chance that this means relocation to a 'boutique village', often in a different region of the world.
• Over time, while you may or may not retain an ethnic identity, you will likely replace your national identity with a cultural identity.
• You will plan for a 'Finely Crafted Life' that emphasizes a lifestyle facilitative of your unique interpretation of self-actualization.

We are on the verge of a true Golden Age.  However, first, between now and about 2025, Western civilization is going to experience a social, political, cultural and economic train wreck.  The beginnings  are being aggressively reported and commented upon by the Pundits, Professors and Politicians.  What is not be reported upon is that 'this, too, will pass.'  By taking meaningful action we can reduce the impact of this train wreck and hasten the arrival of the Golden Age.

• As the implementation of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence accelerates, technologically induced unemployment could exceed 20% before decreasing again.
• Put simply, with everyone moving to new locations and to much larger and higher quality houses, nearly all the current housing inventory will become functionally worthless.  The Northern Industrial Age urban areas will begin to die.
• Corporations will fade to be replaced by Enterprise Networks.  This means 'jobs' will permanently disappear in favor of owner-operators.
• The ascent of Maslow's pyramid will cause differences between groups to become principled and cultural rather than primarily economic.  This, combined with several other factors, will tear the Nation State asunder.

We all received the mythologies, values, cultural literacy and instincts of the Industrial Age.  However, Information Age problems, which the train wreck entails, will not yield to Industrial Age solutions.  For example, the Industrial Age attempts to lower unemployment, when applied to the Information Age problem of technological unemployment will actually make it worse.  The correct solutions, when considered from an Industrial Age mindset, do not make sense.  Consequently, if we are to decrease the severity of the train wreck, the first thing we must do is educate people on the emerging global, Information Age civilization and its mechanisms.  That starts with you subscribing to The Future 101 and then becoming an Ambassador for the Information Age.  We will likely be less than dramatic in our success, but every bit helps.

This vision of the near future, despite being completely at odds with the views promulgated by the ideologically driven "Pundits, Professors and Politicians', is rigorously supported in The Future 101 subscription.  It is the future that you need to understand.  It is the future for which you need to be planning.  It is the future that you should assist in injecting into the public discourse.

The $54.95 per year and 50 or 100 hours of study per year of The Future 101 is going to make you, over time, a very well informed person.  You will make superior life decisions because of it and you may even gain early entrance into this profoundly affluent Information Age civilization.  It will also make you the informed and valuable ambassador for the positive future that awaits us.  In this sense, I say that subscribing to The Future 101 is the first step in 'Saving the world by saving yourself.'  I can't guarantee that subscription will indemnify you against the 'train wreck.'  However, your prognosis will most assuredly be very superior to the one where you do not subscribe. 

So, this is my 'hard close.' If we are to make significant improvements in the current outlook, we need to get influencers like you well educated on The Transformation.  We need to build a community of people who are planning their Information Age future, not attempting to 'fix' their broken Industrial Age present.  In other words, we need you to 1) subscribe to The Future 101 and then, do the work, 2) become an ambassador for the Golden Age by influencing your network and 3) create and implement a personal Information Age action plan.


This is the 'Save the world by saving ourselves' strategy.  It is an altruism/self-interest win-win.  Although it may not be apparent now, it is the only solution to the problems that face us.  It is the only way to lessen the severity of the train wreck. 

They say that the first casualty of war is the truth.  Well, we are in a cultural war and the truth long ago was sacrificed to ideological goals.  Every single day you are bombarded by News stories intended to drag you back to an Industrial Age world view and get you mired in fruitless political arguments.  Article after article will give you evidence that one cultural mythology is correct or another one is false.  It may involve Climate Change or income disparities or whether most people favor abortion rights or the death penalty. 

If you turn a cynical eye toward your News sources you will see that virtually every article is either attempting to destroy or reinforce a moral, ethical, political or cultural attitude.  Your vote is wanted.  Your donation is needed.  Whether it imparts an objectively supportable world view or a rational expectation of the future is not relevant.  They are not interested in your education, they are interested in influencing your behavior. 

When you subscribe to The Future 101, it is entirely different.  We will look at an issue and then examine the evidence.  The evidence will come primarily from peer reviewed papers and government white papers.  It will not come from The Huffington Post or Scientific American or Town Hall save to contrast and compare the attitudes of Industrial Age ideologies.

The longest journey begins not with a single step but rather with the realization that one ought to be elsewhere.  Are you on the correct road?  Does the road take you where you think it does?  Will the people you meet along the way be a help or a hindrance?  These are questions that have answers whether you think about them a little or you think about them a lot. The Future 101 subscription will not answer all of them.  But it definitely can make a valuable contribution to your understanding.

Lastly, because the community of subscribers will have forums, your subscription will also become a portal to an extraordinary community.  These people, by virtue of their subscription, are clearly people of exceptional intelligence and well-tempered vision.  As you read The Future 101 and learn about the Transformation, many potential career, social, political and cultural opportunities will likely occur to you.  This community, as an added benefit, constitutes a valuable source of collaborators and investors for whatever projects you may wish to undertake.  The more you and your fellow subscribers act as ambassadors for The Future 101, the larger the community will become and the more valuable an asset it will become.

So, in conclusion, I ask you to begin your road to the Information Age by subscribing to The Future 101.  It is a nominal financial commitment.  It is a somewhat larger time commitment.  However, it is very small in both regards compared to, say, a college education or buying into a franchise.  It is not the journey.   However, if you have decided that you ought to be elsewhere, it is a first step.  Of course, I do also welcome the intellectually curious. 

Hope to see you inside,

Michael Ferguson