Brave New World of the 2020s

Everyone and their grandmother already wrote about end of the decade, best and worst things of the 2010s, and their predictions for 2020s; I feel like a sucker left behind. 

Jumping in the very last car of the very last train doing straight into the 2020!!!!

Ta-da……

My 2020s decade predictions*:

** in no particular order**

  1. Low developed market equity returns. Bad news for the 14-year olds who want to retire at 25 betting on a steady market inflation that we’ve seen past decade (I’m not joking – there are tons of threads on Reddit starting with “14 year old from Oregon, with $350 savings, want to retire at 25”). 
    Why low? Aging demographics trend, low productivity growth, potential social unrest due to increasing inequality – all the boring  things that economists have been saying..
  2. People moving away from the cities (developed economies, of course urbanization will still be increasing in emerging economies). Trend to live a more simple life, combined with increased connectivity and telecommuting. 
  3. Not (yet) autonomous cars. I’m not even skeptical about the technology – we, as a society are just not ready to the ethical dilemmas these cars will pose: “I’m about to crash – who do you prefer me to kill – a little kid or a babushka?”
  4. Insects BBQ and the rise of alternative proteins. Yammy!
  5. Big Tech related disruption. Don’t know what it will be. Zuckerberg turns out to be a space alien, or terrorists steal Amazon’s data to use it for some sort of mega cyber attack – with the power that the Big Techs accumulated in 2010s, we are going to have a first explosion in 2020s. 
  6. Precision medicine. Good news for the 1% of the population who’d be able to pay for it. Genome editing, drugs developed for very rare deseases – definitely a bright spot of the future medicine. 
  7. Anti-globalization. Too much complexity and too much choice in our lives will prompt people to seek more simple ways of living. Rising wealth inequality will lead to the increasingly frequent backlashes against the holders of the wealth – global corporations. 
  8. Climate-activism wars. You can’t save the environment without curbing consumption – starting from eating less meat, using less electricity for data, producing less. Our desire to be cleaner will come in conflict with wanting to buy these 10th pair of yoga pants. There will be activists wars between the climate radicals and corporations and also the good old proponents of Consumerism.
  9. Boys vs girls. Gender issues got a lot of attention in the end of 2010s, with #MeToo, and terms like “toxic masculinity” becoming household expressions. Boys are getting harsh treatment from early on, and into the adult life – affirmative action as part of the cultural wave that is meant to restore gender equality and undo the historical damage done to the women.  Meanwhile, the gender educational gap is not in boys favor – girls do better at school. More females than males attain university diplomas – starting from bachelor through the doctorate. Yes, the gender pay and gender wealth gaps are real, and it hits harder the higher you go on the career ladder – small percentage of the C-suite executives are female. Reducing this gap is necessary and good, but the efforts to do so seem to hit at the wrong places – we are creating a generation of the boys used to being inferior, rather than equal.  My prediction – things are going to get worse and by the end of the 2020s the issue will become on the nations agenda, as the society realizes the pendulum swung too far. 
  10. College sucks – college education will get less and less relevant for the future success. And with the cost of this education, the kids and the parents of the future will more often choose to forego the $80k-per-year expenditure. As all sort the information is readily available to anyone with internet access, ability to learn on your own will be the most defining success factor. 

* Disclaimer: these predictions are mainly for the US. This has been my home for the last 29 years, this is the life I know most. It’s only when you get out of the country, you realize how hugely different the US is – good and bad different. How concepts and beliefs of the Americans are alien to the rest of the world. Simply put, the world doesn’t give a shit about many things that are on the front pages of the US agenda (MeToo anyone?), while the US is looking like a Stone Age regarding the issues that matter to say Europe (e.g. avoidance of single-use plastic)