Well, I'm back

[Mikebert]

(01-15-2018, 01:12 PM)David Horn Wrote: [quote pid='34169' dateline='1515959701']
I'm still surprised by how little economics seems to play.  The righteous anger is still reserved for the cultural issues, that can't be resolved through politics, and won't be resolved until the true believers pass from the scene.  A 2T-like period might be all we can expect, though the underlying economic issues scream 4T at the top of their lungs.  I suspect this won't get resolved while I'm still around.

[/quote]
I got ahead of myself and charged off point. I'' try to stay on track here. Starting off as before...

Were economic issues screaming in the years leading up to 2008? Social issues were, remember how (opposition to) gay marriage was supposedly key to the Republican victory in 2004?  Was the 2008 campaign about the economy, like 1992 was?  I seem to recall the big issues were the Iraq war and health care. I don't believe economic inequality even moved into public consciousness until the Occupy movement in 2011. Contrast this with the muckrakers who had raised consciousness of the plight of the underclass by 1906, and certainly by the time of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1911 (and yet would be 20+ years before anyone took effective action).

Where I was going before I wandered off into that intriguing analogy was that according the PSI model, economic inequality issues were not supposed  to be the big issue in 2008, that's what low PSI means.  PSI is high now, and sure enough, economics is a big issue now.  But what sets the table for the political moment (according to the model) is the situation at the beginning of the moment, when the dominant generation first arrives at the scene.  As I pointed out above economic inequality wasn't the big issue on the Left in 2008.

The progressive political moment (1896-1919) also had  low PSI when it started in 1896 (lower than 2008). PSI rose over the next two decades but by the time it began to approach 4T-like dimensions, the dominant generation had left the scene.  The progressive political moment, like other 2Ts, and like today, had rising radicalization. Radicalization in a non-4T environment generates a 2T.  This means that the current political moment that began in 2008 has a lot of 2T character.  I am sure you have noticed the 2T-like character of the current moment with social/cultural movements like LBGTQ-rights, #Me Too, and BLM.  Of these BLM has the most economic character, but economics is not front and center.  One of the two economic movements, Occupy, has faded from the scene, and the other, the Tea Party, has been converted from a fiscally-focused movement to a cultural movement by the alt-right. 

The model suggests this political moment will turn out to be a second 2T, unless we get another crisis trigger (of an economic type) before the dominant generation leaves the scene in around 2023.  The capitalist crisis hypothesis suggests that the next recession should see a very large stock market decline that ought to induce a financial crisis, which if unopposed, or addressed with tax cuts, should produce a recession more serious than any other postwar recession.  If it is large enough to be considered an economic collapse (i.e. like the one in 1929) it could serve as a economic crisis trigger to induce and economic response, which if effective will create a lasting political dividend for the party doing it.

Presumably the market decline will be before 2020, Democrats will win big in 2020, and facing a deep recession, will finally enact policy to turn things around and so NOT get hammered in 2022. If they can manage to do that, it will pay off in spades for them as they will win the next two political elections.  In other words a Democratic Reagan will come to power in 2020, and Trump will be a Skowronek "disjunctive" president like Carter.

[Classic-Xer]

(01-15-2018, 10:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Both idiots and the value-locked are impossible to convince. The idiot has nothing to convince. The value-locked have nothing more to convince.

Which one are you, an idiot or value-locked?

[pbrower2a]

(01-17-2018, 06:35 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-15-2018, 10:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Both idiots and the value-locked are impossible to convince. The idiot has nothing to convince. The value-locked have nothing more to convince.

Which one are you, an idiot or value-locked?

Neither. I consider myself very flexible in my criticism of this awful President. I can offer conservative arguments against him. He is not a conservative, and his supposed Christianity is nearly pure sentimentality with no morals.

This is a cruel, corrupt, dishonest, despotic, incompetent leader; one cannot defend such with any ideological defense.  Her needs a cult of personality.

Can't you recognize, as does Senator Jeff Flake, that a President who calls any derogatory news story about him 'fake news' and call his detractors 'enemies of the people'* -- a term used widely against people doomed for their opposition of Josef Stalin -- is a menace to democracy itself? Yes, that horrible man.

*FDR and J. Edgar Hoover did use the word "public enemy", but this was against outright gangsters and such modern-day brigands as John Dillinger. Never against political opponents.

[David Horn]

(01-16-2018, 06:40 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(01-15-2018, 01:12 PM)David Horn Wrote: I'm still surprised by how little economics seems to play.  The righteous anger is still reserved for the cultural issues, that can't be resolved through politics, and won't be resolved until the true believers pass from the scene.  A 2T-like period might be all we can expect, though the underlying economic issues scream 4T at the top of their lungs.  I suspect this won't get resolved while I'm still around.

I got ahead of myself and charged off point. I'' try to stay on track here. Starting off as before...

Were economic issues screaming in the years leading up to 2008? Social issues were, remember how (opposition to) gay marriage was supposedly key to the Republican victory in 2004?  Was the 2008 campaign about the economy, like 1992 was?  I seem to recall the big issues were the Iraq war and health care. I don't believe economic inequality even moved into public consciousness until the Occupy movement in 2011. Contrast this with the muckrakers who had raised consciousness of the plight of the underclass by 1906, and certainly by the time of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1911 (and yet would be 20+ years before anyone took effective action).

Where I was going before I wandered off into that intriguing analogy was that according the PSI model, economic inequality issues were not supposed  to be the big issue in 2008, that's what low PSI means.  PSI is high now, and sure enough, economics is a big issue now.  But what sets the table for the political moment (according to the model) is the situation at the beginning of the moment, when the dominant generation first arrives at the scene.  As I pointed out above economic inequality wasn't the big issue on the Left in 2008.

The progressive political moment (1896-1919) also had  low PSI when it started in 1896 (lower than 2008). PSI rose over the next two decades but by the time it began to approach 4T-like dimensions, the dominant generation had left the scene.  The progressive political moment, like other 2Ts, and like today, had rising radicalization. Radicalization in a non-4T environment generates a 2T.  This means that the current political moment that began in 2008 has a lot of 2T character.  I am sure you have noticed the 2T-like character of the current moment with social/cultural movements like LBGTQ-rights, #Me Too, and BLM.  Of these BLM has the most economic character, but economics is not front and center.  One of the two economic movements, Occupy, has faded from the scene, and the other, the Tea Party, has been converted from a fiscally-focused movement to a cultural movement by the alt-right. 

The model suggests this political moment will turn out to be a second 2T, unless we get another crisis trigger (of an economic type) before the dominant generation leaves the scene in around 2023.  The capitalist crisis hypothesis suggests that the next recession should see a very large stock market decline that ought to induce a financial crisis, which if unopposed, or addressed with tax cuts, should produce a recession more serious than any other postwar recession.  If it is large enough to be considered an economic collapse (i.e. like the one in 1929) it could serve as a economic crisis trigger to induce and economic response, which if effective will create a lasting political dividend for the party doing it.

Presumably the market decline will be before 2020, Democrats will win big in 2020, and facing a deep recession, will finally enact policy to turn things around and so NOT get hammered in 2022. If they can manage to do that, it will pay off in spades for them as they will win the next two political elections.  In other words a Democratic Reagan will come to power in 2020, and Trump will be a Skowronek "disjunctive" president like Carter.

This all sounds more than reasonable, but it hangs by the thread I highlighted two paragraphs above.  I'm expecting a huge correction (collapse?) soon enough to do exactly what you posited, but that may be wishful thinking on my part.  What happens if the stock market rally persists until 2030, and then there is a crash of the market?  Alternately, we get a period with no further growth but no collapse either (this assumes that there is a minimal amount of gambling going on, so maybe not).

I don't see the current model being viable for the long term, and waiting to resolve the issue of capitalism-as-it-is until the next 4T seems far fetched.  If not soon, then when.  If not in a progressive vein, are we headed for autocracy?

[Bob Butler 54]

Ha! Found the password for my old account...

[David Horn]

(01-18-2018, 03:32 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Ha!  Found the password for my old account...

Good for you!  If I didn't have an app that does that for me, I wouldn't know any of my passwords.  

[Bob Butler 1954]

It wasn't an app. I finally have a new computer, and plugged in a disk drive from my old computer that died. There was a hint I was able to interpret...

[Mikebert]

(01-18-2018, 03:26 PM)David Horn Wrote: What happens if the stock market rally persists until 2030, and then there is a crash of the market?  Alternately, we get a period with no further growth but no collapse either (this assumes that there is a minimal amount of gambling going on, so maybe not).

This is what I call the Dow 36,000 scenario, after the 1999 book co-written by Kevin Hassett, Trump's top economic advisor. Basically it calls for a continuation of the bull for years after 2000.  Another book called Dow 100,000 came out in 1999 that forecast this value by 2020. In Stock Cycles I developed a model that did a good job of explaining the rising market of the 1990's.  Basically it showed that if the economic expansion continued until 2007 we would see Dow 35,000 and if it went to 2016 we would see Dow 100,000.  As I wrote then (Jan 2000): "but a 17-26 year economic expansion would have to occur for these wondrous results to come to pass."

For today it would be Dow 100K by 2026 and 250K by 2035.  If this happened this will mean a new era has truly dawned and trees really do grow to the sky. Such market rise implies Republicans would win in 2020 and again in 2024.  Trump would become a Reconstructive president and we would date the start of the 4T in 2010, when Republicans began the long recovery from the disaster of the Obama years (recall history is written by the winners). The 4T would come to an end around 2028, when the opposition party wins. The immigration issue would be resolved by implementation of a 1924-like law to restrict non-white immigrants. Harsh treatment of illegals will send many of them back to their countries of origin. Americans who manage to keep good jobs will benefit from huge gains in their 401k which new laws will allow then to tap for current spending like folks did with their homes under Bush. Other Americans will end up living in the American version of favelas edge of trash dumps survivng by picking through garbage like Freegans.

It will have been a real 4T.  In 2000, I wrote that the Dow 36,000 theory was garbage, that the market would not continue to rise to 36K by 2005 or 100K by 2020, but that a secular bear market would begin soon.  Shortly afterward it looked that this was happening.  But in 2002 I did my analysis of market cycles using generation theory, and concluded that the secular bear market would last to 2020 or so. That future is nearly gone now.  For it to happen, a bear market would have to start ths year and the Dow fall to the 6000's around 2020.  If we do stop having recessions and the market rises forever, then the concept of stock market cycles is no longer valid. There will be no crash, the world will have changed, and that change will be the structural change that is the core feature of the 4T.

This scenario is *not* what we call a "failed 4T". This will simply be one in which the Right wins. Although the end of what we had known as business cycles may seem like magic, one could say it was a miracle, the result of divine intervention on the behalf of the Republicans, the new "Party of God" after their destruction of Hezbollah (the old Party of God) in the Iran war.

Another option would be a true failed 4T. The market rises until the end of next year, then starts to drift down in 2020, but no recession begins until 4Q 2020.  Republicans win narrowly in 2020, before the recession gets underway, but lose big in 2022 and 2024. The 2010's business cycle is unusually long, but it does not destroy the idea of business cycles, the recession does eventually happen. The 3T political stalemate continues, and all the energy remains with social movements. Or the recession comes sooner, Democrats win in 2020 and screw the pooch like they did in 2009, and we have Obama II.

In either of these cases the political moment maps out as a 2T, with some 4T overtones, basically something like the Progressive era. The models are up in the air about whether this political moment will end up as a 2T or 4T, either can happen.  What the models forbid is the scenario I described above.  A 4T, according to the models, is associated with a trend change from rising to falling inequality. 

The three models would say "the Right wins" scenario is a 2T.  They would actually call for what you propose, a decline around 2030.  But a rise to 2030 would create such crazy valuations in the stock market that it would invalidate the very concept of valuation and business/market cycles. It changes everything, creates a magical new paradigm, which (if it came to pass) would truly be a very big deal, making this era truly a 4T in the S&H sense.  But such a Brave New World invalidates history, which includes S&H, so it is a self-contradictory situation. Occam's razor would say the Right wins scenario is wishful thinking.  Yet this is the stated belief of the chief architect of Republican economic thinking.  It is what they (and many here) truly believe.  But then those 19 guys who flew planes into the WTC also believed. Did their fervent belief make their beliefs correct?  As I describe above, the Republicans are our version of Hezbollah, of true believers. (Many on the Left are also true believers--which is why this turning as a 2T feels like a possibility). Many conservatives believe in an imminent Rapture, in what I call "Field of Dreams" economics, in the idea that reality is just a matter of will.  So maybe they can will themselves to victory in 2020 and then the mojo fails and the parties keep trading off every other term.

[David Horn]

(01-21-2018, 08:27 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

(01-18-2018, 03:26 PM)David Horn Wrote: What happens if the stock market rally persists until 2030, and then there is a crash of the market?  Alternately, we get a period with no further growth but no collapse either (this assumes that there is a minimal amount of gambling going on, so maybe not).

This is what I call the Dow 36,000 scenario, after the 1999 book co-written by Kevin Hassett, Trump's top economic advisor. Basically it calls for a continuation of the bull for years after 2000.  Another book called Dow 100,000 came out in 1999 that forecast this value by 2020. In Stock Cycles I developed a model that did a good job of explaining the rising market of the 1990's.  Basically it showed that if the economic expansion continued until 2007 we would see Dow 35,000 and if it went to 2016 we would see Dow 100,000.  As I wrote then (Jan 2000): "but a 17-26 year economic expansion would have to occur for these wondrous results to come to pass."

For today it would be Dow 100K by 2026 and 250K by 2035.  If this happened this will mean a new era has truly dawned and trees really do grow to the sky. Such market rise implies Republicans would win in 2020 and again in 2024.  Trump would become a Reconstructive president and we would date the start of the 4T in 2010, when Republicans began the long recovery from the disaster of the Obama years (recall history is written by the winners). The 4T would come to an end around 2028, when the opposition party wins. The immigration issue would be resolved by implementation of a 1924-like law to restrict non-white immigrants. Harsh treatment of illegals will send many of them back to their countries of origin. Americans who manage to keep good jobs will benefit from huge gains in their 401k which new laws will allow then to tap for current spending like folks did with their homes under Bush. Other Americans will end up living in the American version of favelas edge of trash dumps survivng by picking through garbage like Freegans.

It will have been a real 4T.  In 2000, I wrote that the Dow 36,000 theory was garbage, that the market would not continue to rise to 36K by 2005 or 100K by 2020, but that a secular bear market would begin soon.  Shortly afterward it looked that this was happening.  But in 2002 I did my analysis of market cycles using generation theory, and concluded that the secular bear market would last to 2020 or so. That future is nearly gone now.  For it to happen, a bear market would have to start ths year and the Dow fall to the 6000's around 2020.  If we do stop having recessions and the market rises forever, then the concept of stock market cycles is no longer valid. There will be no crash, the world will have changed, and that change will be the structural change that is the core feature of the 4T.

This scenario is *not* what we call a "failed 4T". This will simply be one in which the Right wins. Although the end of what we had known as business cycles may seem like magic, one could say it was a miracle, the result of divine intervention on the behalf of the Republicans, the new "Party of God" after their destruction of Hezbollah (the old Party of God) in the Iran war.

Another option would be a true failed 4T. The market rises until the end of next year, then starts to drift down in 2020, but no recession begins until 4Q 2020.  Republicans win narrowly in 2020, before the recession gets underway, but lose big in 2022 and 2024. The 2010's business cycle is unusually long, but it does not destroy the idea of business cycles, the recession does eventually happen. The 3T political stalemate continues, and all the energy remains with social movements. Or the recession comes sooner, Democrats win in 2020 and screw the pooch like they did in 2009, and we have Obama II.

In either of these cases the political moment maps out as a 2T, with some 4T overtones, basically something like the Progressive era. The models are up in the air about whether this political moment will end up as a 2T or 4T, either can happen.  What the models forbid is the scenario I described above.  A 4T, according to the models, is associated with a trend change from rising to falling inequality. 

The three models would say "the Right wins" scenario is a 2T.  They would actually call for what you propose, a decline around 2030.  But a rise to 2030 would create such crazy valuations in the stock market that it would invalidate the very concept of valuation and business/market cycles. It changes everything, creates a magical new paradigm, which (if it came to pass) would truly be a very big deal, making this era truly a 4T in the S&H sense.  But such a Brave New World invalidates history, which includes S&H, so it is a self-contradictory situation. Occam's razor would say the Right wins scenario is wishful thinking.  Yet this is the stated belief of the chief architect of Republican economic thinking.  It is what they (and many here) truly believe.  But then those 19 guys who flew planes into the WTC also believed. Did their fervent belief make their beliefs correct?  As I describe above, the Republicans are our version of Hezbollah, of true believers. (Many on the Left are also true believers--which is why this turning as a 2T feels like a possibility). Many conservatives believe in an imminent Rapture, in what I call "Field of Dreams" economics, in the idea that reality is just a matter of will.  So maybe they can will themselves to victory in 2020 and then the mojo fails and the parties keep trading off every other term.

So, in short, we don't have any really good options here.  I can't buy the concept that the business cycle is totally dead, because there has to be something concrete underlying all the enthusiasm.  Yes, the buying and selling continues on Main Street, but the buyers have to be getting near the point of saying "enough".  Wages and salaries haven't been rising enough to propel an endless shopping spree, so business will have to slow at some point.  I just can't see when.

After the corporate spending spree subsides, that may signal the end of this round.  Considering the amount that will be repatriated, that may take a while.  I doubt it will be broadly shared, but it may be enough to get the GOP reelected in 2018.  If so, 2020 is still up for grabs, and the gerrymander may do the rest.  By then, we'll all be tired, and I expect that will be the last major event I'll witness.  So 2020 is still the key, and a stock market crash is still a potential triggering event.  The operative word being 'potential'.

[Eric the Green]

The economic cycle suggests that the economy will slow at the end of the decade, and end of decades are often slow times anyway. Gerrymandering has been overturned in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, probably making 6-8 seats available to Democrats, and Wisconsin's was overturned at the state level. So more may come. Over 30 GOP incumbents have announced retirement too. I'd say a Democratic victory in the House in 2018 is very likely. Presidential victory in 2020 likely depends on the Democrats choosing a candidate that does more than satisfy Democrats, but one who can communicate and connect with voters. Horoscope scores and any good observation that includes this factor indicate that most of the front runners so far don't fill the bill. Maybe Sherrod Brown has a good shot because of his strength in the Rust Belt.

As I pointed out on the other site, 4Ts do not equal economic crashes and declines. The 4T most like our own, in the 1850s and 1860s, were boom times. The crisis as I have always pointed out is our divided country, and the question is whether a united states will survive this 4T. Our 4T will climax in revolution, civil war, and war abroad all at once in the mid-2020s. Progressives should dominate in the 2020s, although the astrological indicators are unclear about which party will rule for how long.

But if boom times impel the Republicans to stay in power, and rule over times that become relaxed and complacent with the national divide just fading away into a new and successful gilded age, then I think the cycle of the saeculum has ended. The 4T would have been a brief dud in 2008-2010. There is no 1T without a 4T; there would be no way to characterize such a prospect within the saeculum paradigm. The pattern would simply not hold. But all the cosmic signs and the demographics militate against this happening. The cosmic signs may not always be easy to read, but on this point they seem unambiguous. We have severe conflicts ahead in the 2020s, and vigorous new departures for our country-- or what's left of it.

[David Horn]

(01-22-2018, 11:05 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: ... But if boom times impel the Republicans to stay in power, and rule over times that become relaxed and complacent with the national divide just fading away into a new and successful gilded age, then I think the cycle of the saeculum has ended. The 4T would have been a brief dud in 2008-2010. There is no 1T without a 4T; there would be no way to characterize such a prospect within the saeculum paradigm. The pattern would simply not hold. But all the cosmic signs and the demographics militate against this happening. The cosmic signs may not always be easy to read, but on this point they seem unambiguous. We have severe conflicts ahead in the 2020s, and vigorous new departures for our country-- or what's left of it.

We're entering the second Age following the Industrial. That alone is enough to change the tenor of things. But that doesn't mean that we're at the end of history, merely shifting to a new paradigm. We still have issues that need to be solved, and some are moving to the critical stage. The real question: do they get resolved in this 4T period or merely delayed until the next 2T or longer? Intellectually, I'm open to either, but emotionally I'd prefer seeing the issues resolved sooner than later.

I don't always get my wish.

[pbrower2a]

(01-23-2018, 11:51 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-22-2018, 11:05 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: ... But if boom times impel the Republicans to stay in power, and rule over times that become relaxed and complacent with the national divide just fading away into a new and successful gilded age, then I think the cycle of the saeculum has ended. The 4T would have been a brief dud in 2008-2010. There is no 1T without a 4T; there would be no way to characterize such a prospect within the saeculum paradigm. The pattern would simply not hold. But all the cosmic signs and the demographics militate against this happening. The cosmic signs may not always be easy to read, but on this point they seem unambiguous. We have severe conflicts ahead in the 2020s, and vigorous new departures for our country-- or what's left of it.

We're entering the second Age following the Industrial.  That alone is enough to change the tenor of things.  But that doesn't mean that we're at the end of history, merely shifting to a new paradigm.  We still have issues that need to be solved, and some are moving to the critical stage.  The real question: do they get resolved in this 4T period or merely delayed until the next 2T or longer?  Intellectually, I'm open to either, but emotionally I'd prefer seeing the issues resolved sooner than later.  

I don't always get my wish.

This is a new era, and for all its promise of ease and prosperity it will force some uncomfortable change. Capitalism saved itself from proletarian revolution by turning what Karl Marx saw as a sweated degraded proletariat into a consumer market for industrial output. Such was possible so long as the consumer goodies were precious and thus profitable to manufacture and sell. What Marx saw as exploitation in his day (workers toiling to exhaustion under brutal management for bare existence while the capitalists took everything else) morphed into corporate profits from employers making their net profits off the sale of a larger volume of industrial productivity. Workers could afford such things as radios, cars, new clothes, furniture, and refrigerators, but capitalists would make their profits off the sale of such things. So that workers could enjoy such things they would have to work fewer hours, and the higher productivity from such measures as electrification of production lines in the 1920s would make possible the 40-hour workweek in industry.

But the new economic order that came into existence in the 1930s in the democracies followed the  worst economic meltdown in the last century. Capitalism could save itself either with the brutal nightmare of fascism or by humanizing itself. The capitalist societies that made the opposite choices generally ended up at war with each other, and the capitalist powers that chose to humanize themselves survived the apocalypse of the Crisis of 1940. The Marxist prophecy of a proletarian revolution never materialized, unless you want to call the Soviet takeovers of central and Balkan Europe 'revolutions'.

We are now almost eighty years away from the Crisis of 1940, and the generational cycle has generational archetypes aligned much as they were around 1935. The Progressive generation may have been largely gone from influence in the 1930s because lifespans were not as long then as now, but even now anyone living into his eighties is living on borrowed time. We may see some prominent Silent today, but those are the last of their generation and they are approaching the end of the line. Some Boomers are still young enough for a final act in their lives, but they will have at most one act before being discredited or being forced to retire for reasons of health, mental (including senility) and physical  (the usual cancer, heart disease and other organic failure, and strokes).  To be sure, the elderly have been extending their lifespans through good habits (weight control, staying physically and mentally active, and staying connected) as GIs taught by example. But barring some unforeseen miracles in medicine, even that shows its limits. So far there are only so many times that the genes can replicate, after which time it is all over.

So we find ourselves in a time in which people consider their fanaticism rational and normal, in which ruthlessness becomes the norm in government and corporate bureaucracies, in which people running afoul of the tide of history are in danger of severe mistreatment, talk of apocalyptic evenets as decisive in a chilly manner, and in which just about everyone is scared that the aspects of the world that they have found comforting is at risk, and you almost have the elements of a full-blown Crisis. Almost -- because in America we have yet to see whether the vulgar, fascistic traits of Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and of the economic elites delighted in the prospect of absolute plutocracy becoming possible.  Sure, people will get work, but the public sector will be privatized for monopolistic gougers, and managerial elites will faithfully brutalize every workplace possible. If you do not see the threat of torture chambers and exploitative labor camps because "this is America and we are too civilized and sophisticated", then remember that the Germans did not see that coming in their country too.  Even our political language is becoming debased, with elites redefining such a word as 'liberty' to mean that the elites are free to gouge the rest of Humanity so that they can gorge themselves in an aristocratic manner.

Howe and Strauss wrote in Generations of the Crisis of 2020 as a certainty because the generations would be so aligned in or around 2020. They dared not predict what the Crisis of 2020 would be, but they did suggest that it would be messy. It could involve civil or international war, and every institution that people thought that they could take for granted in 1989 would be in gross peril. That includes democratic institutions that the Founding Fathers enshrined in a constitution in the late 1780s, the norm of freedom (at least formal) for all for which the Union Armies ended up fighting for in the Civil War, and the basic decencies of economics for people who weren't born to wealth and privilege as defined in the 1930s and defended against gangster regimes in the early 1940s. These are liberal trends, and at no time in American history have liberal trends been so denied and reversed as in the last year.

Liberals have an advantage: they are the heirs of the likes of Samuel Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and FDR. They lack the advantage of institutional control, as (perhaps Jewish wealthy families excepted for cultural reasons) the economic elites are consummately reactionary; those elites would love a return to what those elites saw as the aspects of the Good Old Days for them, those times when taxes were light, regulation was nearly non-existent (except to enforce sobriety and obedience among the proles and peons), monopoly pricing was the way to make the all-holy profit, and labor was cheap and cowed.  Those elites have a loudmouth vulgarian who fully stands for such as President, and majorities in both the House and Senate dutifully follow the instructions of corporate lobbyists that those elites have deputized to establish government of, by, and for the Master Class. I expect liberals to channel the Founding Fathers, Lincoln, and the New Deal. I expect the Master Class and its acolytes to admonish us to obey them cheerfully and without qualification or suffer horrific consequences. Remember: few Germans saw what would happen under Hitler. Trump may not be Hitler, but I can easily see a plutocratic America morphing from the 500-pound gorilla (where does a 500-pound gorilla sleep? Anywhere he wants to) to the 500-pound tiger (what does a 500-pound tiger eat? Any critter that he can catch!) should it go bad.

We are one rigged election away from a civil war. The people defending slavery did not see Lincoln as a legitimate President and may have been unwise to contemplate how he might have ended slavery in America (this is my speculation, but he would have adopted the British model of emancipation that had worked well in the British Empire and would have worked well in America if given a chance).  Liberals might see the consolidation of an undemocratic plutocracy in 2020 as a rejection of everything that they cherish, and legitimately so. The difference? A fascistic America will be utterly inhuman. Torture chambers and abusive prisons merit nothing less than violent resistance. People will soon learn that death is far preferable to some brutal prospects in life. people will die and even kill to protect their loved ones. A phrase such as "Give me liberty or give me death" (Patrick Henry) or "Death to fascism, liberty for the People" (Stjepan Filipović, a Yugoslav partisan commander captured by the fascists and hanged as a rebel), absurd in normal times, can be eminently reasonable in a Crisis. Everything seems to be at stake in a Crisis.

Now for the big question -- will the post-industrial age be one of unprecedented ease and plenty, or will it be one of unprecedented inequality with brutality enforcing it? We may know in another decade. We do not know now.

[Bob Butler 54]

(01-23-2018, 11:51 AM)David Horn Wrote: We're entering the second Age following the Industrial.  That alone is enough to change the tenor of things.

Can I demand a recount?  The common wisdom might put us in the fourth age, if you count hunter-gatherer, agricultural, industrial, post scarcity.  This suggests nukes, computer networks and renewable energy tumps chemical weapons, industrial production and oil.

But I don't doubt old patterns might break, that the tenor might change.  No more crisis wars between major powers?  Guerrilla wars become more common?  Awakenings become the turning of change, not crisis?  The patterns found in western history become irregular?

Too soon to tell.

[Bob Butler 54]

(01-23-2018, 01:12 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Now for the big question -- will the post-industrial age be one of unprecedented ease and plenty, or will it be one of unprecedented inequality with brutality enforcing it? We may know in another decade. We do not know now.

Good question.

[Eric the Green]

(01-23-2018, 11:51 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-22-2018, 11:05 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: ... But if boom times impel the Republicans to stay in power, and rule over times that become relaxed and complacent with the national divide just fading away into a new and successful gilded age, then I think the cycle of the saeculum has ended. The 4T would have been a brief dud in 2008-2010. There is no 1T without a 4T; there would be no way to characterize such a prospect within the saeculum paradigm. The pattern would simply not hold. But all the cosmic signs and the demographics militate against this happening. The cosmic signs may not always be easy to read, but on this point they seem unambiguous. We have severe conflicts ahead in the 2020s, and vigorous new departures for our country-- or what's left of it.

We're entering the second Age following the Industrial.  That alone is enough to change the tenor of things.  But that doesn't mean that we're at the end of history, merely shifting to a new paradigm.  We still have issues that need to be solved, and some are moving to the critical stage.  The real question: do they get resolved in this 4T period or merely delayed until the next 2T or longer?  Intellectually, I'm open to either, but emotionally I'd prefer seeing the issues resolved sooner than later.  

I don't always get my wish.

Me either. One thing I've noticed is how many tyrants have appeared and gone beserk in recent times despite the touted "end of history" following the end of the Soviet Union and the birth of many new states and some new democracies in the 1990s. 

Now, Turkey has slipped back into the world of thuggery, and Assad of Syria has taken it to a level not seen since Hitler and Pol Pot. This vaccuum also opened the way to the horrible Islamic State. The current Isreali thug ruler continues to attack his Palestinian neighbors. Deterte has waged war on his own Filipinos in the name of the drug war, and General Sisi hijacked the Egyptian Arab Spring democratic movement and turned it into virtual tyranny. The Saudi royal family is easing some restrictions while they rain terror and death over their Yemeni neighbors -- even as they now are offering some aid to them. Putin has put the emergent Russian democracy back into the age of the Tsars. Hungary and Poland seem on the verge of fascism, and Venezuela and Brazil are in the grip of corruption, and in the former case of one-man rule despite people massed in the streets against him. Honduras remains in the grip of thuggery too. And the USA put a would-be thug into its Oval Office who is marching that nation back into medieval times as fast as he can.

Not exactly the progress I thought might be happening in these times, although I predicted some of this regression.

So, will my progressive prediction happen in the 2020s? To what extent will the USA come apart, and to what end?

One thing is sure, more change will come in this 4T, and in the USA the progressive side has always won the 4T battles. If the progressive side loses this time and the Republicans win instead, it will mark the first time that the regressive side has won, and will indicate that the USA is in severe decline. It would not survive as we know it. One thing is sure too: changes in a 4T are never enough, even if the progressive side wins as usual. There is always more needed, and that's where the next 2T comes in to take things to the next level. 

But I think we need a progressive victory in the 4T before the next 2T can bring a new Awakening. A reactionary victory in this 4T will result in there being no new Awakening in what is now the USA. There will be no basis for one in society. America cannot recover from a victory by today's regressive faction, which is now in power. Awakenings as we have known them don't happen in societies that are in constant suffering and decline. One reason for this is that there will be no new prophet generation. These generations have always been victory children.

One thing to note well, however. In 4T crises, it has always been uncertain whether the progressive side would win, or whether we instead would slip into a new dark age. It is always darkest before the dawn. The American Revolution hung by a thread many times. The Civil War seemed to go on and on with no end in sight. The Depression seemed never-ending too, and Hitler could have defeated the Allies had he been smarter in his strategy.

Awakenings have not always been entirely successful or progressive spiritually, but they DO nevertheless put some momentum behind the changes that happen in the next 4T. Earlier awakenings were traditionally-religious, but uplifting to the spirit. This kind of awakening in the mid-18th century gave momentum to positive changes such as the American Revolution 4T, with a new constitution as its outcome that, while still flawed, was a landmark in human history that inspired the French and then the world. 

Since then, our great Awakenings have often been both traditionally-religious and non-conformist spiritual movements. That includes the previous one, which was dominated by non-conformist awakenings through human potential and counter-cultural movements like esalen, est, the hippies and the new agers, which although climaxing early in the 2T, continued throughout and beyond it, and which also helped empower environmental and peace movements as well as diversity awakenings. Later in the 2T came a counter-awakening of a Jesus-freak movement followed by the moral majority and other fundamentalist awakenings that empowered the reactionary political movements still dominant today in red states. This divided awakening has resulted in the red-blue divide that threatens to tear our nation apart in this 4T. I suspect, however, that if the nation holds together, that this divide will pass away or lessen in severity in the following 1T.

[David Horn]

(01-23-2018, 05:13 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(01-23-2018, 11:51 AM)David Horn Wrote: We're entering the second Age following the Industrial.  That alone is enough to change the tenor of things.

Can I demand a recount?  The common wisdom might put us in the fourth age, if you count hunter-gatherer, agricultural, industrial, post scarcity.  This suggests nukes, computer networks and renewable energy tumps chemical weapons, industrial production and oil.

But I don't doubt old patterns might break, that the tenor might change.  No more crisis wars between major powers?  Guerrilla wars become more common?  Awakenings become the turning of change, not crisis?  The patterns found in western history become irregular?

Too soon to tell.

I meant to imply that we're in the second Age to follow the Industrial.  First, there was the Information Age, which still had a true form to it.  Now, we're Post-modern, whatever that actually means.  If you plot the inception of each age as a graph, the rate of change is clearly exponential.  

FWIW, I see the inception of the Information Age as the date EINIAC first came into existence -- similar to the date Watt debuted the steam engine.  The real work occurred in the 50s through the 90s, when we turned Information from a tool into a product.  This century has taken that to a different level, where information is a given, and the new products, if they actually are products, are social platforms for hoi polloi and massive wealth for the few.  We're just now beginning to see that mature.

We can be sure that the oligarchy will use it to their advantage, if they can.  They already have been.  It was announced at Davos that, worldwide, the top 1% have garnered fully 83% of the gains since the crash of 2007-8.  That's unsustainable, but clearly continuing and even growing.  There will either be a reckoning or we will see the world devolve into a few with everything and the rest struggling, but happily connecting on their social media, numb to their own fate. The theory calls for a reckoning.  We'll see.

[Eric the Green]

Post-modern and information age are roughly the same, I think; the post-modern era dates from at least as far back as the 1960s, which is when the microchip came into being too. Post-modern philosophy and architecture appeared in the 60s and 70s. The first big computer came into being earlier, but some also date post-modern earlier; perhaps to the time of the nuclear arms race, and perhaps to just before the turn of the 20th century, at least with regard to some allegedly post-modern prophets like Nietzsche.

The reckoning must come, I agree, about the 1% elite, or else we are descending into a new feudalism.

I would be happy if Reaganomics is replaced by a general realization that taxing the rich enough to boost average Americans and to keep the rich from owning and running everything is a necessary and rational policy that should be permanent, as it was for almost 50 years, and that libertarian-economic nostrums should be permanently debunked. If we realize this, and implement this fair tax policy, then a deadly revolution might not be needed.

[pbrower2a]

(01-24-2018, 08:18 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(01-23-2018, 11:51 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-22-2018, 11:05 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: ... But if boom times impel the Republicans to stay in power, and rule over times that become relaxed and complacent with the national divide just fading away into a new and successful gilded age, then I think the cycle of the saeculum has ended. The 4T would have been a brief dud in 2008-2010. There is no 1T without a 4T; there would be no way to characterize such a prospect within the saeculum paradigm. The pattern would simply not hold. But all the cosmic signs and the demographics militate against this happening. The cosmic signs may not always be easy to read, but on this point they seem unambiguous. We have severe conflicts ahead in the 2020s, and vigorous new departures for our country-- or what's left of it.

We're entering the second Age following the Industrial.  That alone is enough to change the tenor of things.  But that doesn't mean that we're at the end of history, merely shifting to a new paradigm.  We still have issues that need to be solved, and some are moving to the critical stage.  The real question: do they get resolved in this 4T period or merely delayed until the next 2T or longer?  Intellectually, I'm open to either, but emotionally I'd prefer seeing the issues resolved sooner than later.  

I don't always get my wish.

Me either. One thing I've noticed is how many tyrants have appeared and gone beserk in recent times despite the touted "end of history" following the end of the Soviet Union and the birth of many new states and some new democracies in the 1990s.

Human nature, especially of economic and administrative elites, hasn't changed much since the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle or of the Hebrew prophets. The classics remain relevant to Modern Man in ways that we don;t realize until we neglect the lessons. In case someone says that this observation is unduly ethnocentric, one can get a workable order out of Confucius and the Buddha.

Economic and administrative elites have invariably done what they think that they can get away with, whatever their stated ideology. The question is whether they know when to give up. The French Revolution of 1789 had much to say about the Romanian Revolution of 1989 even if the ideologies of Louis XVI and Nicolae Ceausescu were seeming opposites.

Quote:Now, Turkey has slipped back into the world of thuggery, and Assad of Syria has taken it to a level not seen since Hitler and Pol Pot. This vacuum also opened the way to the horrible Islamic State. The current Isreali thug ruler continues to attack his Palestinian neighbors. Deterte has waged war on his own Filipinos in the name of the drug war, and General Sisi hijacked the Egyptian Arab Spring democratic movement and turned it into virtual tyranny. The Saudi royal family is easing some restrictions while they rain terror and death over their Yemeni neighbors -- even as they now are offering some aid to them. Putin has put the emergent Russian democracy back into the age of the Tsars. Hungary and Poland seem on the verge of fascism, and Venezuela and Brazil are in the grip of corruption, and in the former case of one-man rule despite people massed in the streets against him. Honduras remains in the grip of thuggery too. And the USA put a would-be thug into its Oval Office who is marching that nation back into medieval times as fast as he can.

I now have more fear of what Donald Trump can do to the world than I ever had of Khrushchev or Brezhnev. This is what one gets with a political leader whose style of communication is the schoolyard taunt. This is what one gets with leadership more attentive to personal gain and indulgence than with service to Humanity, someone who ridicules any critic.

Perhaps multicultural tendencies have their own reaction in people circling the wagons against people unlike themselves by culture, religion, and appearance. But we Americans seem to be recognizing that we have a big problem.

Quote:....
One thing is sure, more change will come in this 4T, and in the USA the progressive side has always won the 4T battles. If the progressive side loses this time and the Republicans win instead, it will mark the first time that the regressive side has won, and will indicate that the USA is in severe decline. It would not survive as we know it. One thing is sure too: changes in a 4T are never enough, even if the progressive side wins as usual. There is always more needed, and that's where the next 2T comes in to take things to the next level. 

 In Germany (with the arguable exception of the Soviet Zone), Austria, Italy, and Japan, the progressive side won. But the ones who won were foreign Great Powers, even if that was not soon enough to prevent some unspeakable horrors of enslavement and genocide. God help us should America go so bad that it should need foreign liberation in defeat to recover some political decency.

America as an Evil Empire dominant upon the world is one of the worst scenarios possible. To be sure, corruption and cruelty are not good for winning the final struggle. The best way to win a war is to make sure that the other side has nothing left for which to fight. What would be worse? Extinction of civilization, let alone humanity itself.

Quote:But I think we need a progressive victory in the 4T before the next 2T can bring a new Awakening. A reactionary victory in this 4T will result in there being no new Awakening in what is now the USA. There will be no basis for one in society. America cannot recover from a victory by today's regressive faction, which is now in power. Awakenings as we have known them don't happen in societies that are in constant suffering and decline. One reason for this is that there will be no new prophet generation. These generations have always been victory children.

But Germany and Italy had Awakening eras just as strong as ours. So did Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, not as privileged as the non-communist industrialized countries. Japan might not have, but that says more about Japanese culture or that Japanese pop culture didn't then travel well. Sweden, not a participant in World War II, had an Awakening. The repressive regimes of Spain and Portugal were able to put off Awakening Eras until the 1970s. but when the glacial winters of repression died, the flowers could bloom. An Awakening Era depends on some freedom and the perception that the world is a much safer place than it had been.

Quote:One thing to note well, however. In 4T crises, it has always been uncertain whether the progressive side would win, or whether we instead would slip into a new dark age. It is always darkest before the dawn. The American Revolution hung by a thread many times. The Civil War seemed to go on and on with no end in sight. The Depression seemed never-ending too, and Hitler could have defeated the Allies had he been smarter in his strategy.

Hitler lost the war because he could have never gotten peace except through the extermination of his enemies as he tried with the Jews. In any event I can figure that his style of government would have imploded much as the Soviet order did in the 1980s.  But this is a science-fiction scenario.

The best thing that one can say of a 4T is that people eventually do what they must to preserve what is best in their heritage while undoing the worst, when alternatives (especially giving in to a seeming fate) become unworkable.

Hitler lost the European war because of his atrocities. I can easily imagine Britain accepting a German hegemony over Europe had it not been for Nazi atrocities much as Britain had shown little concern about the Franco-Prussian War.

Quote:Awakenings have not always been entirely successful or progressive spiritually, but they DO nevertheless put some momentum behind the changes that happen in the next 4T. Earlier awakenings were traditionally-religious, but uplifting to the spirit. This kind of awakening in the mid-18th century gave momentum to positive changes such as the American Revolution 4T, with a new constitution as its outcome that, while still flawed, was a landmark in human history that inspired the French and then the world. 

The Boom Awakening has not been as rich in consciousness-building literature as the Transcendental and Missionary Awakenings. So far I see some progress in minority-based consciousness... but at this stage of the  4T I see largely the narcissism among economic and administrative elites, and this is much the problem of contemporary America -- people with the power to get practically anything that they want and nobody able to stop them. This said, many Boomers reject this and want something very different -- and they will need Generation X to administer such change and Millennial adults to realize it in work. Donald Trump is not the last act of Boomers, the youngest of which will be in their 60s in the 2020s.

Quote:Since then, our great Awakenings have often been both traditionally-religious and non-conformist spiritual movements. That includes the previous one, which was dominated by non-conformist awakenings through human potential and counter-cultural movements like esalen, est, the hippies and the new agers, which although climaxing early in the 2T, continued throughout and beyond it, and which also helped empower environmental and peace movements as well as diversity awakenings. Later in the 2T came a counter-awakening of a Jesus-freak movement followed by the moral majority and other fundamentalist awakenings that empowered the reactionary political movements still dominant today in red states. This divided awakening has resulted in the red-blue divide that threatens to tear our nation apart in this 4T. I suspect, however, that if the nation holds together, that this divide will pass away or lessen in severity in the following 1T.

There are the libertarian causes... and it looks as if Esalen, est, hippies, and New Age stuff will not be particularly relevant to the future. They are strictly Boom phenomena. As for the Christian Protestant fundamentalists -- they have children. If those children read and contemplate the Bible instead of treating it as a holy icon beyond discovery, they will find out how amoral and immoral their parents are for racism, homophobia, and economic hierarchy.

[David Horn]

(01-25-2018, 01:22 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Post-modern and information age are roughly the same, I think; the post-modern era dates from at least as far back as the 1960s, which is when the microchip came into being too. Post-modern philosophy and architecture appeared in the 60s and 70s. The first big computer came into being earlier, but some also date post-modern earlier; perhaps to the time of the nuclear arms race, and perhaps to just before the turn of the 20th century, at least with regard to some allegedly post-modern prophets like Nietzsche.

Post-modernity has less to do with science and technology than it does with philosophy. The reason I added 'whatever that means' to my comment has to do with the lack of clarity about the topic. A lot of it has to do with 'truth' and 'fact', which are different as you should know. Unfortunately, many have decided that 'truth' exists outside the world of 'fact', so one opinion is just as valuable as any other. Dangerous!

Eric the Green Wrote:The reckoning must come, I agree, about the 1% elite, or else we are descending into a new feudalism.

Yes, it must come, but not necessarily now. Let's admit it: we're tired. The rate of societal change is ridiculous, and it's worn us down. That, in part, is why I wonder whether this 4T will be dud: existent but weak and ineffectual.

Eric the Green Wrote:I would be happy if Reaganomics is replaced by a general realization that taxing the rich enough to boost average Americans and to keep the rich from owning and running everything is a necessary and rational policy that should be permanent, as it was for almost 50 years, and that libertarian-economic nostrums should be permanently debunked. If we realize this, and implement this fair tax policy, then a deadly revolution might not be needed.

I'll stick my neck out: I see the capitalist system either dying or morphing into something totally different in less than 50 years. The pace of change will make us all supernumerary in our own economy. We have to eat, cloth and house ourselves, and live real lives. If not through paid work, then how?

[pbrower2a]

(01-25-2018, 04:05 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-25-2018, 01:22 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Post-modern and information age are roughly the same, I think; the post-modern era dates from at least as far back as the 1960s, which is when the microchip came into being too. Post-modern philosophy and architecture appeared in the 60s and 70s. The first big computer came into being earlier, but some also date post-modern earlier; perhaps to the time of the nuclear arms race, and perhaps to just before the turn of the 20th century, at least with regard to some allegedly post-modern prophets like Nietzsche.

Post-modernity has less to do with science and technology than it does with philosophy.  The reason I added 'whatever that means' to my comment has to do with the lack of clarity about the topic.  A lot of it has to do with 'truth' and 'fact', which are different as you should know.  Unfortunately, many have decided that 'truth' exists outside the world of 'fact', so one opinion is just as valuable as any other.  Dangerous!

We can all have our opinions, but we need to deal with factual reality for what it is. Factual reality can get in the way of anything that one wants. "Bridge out" does not mean that you can reasonably make a crossing at that point just because you want to.

Quote:

Eric the Green Wrote:The reckoning must come, I agree, about the 1% elite, or else we are descending into a new feudalism.

Yes, it must come, but not necessarily now.  Let's admit it: we're tired.  The rate of societal change is ridiculous, and it's worn us down.  That, in part, is why I wonder whether this 4T will be dud: existent but weak and ineffectual.

Historical change will not set its pace based upon the desire of any people. We can reasonably expect institutional changes contrary to our desire or our readiness for them, let alone their manner of happening.

Eric the Green Wrote:I would be happy if Reaganomics is replaced by a general realization that taxing the rich enough to boost average Americans and to keep the rich from owning and running everything is a necessary and rational policy that should be permanent, as it was for almost 50 years, and that libertarian-economic nostrums should be permanently debunked. If we realize this, and implement this fair tax policy, then a deadly revolution might not be needed.

I'll stick my neck out: I see the capitalist system either dying or morphing into something totally different in less than 50 years.  The pace of change will make us all supernumerary in our own economy.  We have to eat, cloth and house ourselves, and live real lives.  If not through paid work, then how?[/quote]


Capitalism remains a system of manipulation -- creating desires that can be achieved in relatively few ways, all of those requiring obedience to the capitalists. Needs such as food, clothing, shelter, and heating or cooling will be there whether we like it or not. We will need transportation to get to work, education to prepare us for jobs other than raw labor, and medical care to keep us from dying before our careers are through.  The Master Class wants to inflict entrepreneurial responsibility upon the masses in return for offering nothing but peon rewards.... that cannot work long.  If we cannot have full employment we will need some sort of welfare system, perhaps a guaranteed income (which robot-based production will make necessary) We will probably need to tax robot-based productivity heavily to ensure that people who lose productive jobs get compensation.

We will need more education to prepare people for a world with less work. The 40-hour workweek of the 1930s transformed unemployment into predictable leisure. Shorter hours of work may be a necessity.

But think of what people could do in their added leisure time. Creative activities. Visiting people in need, such as people incarcerated in nursing homes. Travel for leisure purposes. Reading great literature, viewing great cinema and video, and listening to great music. Maybe we will have plenty of 'perpetual students' -- but so what?