If you had to predict American 2030.....

[Nikki Stone 1]

What would your prediction be? Will the US be a full-fledged dicatorship by then? Will there even be a US or will it have split into a bunch of little entities? Will the oil have run out?

OR will it all be ok?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

1. It'll All Be Ok.

[Random_Australian]

2. Seedy, both meanings of the word. n/t

[1620rock]

3. Who knower's, we are going to hell in a hand basket for now. n/t

[Random_Australian]

5. Thus the first meaning, bad, coarse, unkempt, highly impure to stretch the

word to a more chemical analagy.

[Ravenseye]

4. Well it doesn't look good.

According to the conservative websites by then we'll be fully in the evil grip of the GLBT illegal immigrants who will be forcibily breaking up heterosexual christian marriages and forcing their children to convert to islam while they continue to tear apart all aspects of corporate america by making all jobs and industry part of their new communist government.

So sure...it looks like it might get pretty bad...

[Bobbieo]

6. Besides the all above - half of the world

will be under water!!!!!

[pinto]

7. I think it'll be OK. Some alive today may not recognize it, but

I have a lot confidence in we humans to "come back from the brink" as it were.

[Prophet 451]

8. Could go either way

Could all turn out more-or-less ok

OR, if Bush is succeeded by someone similar, you end up with a fracturing union (USA on the coats and much of the north, Jesusland everywhere else), an economy that makes Brazil look stable, grades of citizenship (read Heinlein's "Starship Troopers") and most of Jesusland ruled by a series of de facto dictators who may make a pretence of elections but somehow, never lose...

To be honest, it might already be too late to prevent that. Reagan/Bush I and Bush II moved the political centre so far to the right that, in comparison, Clinton appeared a man of the far-left (despite being pretty centrist in his policies). What worries me now is the tendancy for a successful pattern (Bush's ultra-right policies) to spawn more and more extreme imitators. Between her views and the opportunity to accuse anyone criticising her of sexism, I could honestly see the Repubs running Ann Coulter, she's just the logical progression of what they've been doing for years.

[Erika]

9. America will be a full blown corporate theocracy

As in Hitler's days, the government finds religion to be the opiate of the masses, and will take full advantage to control the middle class while redistributing the taxes paid to the coffers of the elite from the earnings of the poor and middle class.

Christianity (fundamentalist version) will become the icon of America, and freedom of religion will be lost. Subservients as in the past, will be told to bite it and God will give them better at death. Again, the opiate of the masses.

These people will accept hardship in lieu of a promise of Heaven, while the rich expect Heaven here and there. They did buy their admission ticket, right?

The Carlyle Group and the homeless will receive the same severance package, right?

[JeffR]

10. If at any point in the last 50 years I'd had to predict America 2006

I could not possibly have come up with anything as weird as the reality has turned out to be.

[unkachuck]

11. on October 25, 2011....

....at 4:45pm, EST, the world will experience all-out thermal nuclear war....the fascist neocon corporate quest for empire and global domination was not abated by the election of a Democractic President and Congress in 2008 or 2010....

....success in Iraq and elsewhere continued the fascist neocon corporate war-march forward via the shadow government...though the continuing use of theatre nuclear weapons by the neocons was being condemned resoundingly by governments and people around the world, little or no opposition was forthcoming from the American people....

....nuclear governments around the world secretly met in June, 2011 to formulate a first-strike on the continental U.S. to begin at 4:22pm, EST, on October 25, 2011....

....2030, the world will be back to a new-normal with pockets of sickly, deseased, humans scattered around the globe, still at war....surviving plants and animals will thrive in the lush, green, clean environment of the 'new-world'....

....then again, I could be wrong....

[cigsandcoffee]

12. Like it is now, but with digital chopsticks

[RagAss]

13. The #1 Fiction Novel will involve a man walking on the moon !

and, oh yeh, Pat Robertson will leg press Rhode Island.

[Lib Grrrrl]

14. Well, The Mayan Calendar Stopped In December, 2012....

Maybe that's the end of the world? Apparently, the Mayans must have thought so!

[blues90]

15. not much hope here

2030 , well I believe there is global warming and I don't believe man will wake up soon enough to fix this , they just love their autos , you will be forced to take these from their cold dead hands .

Before the oil runs out the water supply will .

If there are still people living by then I will have died from old age long before this , hopefully this is the way I will go out and not the victim of the after affects of WW III with nukes .

In my mind it's insane to think that the population growth will slow down or there will be enough jobs to sustain all the people and still have a welfare fund . There are so many things now that something has to give and I don't think it will take until 2030 to find out what these will be . Even if the best leaders on earth were at the wheel people are going to find it necessary to adapt and need a lot less and to sacrifice or it will just burn out .

If all the best efforts started today then maybe by 2030 we will be close to what it was like in 1902 .

[Golden Raisin]

16. If the Republicans/Neocons "win" in November 2006,

like they "won" in Florida/2000 & Ohio/2004, then we are in deep elephant dung up to our eyeballs. Jesusland/American Talibanate over vast areas of what are now red states. Fracture or Civil War a possibility. After that a strong possibility of internment camps (Michelle Malkin will be in ecstasy). Profits of oil, defense companies, and semi-official, no-bid crony entities such as Halliburton will be beyond obscene. Severe Clampdown or Closedown of the Internet (see mainland China). They probably won't have to suspend elections as they know how to manipulate/steal them. More and more Fox-type media on TV. The Constitution and Bill of Rights will be trashed/ignored (BushCo already doing a good job on that score.) Supreme Court and Federal District Courts will not even have a pretense of being anything other than a rightwing rubberstamp. Vast Hispanic population surge will eventually be assimilated just as every other group before them. Ever in search of new thrills, Reality TV will have "progressed" to live, pay-per-view gladiatorial combat to the death.

[WCGreen]

17. I think the corporate state will replace the people state....

The folks will still vote, but we will be sated with consumer goods and diversions...

Much like today....

Only it will be grimy and gritty, like a graphic novel....

[Name removed]

18. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Swamp Rat]

19. Sounds plausible

Welcome to DU! :hi: or should I say, bienvenido al DU. :D

[RDU Socialist]

20. let's see...

In 1812 we were invaded by Britain, a year later our capital was burned down by the British, but in the end America survived. In 1861 we had a four year long Civil War and America survived that. In 1941 we were engaged in the most brutal war in history facing at that time the most fearsome enemy ever, and we survived that. After WWII we were in a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union and didn't lose a single life in battle there.

There is nothing going on in this world right now that compares to any of that. It will all be okay.

[Placebo]

21. Fuck yeah.

I am just beaming with optimism for our Global Warming, Terror-filled future.

[RDU Socialist]

22. Terrorism has existed for centuries

if it wasn't involving Muslims, it was involving Indians, Mexicans, the Spanish, southerners, Germans, Commies, or Japanese. Right now Muslims are our "enemy", but by 2030, God willing, we will realize the problem has always been Slovenia.

Fuck Slovenia.

[Placebo]

23. Slovenia has had it coming for ages.

Time to liberate (burn Slovenia to the ground, and bomb 'em back to the stone age), in the name of the Lord!

[RDU Socialist]

24. we should do to Slovenia what Sherman did to Georgia

there will be some global warming in Ljubljana when every building is set ablaze in response to the bullshit they've been doing for centuries.

[Placebo]

25. They've been itching for a nuke up their arse...

since the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Been a sovereign nation for 15 years already and they still don't got their shit together.

Time to rain the fire down on those whores and idolaters.

[RDU Socialist]

26. is it any coincidence that the flag of slovenia has a golden calf?

and Kranj (Slovenia's third wealthiest city at $3.87) literally means "worshippers of golden bovines"?

[sweetheart]

27. 2030

The earth's population tops 8 billion people and the USA tops 500 million,
lifespans are shorter due to toxic poisons in the environment. The economy
is about half the GDP of china and equal to australia.

High speed internet is ubiquitous, and the violent malaise that today only
infects major US cities is rampant in every metropolis on earth.

Politicians are never seen in public for fear of execution, and the country
is stone cold broke. Surviving nonchaotic ungovernable states are allied with
canada in an EU-like arrangement, where they get water as "money" in the trading
relationship.. .something more valuable than oil.

Entire states have been privatized, and no government remains except the title to
the citizens held by corporate state. There is free medical treatment, and all
doctors are required to warn the authorities if someone shows unpatriotic
mental abberrations, and such persons are put on mandatory drugs, and/or institutionalized.
All of the best political persons in the country are so imprisoned.

The country is a military dictatorship, where the military, much like the chinese
PLC, owns and runs all its own industries and "the economy". There is no economy
except that is run by the military. The birthrate is increasing as the country
falls deeper and deeper in to poverty, as people go back to ancient practices of
having many children to ensure their old age, and that one might survive...

People go to military bases to get food and services, like huge gated cities that
only allow the people in during "hours" and they are forced back off in to the
ghettos. Nobody can afford to drive a car, but 50 million people live in cars.

Desert states are mostly abandoned as the water is dried up, and people have moved
to places where there is a water/habitable climate. This lasts until 2050 when a
revolution decapitates the dictatorship and establishes an emperor.

[nonconformist]

28. That's a really tough one

If I would have told someone 24 years ago all of the details leading to the mess we're in in 2006, they probably wouldn't have believed me. Especially since I would have been 9 years old. :P

Hell, if I would have told someone in 1999 this, they probably wouldn't have believed me. *I* wouldn't have believed me.... I knew that it was going to be bad but I had no idea HOW bad.

I fear for my family and my country.

Honestly, best guess? We'll be a washed-up old superpower. Debt up to our eyeballs. Unemployment, homeless and poor at astronomical highs. China will be the undisputed superpower of the world.

[Nikki Stone 1]

30. Yours is the closest to my own

I hope we're wrong

[Jazz2006]

29. The U.S. will survive intact...

life will go on,
democracy will survive,
there will be no dictatorship,
the country will not devolve into a bunch of little entities,
oil will not have run out but alternatives to oil will have become more commonplace,
but Karl Rove might get indicted some time between now and 2030.



That's my prediction ~ and some DUers will still be around to pull these predictions out of the archives, I hope :D

[Laughing Mirror]

31. The esteemed Immanuel Wallerstein looks into his crystal ball and asks

"Whose Century is the 21st Century?"


There are basically three sets of answers to the question of what the world will look like in 2025. The first is that the United States will enjoy one last fling, a revival of power, and will continue to rule the roost in the absence of any serious military contender. The second is that China will displace the United States as the world's superpower. The third is that the world will become an arena of anarchic and relatively unpredictable multi-polar disorder. Let us examine the plausibility of each of these three predictions.

The United States on top? There are three reasons to doubt this. The first, an economic reason, is the fragility of the U.S. dollar as the sole reserve currency in the world-economy. The dollar is sustained now by massive infusions of bond purchases by Japan, China, Korea, and other countries. It is highly unlikely that this will continue. When the dollar falls dramatically, it may momentarily increase the sale of manufactured goods, but the United States will lose its command on world wealth and its ability to expand the deficit without serious immediate penalty. The standard of living will fall and there will be an influx of new reserve currencies, including the euro and the yen.

The second reason is military. Both Afghanistan and especially Iraq have demonstrated in the last few years that it is not enough to have airplanes, ships, and bombs. A nation must also have a very large land force to overcome local resistance. The United States does not have such a force, and will not have one, due to internal political reasons. Hence, it is doomed to lose such wars.

The third reason is political. Nations throughout the world are drawing the logical conclusion that they can now defy the United States politically. Take the latest instance: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which brings together Russia, China, and four Central Asian republics, is about to expand to include India, Pakistan, Mongolia, and Iran. Iran has been invited at the very moment that the United States is trying to organize a worldwide campaign against the regime. The Boston Globe has called this correctly "an anti-Bush alliance" and a "tectonic shift in geopolitics."

Will China then emerge on top by 2025? ...

more ...

http://fbc.binghamton.edu/186en.htm

[DarbyUSMC]

32. By 2030 the majority of people will be a golden color and speak at least

two languages. We will have realized that Canada is a more valuable friend than we realized and we will join them in an effort to improve both of our countries in all regards. There will be a committee in each state and in DC to review the present laws; discarding those which never should have been passed and those that are outdated. Pork is gone. Bills are only about what they were meant to be about. Canadian and American citizens no longer go to Mexico on vacation as a protest of the Mexican government's non-help with the illegal immigration situation. This wasn't a government mandate, it evolved from the American and Canadian people's conversations about the safety of our countries. By doing this we are also protesting the way we are treated there when either working or visiting off the beaten path. Bribes, threats, and extortion have soured all of us on ever crossing their border. Finally, a committee made up of people from all walks of life is being heard before congress regarding redundant taxing. Either income tax has to be eliminated, as it was a temporary measure when conceived or there has to be an end for paying taxes on money already taxed i.e. gas tax, sales tax and taxes added to anything and everything the government can come up with. No more. One tax. The other big thing regarding taxes --- once a home owner's house is paid for or when he reaches seventy years old there will be no more taxes on that property.

Yes, I'm not awake --- just one of my unreal dreams.