Checking In on the Four Intersecting Cycles
If you think this is a robust, resilient, stable system, please check your Ibogaine / Hopium / Delusionol intake.
Correspondent James D. recently asked for an update on the four intersecting cycles I’ve been writing about for the past 10 years. Here’s the chart I prepared back in 2008 of four long-term cycles:
1. Generational (political/social)
2. Price inflation/wage stagnation (economic)
3. Credit/debt expansion/contraction (financial)
4. Relative affordability of energy (resources)
Here are four of the many dozens of essays I’ve written on these topics over the past decade:
Beyond the False Dawn: Global Crisis 2020-2022 (February 18, 2011)
We’re in a Boiling-Point Crisis of Exploitive Elites (June 19, 2017)
The key point that’s not communicated in the chart is there are dynamics that interact with each of these cycles. For example, demographics are influencing each of these trends in self-reinforcing ways.
Governments are borrowing more to fund the promises made to seniors decades ago when there were relatively few retirees compared to the working populace. Now that the ratio of those collecting government benefits to workers is 1-to-2 (one retiree for every worker), the system is buckling.
The “solution” is to borrow increasing sums from future taxpayers to fund pay-as-you-go healthcare and pension programs for retirees.
Technology is another dynamic that is actively influencing all these cycles in self-reinforcing ways. As technology is substituted for human labor, wages stagnate and the size of the populace paying taxes dwindles accordingly. The “solution” is once again to borrow more to substitute for declining purchasing power.
The dynamics driving wealth/income inequality and the rise of politically/financially dominant elites are also powering these cycles. As Peter Turchin has explained–a topic covered in my essay When Did Our Elites Become Self-Serving Parasites? (October 4, 2016)– social disunity / discord rises when the number of people promised a spot in the elite far exceeds the actual number of slots available.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
