Making long-term predictions is a fool’s errand
So don’t leave us out! Powerline points us to the CIA’s report on 2020, which has predictably silly elements. But it’s not too bad as a primer on some areas, notably on Asia’s having reached Walt Rostow’s take-off point in the cases of China and India:
Most forecasts to 2020 and beyond continue to show higher annual growth for developing countries than for high-income ones. Countries such as China and India will be in a position to achieve higher economic growth than Europe and Japan, whose aging work forces may inhibit their growth. Given its enormous population—and assuming a reasonable degree of real currency appreciation—the dollar value of China’s gross national product (GNP) may be the second largest in the world by 2020. For similar reasons, the value of India’s output could match that of a large European country.
Here are the predictions of Dinocrat:
1) In 15-20 years, assuming no calamity, the world’s GNP will be around twice as large as it is today, and China’s economy will be roughly the size of that of the US. The dividing line between winner and loser societies will be, as it always has been, between those that practice capitalism and those that do not — and the rise of China and India will make this even more apparent. In fact, this economic scenario is the likeliest, with or without a calamity or two. The technological changes of the next twenty years will far surpass those of the previous twenty — and we well recall that there were virtually no PC’s or cell phones in 1985.
2) Folly will govern the affairs of nations to a significant degree. Many humans can’t abide the success of others, and there’s going to be a whole lot more success in the future as the capitalist economies expand. Depend on the totalitarian losers to try to bring down the winners.