What will America and the World look like in the year 2020

[rusk2003]

[brainshrub]

1. Peak Oil

Here is your prediction: http://www.museletter.com/partys-over.html

Once you understand it, everything Bu$h Co. does makes perfect sense. Enjoy.

[opihimoimoi]

2. Two Views: either we have a world bent on greed as we have now, and live

in misery, or 2, we get proactive and plan for the largest LUAU EVER.

Either we Party;

or we eat shit.

At this point, The odds for shit have it.

[terrya]

3. What a great question.

My take on America:

The chasm between the wealthy and the middle class and poor will be wider than ever. I hate to say it, folks, but we're turning into a country of haves and have nots.

This is so depressing.

We'll largely be a service economy. Most of our high tech jobs will be shipped overseas.

Good news will be that the religious right's influence will be dramatically lessened. There will be a huge backlash against the rr. Gay people will benefit from this. DOMA will be found to be unconstitutional, paving the way for gay marriage in all but name (it won't be called marriage). Don't Ask Don't Tell will be repealed, with gays and lesbians serving openly in the military. ENDA (the Employment Non Discrimination Act) will be FINALLY enacted.

[Outvoicer]

4. We'll be friends with our Alien Overlords...

[ochazuke]

5. Asking the same question another way...

How much damage will be done by Shrubco before people wake up and throw them out? How long will that damage linger? Some of it is permanent. Looking on the bright side, think of the (unintended) good Hitler and the Japanese milatarists did. Seriously, Germany and Japan are pacifist nations now because of their 1930s-40s excess.

[GainesT1958]

6. Well, we'll need at least TWO good Dem. administrations in this country...

Between now and 2020 to undo Dub & Co.'s long-term damage. I now have another "must-read" book to ask for for Christmas, thanks to BRAINSHRUB!:D

If we don't have at least something of a semblance of what Heinberg talks about, along with a New Deal-style effort at renewable energy diversification, 2020 will indeed be, as the late great Steve Allen's song said, "The Start of Something Big"--and our future will look a lot more like something out of "The Terminator" than out of Star Trek, I'm afraid.:-(

We're also going to need more emphasis on "Regulated Capitalism"-- again, as we had during the New Deal. Without FDR's vision, we wouldn't have the society in which we now exist, not only in the U.S., but in the "First World" as a whole. That's the subject of ANOTHER great book, Kevin Phillips' "Wealth and Democracy", which basically derides modern-day "robber barons" and warns against a return to that society (pre-Teddy Roosevelt), and to 1920s-style Harding-Coolidge-Hoover laissez-faire capitalism as well--the kind that set us up for the Depression. The kind that Dub & Co. are trying to bring back in earnest. The kind that would bring us to our knees if major changes aren't made in the growing income gap...changes that can only be made, in the U.S. at least, by putting more Democrats in office--especially back in the White House--for the bulk of the time between now and 2020.

B-)

[HEyHEY]

7. I imagine a couple of nations will have become one and a couple

will have become two. The EU will be running things, China will be one step closer to capitalism. And the Cubs will still be without a penant sadly

[aneerkoinos]

8. I'll do US

In the year 2020 it has become a neofascist fundamentalist country based on the religion of obsessive consumerism and worshipping cool trademarks, called the American Dream. No oil left to drive anything but military vehicles, but the folks still insist living in their suburbian ruines and use donkeys, horses and cows to drag their SUV's around the block ones a day showing reverance to the American Way of Life(tm). One's a week there is a traditional pilgrimage with the SUV cart to nearest Temple of WallMart to go "shopping". Shopping means making a pile of junk and another pile of paper and participating in the mystery Buying Peace/Piece of Mind. Then the junk is left there and not taken home, because there is no usefull junk left, and Americans are well known for their practicality. Consumerism has moved on from material consumption (for the practical reason there nothing left to eat) on to transcendential, holy, mystical act of Consumerism.

Somefink like that...