What will the world look like in 2033?

Revolutionary change seems imminent, so what will the world look like in a decade?

Photo by Alexander Jawfox on Unsplash

The report’s title has always been a misnomer. If it lived up to its name, it would deal with the intergenerational transfer of income and wealth from the young to the old – an issue that deserves much more attention than it gets. It would talk about the way our treatment of housing favours the elderly, and how the tax, spending and superannuation decisions of the Howard government, in particular, shifted income from the young to the old.
Ross Gittins on Australia’s 2023 Intergenerational Report

Australia’s commentariat was no doubt delighted when the latest Intergenerational Report dropped, providing plenty of fodder for at least one column and maybe enough for two or three separate think pieces.

Before going any further, I probably should provide some background for non-Australian readers. Periodically, Australia’s Federal Government releases a report purporting to sketch out a picture of what Australia will look like in four decades.

But as everybody in any way involved with the report realises, nobody knows what Australia or the rest of the world will look like in 2063. So, the report is really about the present rather than the future.

From what I gather (I’ve never paid much attention), if the Coalition is in government when a report is being prepared, the report will argue that right-wing reforms, such as further deregulation of the labour market and lower taxes for high-income earners, are desperately required if Australia is to have any chance of not turning into Venezuela.

The contemporary Australian Labor Party (ALP) being what it is, I presume that right-wing economic reforms are advocated even when Australia’s centre-left party controls the Treasury benches. But there are probably also a few paragraphs added in about redoubling efforts to decarbonise the economy and paying aged-care workers a bit more.

Sadly, there’s little money to be made gibbering about what the world’s 12th-largest economy might look like in the unimaginably distant future. As far as I can determine, the big coin is in being a ‘futurist’, aka futurologist.

I fear generative AI will eat my content-creation lunch sooner rather than later. So, it’s probably only a matter of time until I’m obliged to self-anoint myself as a futurologist and start attempting to charge multinational corporations vast amounts of money to sketch out a picture of what the local and global economy will look like in 1/5/10 years.

As far as I know, there are no barriers to entry to being a futurologist. It’s not like you have to do an undergraduate or postgraduate degree in futurology. Or have your application to become a futurologist approved by a panel of senior futurologists. Or even find a futurologist willing to take you on as an apprentice. It appears that you just build a website that explains that whatever you’ve been up until now has prepared you to be, say, “a thought leader on the future of work” or “an expert on the interaction of emerging technologies and humanity” or a “social researcher with a deep understanding of Gen Z/Gen Alpha/[whatever attention-grabbing neologism you’ve invented to describe the next batch of workers-consumers]”.

While you don’t need any formal qualifications or even connections to be a richly rewarded futurologist/trend spotter/social researcher/social demographer, you probably do need to be able to direct potential clients to at least one published article.

An article containing wildly inaccurate but confidently argued forecasts.

Reader, this is that article.*

The coming political realignment
Most educated people are aware Russia had a revolution in 1917. If they are particularly well-read, they may even know it had two revolutions that year. (The ‘February Revolution’ was followed by the October Revolution, where the Bolsheviks seized control from the more numerous and moderate Mensheviks).

What few people who aren’t interested in either Russia or revolutions typically don’t realise is that Russia’s 1917 revolution almost happened in 1905. Long story short, there was peasant unrest, worker strikes and military mutinies in 1905 after Russia got its arseski kicked in a small war it was expecting to win quickly and easily (sound familiar?).

Only piecemeal reforms were made and the Tsar survived seemingly unscathed. But it was clear to almost everyone after 1905 that Russia’s (near) absolute monarchy wasn’t long for this world. A little over a decade later, Tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed.

People of good will can argue whether the GFC (see Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party) or Brexit-Trump were equivalent to the 1905 Revolution. Either way, from the Far Left to the Hard Right, there's a widespread consensus that neoliberalism is exhausted and a major political realignment is pending.

All that noted, we seem to be in phoney war holding pattern, where everyone keeps predicting a major political realignment that never quite happens or at least never plays out as dramatically as expected. (Yes, a slim majority of Brits voted to leave the EU and that eventually occurred. But it hasn’t changed much, either in the UK or the wider world. And a growing proportion of those who voted for Brexit now report regretting doing so. Likewise, Trump did get elected, extremely narrowly, but he governed as a traditional Republican. They don’t appear to hold him accountable for this, but Trump delivered little – aside from a briefly booming economy – to his working class and lower-middle class supporters.)

What does post-neoliberalism look like?
Just as politics is downstream from culture, all Anglosphere politics is downstream from American politics. In the same way nations such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand pivoted towards neoliberalism soon after Reagan was elected, I imagine they will shift to ‘post-neoliberalism’ only if and when post-neoliberalism takes off in the US. So, my first prediction is that political developments in the US will be crucial, while political developments in other nations are unlikely to be globally influential.  

That raises the question of what happens if and when the US moves out of its post-1905 Revolution interregnum and its 1917 Revolution commences. Especially on the Left, there’s an assumption that after experiencing the rigours of the free market – and the free market’s inevitable concentration of wealth and power – for the past 40 years, many (formerly aspirational) voters are going to embrace a more social-democratic mindset in the years to come.  

The post-Baby Boom generations are much less enchanted with the world the likes of Reagan and Thatcher created than their parents and grandparents. As a broad rule of thumb, the younger the voter, the more left leaning they are. With the Boomers – who typically embraced the free-market fundamentalism served up by the likes of Reagan, Thatcher and Keating after their youthful flirtation with New Leftism – increasingly heading off to the Big Beatles Concert in the Sky, Generations X, Y and Z should have more luck implementing policies that further their generational interests. (Such as slashing through a thicket of NIMBY development restrictions in order to dramatically increase the housing supply.)    

It appears a majority of voters, especially younger voters, are now far more amenable to ‘Big Government’ and considerably more open to reigning in the power of plutocrats and corporations than was the case back in the Reaganite/Bushite/Clintonite/Blairite/Keatingite/Howardite “go go” 1980s and 1990s.

But I suspect that the pending political realignment will involve more than simply the lurch to the economic left that progressives are imagining.  

A jump to the economic left…
The term “neoliberalism” is thrown around so, um, liberally that it has been drained of most of its meaning. But I’m under the impression it refers to a political movement that champions both economic liberalism and social liberalism and is therefore an awkward fit with both bread-and-butter Leftism and old-school (is there any other kind?) social conservatism.

As is the case with its ideological sibling Libertarianism, the Left is in favour of neoliberalism’s championing of greater social liberalism, while appalled by its championing of greater economic liberalism. The situation is reversed for those on the Right.

That means those on both the Left and the Right can argue, with some credibility, that they are scrappy underdogs fighting the dominant ideology. A dominant ideology that most voters don’t like but that remains stubbornly dominant anyway. (Because of either politician-purchasing plutocrats, or the tertiary-educated Wokesters who control the media, universities and HR departments, depending on which side of the political fence you land on.)   

The retreat from economic liberalism is well underway. ‘Chimerica’ is decoupling and, more broadly,  deglobalisation is so hot right now. Once terrified of doing anything not “business friendly”, Anglosphere politicians have been demanding multinational businesses, especially the shameless tech companies, pay more tax for some time now. It will be difficult for any politician to make a case for further privatisation of government assets, and some national governments may even buy back some previously privatised assets. Markets will likely be subject to greater regulation going forward, and there may also be a wave of trustbusting to introduce more competition.

Directly or indirectly, high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals – who’ve done very well for themselves since circa 1980 – will likely end up paying more tax. They may also find it increasingly difficult to have a business earning revenue in a country such as the US, UK or Australia while paying company and income tax in the Cayman Islands.

Those at the top of org charts will probably see their compensation packages increase more slowly than has been the case for the last four decades. Those in the middle of org charts, or even at the bottom of them, may be able to start demanding substantial real wage increases from their employers for the first time in half a century. But even if taking industrial action comes back into fashion for the first time since the 1970s, I suspect average wage earners will have limited success in demanding more money from their employers in an age of accelerating automation. If I were a betting man, I’d wager governments will tax businesses and high-income earners more heavily and use some of the proceeds to top up the wages of low-income and even middle-income earners.    

That’s the good news for Leftists.

And a step to the cultural right  
The bad news for Leftists is that the turbocharged social liberalism the Left has advocated in recent decades is almost as unpopular as the economic liberalism the Right has long promoted.

I will make no judgement here about the reasonableness of demands made by radical trans activists, but I will observe that those demands are proving unpopular with a growing number of voters. (It appears support for the LGBT community is softening in those nations where radical trans activists are most vocal, something those who are L, G or B are increasingly pinning on those who are T.)

More generally, the Left has gone from the joint-smoking, bohemian party guy to the pursed-lipped, curtain-twitching church lady. Even progressives are now getting fed up with progressive scolds obsessively policing what others say and do (and, during Covidtide, where they go). And everyone who is not a progressive now seems to be very much over the social-media-enabled explosion of humourless virtue signalling, with a growing number of media reports arguing we are now moving past Peak Woke. (I suspect even hardcore Wokesters will become much less interested in rooting out transphobia and gleefully joining cancel culture pile-ons if they start earning enough to buy a home and start a family. But that’s a whole other article.) 

Stay tuned
I had planned to bust out a few more predictions today. But I’ve yet again got carried away and run out of time and space. However, if this Musing receives a good reaction, I may engage in some future futurism and speculate about everything from the likely outcome of the great power rivalry between China and the US to the reasons why the younger generation might begin advocating marriage and monogamy loudly and proudly. 

*From what I can make out (given LinkedIn’s increasingly mercurial algorithm), a substantial number of C-suiters read this humble blog. If you’re one of them and feel a burning need to sling me $50,000 to play Nostradamus for an hour at your company’s next conference, please leave a message in the comments.