The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Obvious Predictions For 2023

Covid will not miraculously end. New variants will continue to be born, and they will generally be optimized for immune escape and damage. Hospitals in most countries will continue to be under high strain, because governments will keep pretending Covid is over when it is not and that it doesn’t ravage people’s immune systems. I find this chart of Canada’s Covid experience applies to most countries in spirit.

This will likely be the warmest year on record, but the coldest year of the rest of your life and if it isn’t, it’ll be in the top 5 on both lists. Same with extreme weather events. These will combine with water shortages to cause more problems with the food chain and there will be serious food price fluctuations, though how serious will depend on where you live and who gets hit hardest by climate events. Frequency and severity are increasing, but predicting exactly what where is in most cases impossible, which is part of the problem.

(I am fundraising to determine how much I’ll write next year. If you value my writing and want more of it, please consider donating.)

Nothing of significance will be done about climate change or ecological collapse, though some agreements may be signed which will have no teeth and no noticeable effects on the top line numbers.

The US will continue to pile sanctions on China in an attempt to stop it from challenging the US. Those sanctions will be damaging in the short run, but nothing the US sanctions will be something China can’t genuinely learn to make themselves because they aren’t racially or culturally inferior, and they have the largest industrial base in the world.

Cold War will continue to develop, with the BRICS at the heart of the other side, and movement towards an alternate financial system which bypasses the dollar will likewise continue. China will not allow Russia to be strangled by Western sanctions. Countries outside the developed core will continue to sway towards China, which offers cheaper loans and goods and is their primary trade partner, and also, with a few exceptions, interferes less in their internal politics.

A continued movement towards vertical integration in companies and to countries trying to be able to produce more of their own key goods. People are figuring out that as the cold war develops and neoliberalism collapses, you can’t, actually, trust the supply chain and the poorer you are, or the more the US dislikes you, the more that is true. This will play into countries choosing sides, as well. China does produce more of what most countries need than the US does now and that is going to become more, not less, true, especially when you add in Russia.

Europe will continue to lose industry to America and other low-energy cost nations. I rather doubt they’ll prioritize protecting their industrial base over being American satrapies and anti-Russia, so the EU’s decline as a great power will continue even as they militarize under US guidance and control, using US weapon systems and thus making their dependence higher.

I’d like to be wrong about this one and there’s a small chance I might be, since as the economic consequences become worse, the population may become desperate enough to realize that the cost to anti-Russianism may be a bit too high.

Join in with your dead-obvious predictions in the comments. The best way to be right about things is just to accept the blindingly obvious. Oddly, most people are really bad at that.

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26 Comments

  1. Ché Pasa

    I agree with Ian’s predictions — as he says, they’re blindingly obvious.

    I’ll only add that political systems in the West will continue their slide into authoritarianism and fascism helped along by the need to service the interests of the Overclass at all costs.

    Oh, and wars of aggression will continue and expand with more and more players.

  2. Dan Lynch

    My blindingly obvious predictions:
    — violent crime will continue to increase in the U.S..
    — life expectancy will continue to fall in the U.S..
    — homelessness will continue to increase in the U.S..
    — self-medication of poor Americans will continue to increase, especially in the heartland. The homelessness & the black market drugs contribute to the aforementioned increase in violent crime.
    — gated communities will continue to increase, as the haves feel increasingly threatened by the have-nots.
    — there will be a new record for most people killed in a mass shooting. There’s certainly no lack of trying.
    — Russia will gain control, at a minimum, of the ethnic Russian portions of Ukraine, and probably more.
    — Zelensky will either be killed or else flee to another country.
    — far right parties in Europe will grow in power because they currently offer the only alternative to the U.S Neoliberal / Neocon worldview.
    — nasal vaccines for Covid will be rolled out by fall or winter, and by 2024 the transmission rate may reduced enough to truly end the pandemic, though local covid outbreaks will continue to be a thing. Yeah, I’m being very optimistic on that prediction.

    At some point some of these trends will hit a tipping point where all hell breaks loose, but I can’t predict when that tipping point will be reached.

  3. Trinity

    Ian, this is great, as always. I’m hoping for a Part 2 of the not-so-obvious, aka WAGs, or wild arse guesses.

  4. Chipper

    Increasing income/wealth inequality. US healthcare system will continue its collapse.

  5. different clue

    A few of the people living in detached houses in the suburbs and semiburbs will start gardening for some food.

    Most of those who could still won’t, because they will still ” just can’t believe it”.

  6. Troy

    – Covid-19 caused depression will continue to worsen
    – Voting will continue radicalization and moving leftward due to Covid-19 attrition
    – The slow motion Covid-19 caused attrition of the workforce will continue
    – Western governments are going to continue with high interest rates
    – Western governments will continue increasing their policing forces
    – Labour movement will continue radicalization due to rising costs of living and government/business suppression of wages and radicalization
    – Prices will continue rising
    – Wages will keep chasing prices
    – Wages will also keep rising due to Covid-19 attrition
    – However, housing prices will continue to decline due to high interest rates
    – Russia will continue its slow motion attrition of Ukranian forces

  7. Willy

    The USA will be divided between two capitals and two rulers (possibly emperors). But since the cultural-economic divide isn’t clearly geographic (outside of urban-rural), this divide will happen virtually, with various apps for that.

  8. elkern

    The new (slim) majority of Republicans in the US House of Representatives will focus exclusively on noisy “investigations” (Hunter Biden!!!) and produce exactly zero actual legislation. Most Americans will rightly ignore the noise, but it will allow FOX and the GOP to sideline Trump & slowly regain control of his Mob.

  9. GlassHammer

    1.) Gen X, Millennials, and Zoomers will not be able to support the economy the Boomers built because each successive generation has been far smaller than the Boomers.

    2.) There will be significant “brain drain” once the Boomers leave the workforce because their knowledge came from a career of skill specialization while all subsequent generations became more generalistic in skills to juggle multiple career fields.

    3.) The era of cheap financing is probably over, cash flow will decide which businesses survive.

  10. mago

    Greater land theft and killing of Palestinians in Israel.
    More refugees fleeing violence, drought, flooding and hunger.
    A general rise in desperation, confusion, fear and anger.
    More suicides in the West, particularly the US.
    Religious fundamentalist movements gaining greater popularity and power.
    Nihilism on the rise with a who gives a damn attitude in the ascension.
    The commodification of everything goes without saying, as does most of the above.
    However, there’s still hope in artistic expression and human creativity and in the sacred wherever it may be found. Basic human goodness will not die in 2023.
    Hasta la victoria!

  11. GrimJim

    Two or three of the remaining Mall Anchor stores will disappear. Many malls will go away. So will many other Mall adjacent stores, though some of those will just be greatly reduced in numbers (Bed, Bath, and Beyond; Barnes & Noble; etc.).

    Congress will finally find a way to kill the USPS, which will decimate online sales at the same time brick and mortar is collapsing. Thus we depend less on China and overseas, gives time to move production to closer, friendlier shires during the following recession (well, Greater Depression Part III, really).

    Serious homelessness and hunger will hit everywhere. Massive crackdown on the poor. Enforced corporate labor punishment instead of community service, housed in jails work at McDonalds kind of thing. Just don’t call it slave labor…

    More to come…

  12. VietnamVet

    I agree with these predictions. The current corporate-states are simply incapable of governing for the common good. From the “Sun Also Rises”; “How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” The current economic political system is designed to accumulate wealth for the few not to ration scarce resources equally.

    My hopeful scenario is that breakdown occurs so fast that blame cannot be pinned on Russia, China & Iran Axis and the Ukraine proxy world war does not go white hot.

    Basically once the Cold War 2 starts, it will be the 1970s once again. But the global hegemonic Petroleum US Dollar is no more. North America has run out of cheap energy except for coal and cannot afford to buy anything the BRICS nations sell and can no longer steal it. The Texas Permian Basin becomes a dry hell hole filled with invisible methane clouds and shattering earthquakes. Thousand year storms come yearly. When the government deposits like Social Security end, multi-generational households fall apart. Rioters will have nothing left to lose. The remaining military and police will join their tribes. Survivors will gravitate around seven or so ethnic nuclear armed military bases in North America. The rest become no man’s lands.

  13. Astrid

    My predictions of likely events.

    No less than 6 color revolution/lawfare/worse coup attempts against none-Western countries.

    Anglo governments continue to be completely unresponsive to the needs of their people. Ditto most of Europe but possible peel offs starting in late 2023.

    Wall Street continues to do better than Main Street, to the bitter end.

    The Chinese will replace Russians as the bogeyman race du jour in North America.

    Ukraine will be memoryholed.

    Increasingly bad news on climate change and ecological collapse, but very little MSM reporting.

    More mass shootings in the U.S.

    Declining life expectancy in the US and possibly broadly worldwide, including China.

  14. Astrid

    What’s this economy that Boomers purportedly built? Built what? Because all I can see for the last 40 years is deindustrialization, financialization, rent extraction, and making everything necessary for a decent life (secure housing, quality health care, sufficient education to secure tolerable jobs) incredibly expensive and potentially life destroying.

    There’s more than enough human productive capacity in the world to give every person on the planet enough a decent life. Distribution and natural resources constraints are another matter.

  15. someofparts

    1. By this time next year, Ukraine as we have known it will no longer exist. Instead there will be a DMZ big enough to put the Russian fleet in Sebastopol beyond range of NATO missiles.

    2. On March 2024 the Russians will leave the “International” Space Station. As a result of this, the station will have to come down because we can’t afford to keep it up without Russian input. Meanwhile, Russia is launching their own space station, as China already has, and Russia and China together will be cooperating to create the first moon base.

    3. By this time next year there will be two global financial systems. To keep the domestic population in the West from fleeing in droves to the new system, our overlords will double down on propaganda, economic fraud and militarism.

    4. Some kind of major upheaval in Europe is inevitable. Will they just submit meekly to deindustrialization? Will the re-emergence of European fascism Washington is working so hard to create materialize? If the Euro ceases to be a viable reserve currency this strengthens the role of the greenback for a while longer.

    5. The only civil war in the U.S. will be in the form of a new video game, where MSNBC viewers do battle with the Fox audience.

  16. Tallifer

    The Russian army will shatter and flee like in 1917. Russia unfortunately will not turn to its democrats, but will eventually descend into chronic coups and gang warfare like Haiti.

  17. bruce wilder

    Things continue to deteriorate or Apocalypse Now.

    “Things continue to deteriorate” seems more plausible to me than “Apocalypse Now” in most domains — political, economic or social — domestically (U.S.) at least. This will be a year of marking time and paint peeling off the rust bucket that is the American Ship of State.

    Two exceptions abroad, that I do not feel competent to assess: 1.) the financial repercussions of accumulated dollar-denominated debts in the global financial system outside the U.S. domestic banking system as the world prepares the transition away from dollars as the global reserve currency. And, 2.) the War in Ukraine.

    The global financial system based on the dollar is going to be increasingly volatile which is the opposite of what a financial system ought to be, but it is hard to know where it will break or who it will break. (hint: not the U.S., not yet anyway, not this year — maybe Argentina or some other place where a rapacious elite uses a dollar peg to screw the locals, or maybe Italy comes unglued and drags down the Euro)

    The War in Ukraine continues to focus my attention, but I do not have much insight. I read and listen widely enough to know that there are two competing narratives with wildly different presumptions about the state of facts, military and economic. One narrative, which is broadcast widely in the U.S., holds, as Tallifer predicts, that Russia may well collapse under the strain and the blow to its national self-esteem and confidence in Putin’s leadership.

    The alternative narrative construes the grinding war of attrition as more damaging to Ukraine’s armed forces and the economics of Europe than to the Russian military or the economy of Russia.

    It is very hard to confirm many of the key “facts” presumed by either narrative. Claims are made about casualties and equipment loss on both sides, but never confirmed in gross. Which, if this is a war of attrition, makes the rate of attrition hard to assess.

    Even if I put that assessment aside, I do not see how Russia can “force” Ukraine into negotiating an armistice, let alone a general settlement short of Ukrainian state collapse. Both Russia and Ukraine have resorted to draconian authoritarian measures to stave off the possibility of state collapse — my reading is that Zelensky has gone much further down that road than Putin so far, though the situation on the ground inside the Ukrainian territories controlled by either party and under martial law are beyond our view.

    I also do not see how what appears as a stalemate can continue — neither side’s narrative allows for that for one thing, nor can I imagine an objective military situation that would just continue the established pattern. The Russians are going to have to produce the offensive that its mobilization manned. The way I read a map, the Russians will have to move the military frontier west and beyond the lower Dneiper. If it happens suddenly after so long a stalemate, the effect will be dramatic and I don’t know how the Western narrative will adapt. There are certainly factions in the U.S. military and foreign policy establishment that cannot resist any opportunity to escalate into losing a war and destroying a country.

    Anyway, those are my two candidates for “obviously” not-simply-continuing-to-continue.

  18. marku52

    I like Willy’s. The US explodes, but it can’t be geographically, because the spit now is urban/rural. They can’t live together, how can they live apart? Possibly Cascadia makes a sensible nation, (but splitting off the rural inland areas) and the NE as well. But everywhere else you’d have to see fortified city states again, surrounded by vast rural areas.

    My favorite trope: Imagine the Chinese send a platoon of troops up the Potomac, and occupy DC. Can you imagine any sane American citizen being motivated enough to volunteer to go save it?

    “Come on man, those damn Commies are occupying K Street!”

    “Let ’em have it, it’s never done Sh*t for me..”

  19. Mike D

    the US will play around with the debt ceiling and the government will shut down as GOP and Dems can’t agree on a budget and the press will treat this as 100x more important than climate collapse

  20. someofparts

    I know. Like they used to say down here in the South, the Confederacy will win because one of our brave Rebel soldiers can outfight a dozen soldiers from the Union rabble any day of the week.

  21. capelin

    Whichever way it goes, the big story in 2023 is going to be some sort of WTF Was That? reckoning about The Last Three Years, with many Injection-Chickens in particular coming home to roost.

    Our traumatized and fractured societies will begin repopulating our common spaces, as the economic rug is pulled out; the start of the next 3-4year phase of elite warfare.

    Perhaps a wholesale abandonment of the MRNA experiment, or whatever it was. (Note, already discontinued for many/most adults in some countries).

    Athletes in the prime of health will continue to die from unexplained heart failure at unprecedented rates.

    The use of “unprecedented” will finally, and thankfully, be banned.

  22. GrimJim

    US Politics

    The Republican Party will eat itself up. It will finally show that it cannot even govern itself, let alone the House, let alone the country. It will shatter into two parties — the Usual Corporate Apparatchiks and the Whackjobs. Which party will be larger? I dunno. The Whackjobs have power right now far exceeding their apparent numbers, but many of the Apparatchiks only held their power by a thin margin, so… we will see.

    Either way, it won’t help the Dems. Something is going to blow there, too; what I do not yet know. There’s nothing serious on the horizon. Maybe Biden dies in his sleep? THAT would tear the party apart. That would also cause the Whackjobs and their followers to lose their collective three brain cells — a Black President, twice in their lifetime? And a WOMAN?

    That might just push up ACW II by another decade. [Note: I expected that to heat up again in or around 2050, a fair Death Bet on my part. Trump pushed that up to no later than 2040, possibly 2030, or even earlier if he can recover from his current issues and have a “serious” run in 2024.]

    Barring that, the Dems are just too weak to take advantage of the Republicans collapsing in on themselves, so I expect whichever faction comes out on top will be stronger by the end of the year and ready for 2024.

    More State to State rumblings and grindings along the usual axes. More self-sorting into Red and Blue states. More tit for tat; one state takes away rights, another protects them, etc. Further fuel for self-sorting before the shooting war begins.

    Food and fuel prices will go through serious oscillations — same with Wall Street and whatever remains of Crypto. Some elements will go full cardiac infarction; there will be another Great Dying of companies. Food Deserts will grow, hunger will grow, homelessness will grow. Nothing will be done, straining all the existing systems, and some will break. Probably see our first real homeless/hunger riots, a la Running Man and the Bakersfield Massacre.

    Those who have, will hide their heads in the sand, as others have mentioned, by posting up fences and gates to keep out the growing have-nots, because “what else could possibly be done?”

    What remains of “customer service” will tank. You’ll end up being served directly by convict-employees, if you can get any service at all. As with the railroad unions, Something Will Be Done about all the recent unionization, “for the duration.”

    That duration may or may not require another serious outbreak of Covid. Or it might be an extraneous, outside influence… the collapse of Russia and/or Ukraine, the invasion of Taiwan, or some other international Black Swan event…

    After all, no crisis will go unused for further opportunities to further immiserate the remaining middle class and poor into marginal wage serfdom or outright convict slavery.

    More on potential Internatinal predictions later…

  23. Feral Finster

    @GrimJim:

    The fastest and surest way to blow up Team D would be to blow up the Team R coalition, and vice versa.

    The two legacy parties need each other, they way sports rivals need each other or there is no game, the way Batman doesn’t need Robin, but take away The Joker and he’s reduced to being a weird and humorless LARPer.

    The other party serves each legacy party just fine, both to hold their respective coalitions together, and as means of restricting the demands of coalition partners. How many times have Team D shills said “Obama really really wants to [X], but Mean Republicans won’t let him….”?

    Take away Team R as a meaningful force, and coalition of the PMC yuppies and various minorities that make up Team D would quickly discover that not only do they have little in common, they don’t even like each other all that much. Team D plays a similar role with regard to cementing the coalition of Local Gentry and white Evangelicals that make up Team R.

  24. GrimJim

    @Feral Finster

    Oh yeah, they definitely need each other to play off each other to keep up the illusion that the US is a republic with some sort of modicum of democracy. But that illusion is tearing away, and the oligarchs who really run things (which does not include the parasitic political class) will soon no longer even need to bother with that facade. Should Congress even survive, it will be like the Imperial Senate in Rome or Star Wars. But that’s a few more years off…

    This year we’ll start to see the cascading changes in the parties as they try to remain relevant and the political class starts to eat itself. Politics as usual with the two parties might survive the 2024 election; if they do, they are unlikely to survive the 2028, if there even is an election that year. I give that maybe a 20% chance, tops.

  25. GrimJim

    International predictions:

    Russia/Ukraine. Best case, neither will win, both will lose. Sucks for Ukrainians, but preferred to the collapse of Russia and a very hot WWIII. Which is what we will have if anyone is damn foolish enough to try to take down Russia.

    I don’t see a resolution this year, barring a coup against Putin after a truly egregious loss. And that’s worse for everyone.

    Any serious counter attack on Russian soil using NATO weaponry is much, much worse. Best case in that case is Russia takes out remaining Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and just starts carpet bombing every Ukrainian city. Worst case, glowing glass craters, everywhere.

    Russia will not allow itself to be conquered again, let alone dismembered. People forget that Putin is a realist on the Russian Nationalist spectrum. Most are far worse, and would go full Samson rather than let the West conquer them again.

    The one big hope here is China. China will keep tooling along on it’s great Manifest Destiny as it has been for decades now. No way for the US to stop that, again, barring global thermonuclear war. And so hopefully China can be the adult in the room full of toddlers that is the US/UK/NATO/Russia mess.

    How that goes is up to the US, really, and just how damn stupid they want to be. Collapsing empires can do some seriously damn stupid stuff on their way down to oblivion, and the MAGAts in Congress right now are merely a pissant sideshow compared to what Anglo-America can and is willing to do to hold onto and increase their power, both the oligarchs and the Anglo masses who still think they somehow matter because they are “white”.

    If general peace elsewhere holds, things will slowly continue to decay and devolve in the West. The UK especially is crapping out, and it will be a toss up whether the first Western food/housing riots start in the US or UK. If we get lucky, winter will remain fairly moderate (a few bad storms notwithstanding, it’s been pretty moderate), so cold housing for now is at least some housing. Next fall and winter might be very different.

    Black swans? Anywhere, anytime in Ukraine. Especially as both side live in their propaganda bubbles. If even half the propaganda we’ve been served about Putin were true he’d have crapped himself to death twice over by now, so who knows what the truth really is? That’s when Reality, Objective and giving no F’s about propaganda, drops the Black Swans in your lap.

    Taiwan? China keeps making noises,but I think that’s mostly just practice and to mess with people’s minds… For now. China’s got business to attend to, and Taiwan will be theirs again sooner or later. Bigger fish to fry, continents to conquer with loans and build-out. More profitable than ghost cities, and builds a lot of good will… which the West, as usual, is always more than happy to piss away.

    Elsewhere? Israel is once again in reactionary hands. No one cares about that anymore, though, with more than enough white refugees from Ukraine no one cares about the brown Palestinians anymore. So something ugly might go down there. As long as the oil keeps flowing I don’t think the Arabs care about Palestine, either.

    Movements and brushfires along the periphery. None of which really matters to either side. “First World” denizens will be to worried about food, utility, and rent inflation and the slow collapse of their own services to care.

    Tl;Dr… More of the same, more collapse and hardship in the West and US/UK, stronger China… Unless someone does something stupid and starts WWIII.

  26. Oji

    Thank for the opportunity to pontificate!

    1. Finance-
    a. The Stock market decline will intensify (early 2023), eventually taking the S&P down >50%, possibly as much as 70% from peak. The final bottom may not occur this year.
    i. At least two 25%+ rallies will occur, sucking in many investors.
    b. A general financial crisis will ensue, especially in residential and commercial real estate (particularly office space).
    c. Junk Debt will suffer a general collapse, similar to 2008-09.
    d. Supply chain problems and food production issues will keep prices for necessities stubbornly high, making it very hard for the Fed to ‘pivot’ and lower rates as quickly as Wall Street would like.
    i. Instead, they may reverse QT and ramp up QE again, or even openly monetize debt, a la the BOJ.
    e. Long bonds will become an attractive investment (early 2023) as it becomes clear to many people that growth is permanently slowing or ending.
    f. The $U.S. will be a safe haven, as usual. The Yen will be volatile.
    g. PM’s will suffer in the next (debt deflation) equity drawdown, but will later soar.

    2. Economics
    a. Calls for student debt relief will overwhelm the entrenched opposition who will also need to shuttle as many HS graduates as possible into Post-secondary education of some kind to reduce UE.
    i. Partial debt relief or tuition breaks, will occur.
    ii. Some programs will come from states themselves, targeting in-state students at public universities.
    iii. Incentives will also emphasize trade schools, not just college, along the way.
    b. By 2024, some form of a national healthcare system will become inevitable as well.
    i. It will likely be due to multiple states taking action on their own first.
    ii. Proposals will be corporatized and inadequate, probably emphasizing minors.
    c. The decline of FF production will be partially masked by the weak economy, delaying recognition that the Age of Abundance is over. Still, more and more will come to see it, and the ‘Quiet quitting’ phenomenon will become more widespread.
    d. Fed and state stimulus will keep the alt energy train going, for now, and heat pumps will become the new must-have tech.
    e. The ‘top-off’ UE bennies may return in some states, or even from the Feds, supported by populist Repubs too.
    f. Child Tax Credit may also return, supported by populist Repubs too.

    3. Politics –
    a. DeSantis will become the clear GOP frontrunner, compelling Trump to pursue a 3rd party run—Trump would rather overturn the board than lose– which will hand 2024 to the Dems.
    i. Elon Musk will appear at a pro-Trump event, possibly several.
    b. Biden will not run in 2024, or drop out due to health reasons. The Dems will instead attempt to shove a Harris-Buttigieg ticket down the throat of the electorate. Ads will imply only racist or homophobic people would refuse to vote for them. Due to Trump’s 3rd party run, it will likely succeed.
    c. The Republicans will continue morphing into a two-headed party, with the populist wing breaking off, effectively destroying the party as a national power– not fully completed in 2023, but in progress.
    d. There will be a still small but noticeably increasing threat to the Dems from the Left, which may help extract SOME concessions on education and healthcare. (maybe wishful thinking here)
    e. China will not invade Taiwan militarily, rather, will continue attempting to cajole, bully, and maneuver Taiwan towards a relatively ‘peaceful’ takeover, which will involve all sorts of promises of perserving Taiwanese autonomy– promises China will eventually break. This will deprive the U.S. of the opportunity to destroy TSMC’s Taiwan facilities, though some sabotage may occur if an when China finally does succeed.
    f. Lula will be assassinated, or at least an attempt made. There will be hints of U.S. involvement, which the media will ignore or decry.
    g. The U.S. will stop short of open war with Russia.
    h. Zelensky will flee to the U.S.
    i. Given the economic and environmental pressures, global trends towards authoritarianism will continue.
    j. Elon Musk will publicly consider a run for state office, teasing his followers on Twitter for months, but do nothing.
    k. Israel will do its level best to start a war with Iran, and to bring the U.S. along.

    4. Social
    a. The eventual breakup of the U.S. becomes slightly more obvious.
    b. Covid will not end in 2023.
    c. Another 100K overdose deaths.
    d. Violence and suicide continue rising.
    e. Life expectancy does not recover.

    5. Environment.
    a. El Nino will develop by end of 2023 and into 2024, combining with a peaking—albeit mild—solar cycle, creating a hell-on-Earth via droughts and heat waves, and global avg. temps will hit +1.5C by 2024, even if only temporarily.
    b. A major earthquake (7.5+) will occur in CA—we’re overdue.
    c. Water shortages, soil depletion, species extinction, plastics pollution, etc… will worsen. Talk of “doing something!” will be everywhere, but concerted government action absent.
    d. Major Climate Change groups, such as Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and 350.org, will become even more captured by corporate interests, stifling large-scale action.
    e. Election year Federal subsidies and stimulus, will flow to corporates, or be structured such that only the upper 30% or so can take advantage—i.e., more of the same.
    f. No BOE in 2023, but we’ll come close in Sept. 2025.

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