You may have noticed that those who make a living out of predicting the future are relatively silent if not extremely cautious with what they say going into this new year.
“I can see 2021 will possibly be more difficult in terms of financial, more difficult in terms of opportunities, more difficult in terms of money.” That is as safe a forecast as you can get. This prediction for 2021 will probably be 100 percent accurate. “If there’s one thing we learned from 2020, it’s that sometimes the truly unexpected happens.”
Let’s be honest. The main reason we read these forecasts is so that we can look back and see how wrong the predictions were. The more incorrect, the more fun it is.
So, with that thought in mind, let us travel back and look at some predictions—both short and long term—for the past year. Twenty- twenty was a big year to make predictions for as it is a “zero” year and the beginning of a new decade.
Usually, the tendency is to start any discussion of “predictions” with Nostradamus. Unfortunately, his desire to be a physician was cut short by “the Black Death.” He finally settled on prophecy and astrology, particularly for the rich that asked him for horoscopes and psychic advice.
In a lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1911, Richard Clement Lucas, a surgeon, said that the “useless outer toes” will become used less, so that “man might become a one-toed race.” That sort of goes along with a 1939 issue of British Vogue when designer Gilbert Rhode was asked what people in the future would be wearing, he said that by 2020, we would have disposable socks.
In 1994, the global think tank RAND Corporation said they expected us to have animal employees by the year 2020. “During the 21st century, those houses that don’t have a robot could have a live-in ape to do the cleaning.” That makes sense since in 1966, Time magazine in an essay called “The Futurists,” predicted that “machines [or maybe apes] will be producing so much that everyone in the US will in effect be independently wealthy.”
Those were about as accurate as Popular Mechanics being fairly sure back in 1951 that every family in the early 21st century would have one helicopter in their garage.
However, as disappointing as it will be to some people, the worst predictions for 2020 have to do with climate change and global warming.
“A secret report, suppressed by US defense chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020.” In 2009 we were told that “China to cut emissions 40 percent to 45 percent below 2005 level by 2020; India to cut 20 percent to 25 percent.” In 2020, China’s emissions are about 85 percent higher than 2005 and India’s are about 150 percent greater.
Perhaps the one prediction for 2020 that is 100 percent accurate is this one made in 2012. “By 2020, predicting the future will be commonplace for the average person. We are amassing unprecedented amounts of data, creating unprecedented insight.”
Just read social media. Everyone is an expert on almost everything.
E-mail me at mangun@gmail.com. Visit my web site at www.mangunonmarkets.com. Follow me on Twitter @mangunonmarkets. PSE stock-market information and technical analysis tools provided by the COL Financial Group Inc.