I think all of these have a more-than-50%-chance of happening, but I am probably overconfident:
- COVID-19 will kill more than 25 million people worldwide by 2030. I really hope I'm wrong and an effective, cheap vaccine is available soon.
- More than one US state will default on their public employee pension obligations by 2030. Underfunded pensions are a chronic problem; I might be wrong and strong economic growth might push the day of reckoning past 2030. Or maybe COVID-19 will kill enough retirees to make the accounting work out (but I doubt it; the cost of dealing with lots of sick people is likely to strain government budgets at all levels).
- Polyamory and a push for state-sanctioned polyamorous marriage will be a big "culture war" issue during the 2020s.
- At least one country's central bank will issue a blockchain-based digital currency that will have a 'market cap' of more than 100 billion dollars by 2030.
- A woman will be US president before 2030.
UPDATE: I asked my Twitter followers what they thought; here are the poll results:
- 27% agreed with me(2,121 votes)
- 76% agreed (487 votes)
- 31% agreed (1,000 votes)
- 72% agreed (1,227 votes)
- 43% agreed (877 votes)
If my Twitter followers are right, I'll get two of five right.
Very interested in how you came to predict #1 above?
ReplyDeleteWhy did I predict it would be a big deal in February, before the rest of America realized that? As soon as I saw the reports of asymptomatic spread I thought there was no way we were going to contain it.
ReplyDeleteOr how did I get 25million as the number of dead? I assumed 2 to3billion infected and a 1% fatality rate. I think I’ll be wrong— the fatality rate is probably lower than that, and some of the treatments look like they’ll bring it down to maybe 0.2%.
The vaccine will (happily) derail your prediction for COVID. But science hasn't developed a cure for death by old age yet, so prediction #5 looks like a good bet.
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