DAMBIS MOYO AND HER LAST WORDS ON WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS
FROM HER BLOCK-BUSTER BOOK "HOW THE WEST WAS LOST"
(Which friends, you need to read)
The odds are, however, the United States will be a bona fide socialist welfare state by the latter part of this century. Indeed, if nothing else changes it from its current path, it is almost certain that America will move from a fully fledged capitalist society of entrepreneurs to a socialist nation in just a few decades. The trouble is it won't be just any socialist welfare state (there is, after all, nothing inherently wrong with a socialist state per se if it's well engineered and designed and can finance itself).
While it is true that socialist-leaning states are clearly relatively well developed and engineered in Germany and across Scandinavia, well developed but perhaps badly designed in Greece and Italy, the trouble is that the US is on a path to creating the worst and most venal form of welfare state (poorly developed and designed) - one born of desperation from many years of flawed economic policies and a society that rapaciously feeds on itself.
America is already displaying the hallmarks of this fundamental shift. The pressure on the public purse is rising: the government's tax base is shrinking, but public expenditure is rapidly increasing (with healthcare, pension, unemployment and poverty spending all on the rise). This is set against the backdrop of a heavy debt burden, and with it the promise of sluggish economic growth for many years to come.
Looking at the link between different levels of debt and countries' economic growth over the last two centuries, the economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff find that countries with a gross public debt exceeding about 90 per cent of annual economic output tend to grow significantly more slowly. In particular, in developed economies, above the 90 per cent threshold average annual growth was about two percentage points lower than for countries with public debt of less than 30 per cent of GDP. For the US (as well as the UK and other industrialized countries) this does not bode well.
Already, after the financial crisis debt levels in the US and other countries at the centre of the financial crisis are approaching the 90 per cent mark. In 2009 gross government debt in the US stood at 85 per cent of GDP and according to IMF projections will reach 108 per cent of GDP by 2014. Meanwhile, the UK's 2009 gross government debt stood at 69 per cent of GDP and is forecast to reach 98 per cent of GDP by 2013.
The problems with the misallocation of capital, labour and technology are not helped by the political imperatives (short political terms and decentralized power) that discourage American and indeed most Western policymakers from implementing the transformational policies that will set the industrialized economies back on the right economic path. Ultimately, it is on this point where state-led capitalist societies, like those of China, have the edge.
There are those who say that what the world witnessed in 2008 and the years ensuing was simply the failure of the West's experiment with a social welfare system. That now that the leaders of developed nations realize the folly of running large deficits and accumulating mounds of debt in order to finance social safety nets and big government, we will see the pendulum swing again towards more market-based economies; a re-emphasis on and re-engagement of the private sector and the entrepreneur by more deregulation and lower taxes to unleash the entrepreneurial spirit. This would and could all make sense as an economic strategy, except for one thing. Such a market-based philosophy is predicated on a skilled and highly productive labour force, which, given the labour data and education statistics of the up-and-coming generations, will be in woefully short supply.
If anything, a swing back towards more market-based economics, and away from social welfare, poses a risk of increased income inequality in developed countries. Indeed, it is almost certainly the case that the incomes of the relatively small share of educated innovators and entrepreneurs will be higher than the large base of the unskilled, undereducated population.
Across the West, everyone is culpable. As argued in this book, for example, over the last fifty years in the US, governments, corporations and private individuals have implemented catastrophic decisions that at the time looked cost-less, but in fact were extremely costly and detrimental to the core long-term sustainable operation of the economy.
Over multiple generations, and different US administrations both left and right, public policy has misallocated capital by urging housing access for all despite people's means, establishing a long-term unsustainable pension culture, underwriting R&D for the world at unrequited costs to itself, and bailing out whole industries with a pattern of buying high and selling low!
Western corporations have set up shop in the cost-competitive emerging world (helping vast swathes of the emerging world's labour markets), but the benefit, and in particular returns on capital, accrued only to a handful of shareholders. And of course the decision of millions of families across the West to pursue other, ostensibly better-paying careers at the expense of education is creating a fast-growing surplus of expensive, undereducated, unskilled and globally uncompetitive citizens.
Many questions remain. Will Westerners still be, more or less, living at their current standards of living and looking with envy at the economic successes of the Rest? Who will discover cold fusion? Or the next 'killer app' - that special something or nudge that makes you want to buy a product? Where will the jobs of the future be created? And in what sectors of the economy? Will they be temporary positions or permanent, for-life roles? In the public sector or in the private? Robotics and robot technology are already permeating the workforce. Japan's already includes over a quarter of a million robots. And even at the Cleveland Clinic in the US, for a fraction of human wages, robots travel about 1,800 kilometres (1,100 miles) and make 5,000 trips a day, moving everything from linens, surgical equipment, patient food, supplies and, yes, even trash. If, as Western politicians tend to proclaim today, the future of developed countries is in digital, lowcarbon and pharmaceutical innovation, then richer countries certainly have their work cut out for them.
Of course, there are more political questions not dealt with here, such as who world citizens want to see as the global power? On the economics side, would the West be better off adopting a more insular stance and systematically reducing its economic and financial ties with the rising Rest? Though all parties are guilty of selectively applying the rules of fair trade, the West does garner benefits from trading with the Rest, and for some time yet the richer West will be appealing to the Rest. But the question is: are these economic benefits sizeable enough to warrant the mounting costs for the West of engaging with the Rest?
Contrastingly, the emerging Rest, by engaging with rapidly industrializing countries, will not only make strides in economic development, poverty reduction and technological sophistication but will advance economically in leaps and bounds.
But before this can take effect the West, and America in particular, must implement better policies and stop sowing the seeds of its own destruction. This is not sufficient to stem the economic tide, but it is certainly a necessary step. Changing trade patterns, financial destabilization of the world's most advanced economies, and the transition of economic opportunities to the emerging world are defining our world today, and will continue to shape the world we live in in the most dramatic ways.
This book has been about economics. While economics is one sort of warfare, one country seeking dominance over another, it's never just about the money. Other factors, political, social, even natural, shape and modify our world. Change is unsettling, unpredictable. But sometimes some things are clear; there is, if you like, a feeling in the air.
One suspects that when America's forefathers stepped off the Mayflower and took in the air, they knew, in their hearts, that a great adventure was being embarked upon, that this was the start of something big. In much the same way, although no one can say for sure what the outcome will be, in this, the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, we all know that the world is standing on the lip of a global seismic change, where another country stands on the cusp of greatness. Though we have an inkling of how the land will lie when all is settled, what is also certain is that uncertainty and upheavals lie ahead.
To quote John Adams's world-famous 1987 opera Nixon in China: 'We live in an unsettled time. Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?' The good thing is, what history has taught us, is that while struggles, wars, disasters occur, the world survives and slowly, despite the setbacks, advances. Let us hope that is as true for the next hundred years as it was for the last.
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Moyo knows her economics, for sure, she did not get a PhD from running a "day care center" for pre-schoolers (nothing wrong by the way with such wonderful jobs like that). BUT she does NOT understand Bible Prophecy.
Yes, China is going to be a contender for economic power over the next 10 years plus. The East is going to rise - Russia, China, India, Japan. Then there is to come a mighty "king of the south" (Daniel 11:40-45) - a united Arab federation of nations LED by EGYPT!! You are seeing the start of this right before your very eyes today, with the overthrow of Arab dictators, which must be before the Arab nations can feel free enough to unite together and work as a team. How long will this take? That is in God's hands, as I've said many times, the Eternal can shorten the time or stretch it out. We've seen how long it took Germany to pull East Germany up to West Germany standards after the Berlin Wall came down - 22 years so far.
The Arab nations (a number of them, not all) will form a united confederation eventually - the king of the south.
But it is EUROPE that is YET, to emerge on the world scene as a BLOCK-BUSTER POWER HOUSE - economically, militarily, and religiously. She is yet to RISE from this 2008 crash and be a world trading power. Then a mighty RELIGIOUS power - with the largest religious denomination riding this Europe as a "woman riding a beast" - she will then be the LAST resurrected HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. In the book of Revelation she is called "BABYLON MYSTERY RELIGION" AND SHE IS DRUNK WITH THE BLOOD OF THE SAINTS!! Your history book will tell you in plain language WHO this power was in the last 6 resurrections of the Holy Roman Empire.
Europe right now is DOWN - like iron mixed with clay - she has MUCH to LEARN from this lesson of the economic crash of 2008. Oh she will learn from it make no mistake, but it may take some time, may take at least 10 years, but we'll leave the time table in God's hands.
We will need to yet see Europe RISE UP again, and be the mighty power of the world to fullfil Bible prophecy. Looking just at the way the Eternal is working with Europe to that end over the last 60 years ..... well for us humans we might say it has been slow going, only in the last few years passports done away with for all members of the Europe Unity Nations - a new Euro in money not very old, and some nations like Britain did not sign on to it. Some economically weak nations, the clay, having to be bailed out by the strong iron nations, the strongest being Germany.
We need to be patient friends; we need to keep looking, for Europe to become the "king of the north: as she indeed will, eventually, but it could take some time yet.
Then WHEN we do have the king of the north and the king of the south, we do not know how long it will be before the king of the south "pushes at" the king of the north (Daniel 11:4--45). But it will HAPPEN!!
This will then lead the king of the north into the promised land, into Daniel chapter 12, and into the LAST TRIBULATION, GREATER THAN ANY THAT HAS EVER BEEN ON EARTH. Then we will be into the last 42 months 1260 days of the book of Revelation and the last 1335 days of the last verses of Daniel 12, slightly longer than 42 months (a 30 days month).
SO there is much to yet move into fulfilment. But at least friends YOU CAN SEE IT COMING!! RIGHT BEFORE YOUR EYES IT IS ALL WORKING AS I'VE BEEN TELLING YOU FOR 30 YEARS IN WHAT I'VE BEEN TEACHING ON BIBLE PROPHRCY. WHAT I'VE BEEN TELLING YOU IS TAKING PLACE RIGHT BEFORE YOUR EYES. AND THE PROPHETS OF THE 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AND SOME IN 2000s, AND SOME FOR 2010-2020, HAVE BEEN ***WRONG*** AND WILL BE WRONG FOR THIS DECADE ALSO.
WHEN A PROPHETS SPEAKS AND IT DOES NOT COME TO PASS GOD SAYS DO NOT BE AFRAID OF THEM, I NEVER SENT THEM, THEY WERE FALSE PROPHETS!!
WHEN GOD'S PROPHETS SPEAK AND TELL YOU WHAT THE PROPHECY IN THE BIBLE SAYS, AND YOU SEE IT COME TO PASS, YOU WILL KNOW WHO THE TRUE PROPHETS OF THE LORD ARE.
HE THAT HAS AN EAR TO HEAR WITH SHOULD HEAR!!
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