The pace of change and transformation that we saw in 2012 is accelerating in 2013. As a result the future is coming at us much faster than anyone is fully prepared for. The world is changing faster than we can comprehend. Technological breakthroughs are sourcing much of this change.
Some aspects of the 23rd century world envisioned in the Star Trek series will soon be everyday features of our reality. For example, the 3D printers that are coming on line share some features with the Star Trek replicators.
The printers are able to make material items and also biologically relevant materials like replacement organs and even meat using stem cells as the raw material.
We’re just as the start of a revolution in home manufacturing. In the near future, rather than going out to stores, you’ll just order a file on line and use your personal 3D printer to make what you want. 2013 will be the year that this technology comes into its own.
We’re also very close to another famous Star Trek device, the tricorder. The tricorder was a hand help diagnostic device that could give immediate data on any health condition in a person.
Using adapted smart cell phone technology, the individual patient in partnership with their doctor will soon be able to see immediate real time read outs of health conditions specific to the individual person’s changing unique physiology.
Computers which store and retrieve data through controlled quantum states are also very close to replacing the silicon chip. This won’t happen in 2013 but the proof of concept will be firmly in place by the end of the year.
It won’t take more than a couple of years for fully functional quantum computers to come into our lives with much greater speed and computer power.
Continued advanced in nanotechnology will be another technological trend for 2013. This technology works in concert with the 3D printers to produce revolutionary changes in the materials out of which our world is constructed.
The dramatic technological leaps that are underway will have a long term beneficial effect on our civilization and open the door to meeting some of the ecological challenges we face going forward. However, there is also a short term disruptive effect. Many features of our everyday economic reality become either less relevant or completely obsolete.
If we have the ability to make our own materials at home with 3D printers, for example, there is less need for stores, warehouses, and transport of goods. Moreover, robots are rapidly replacing human beings in many industries.
One-third of all manufacturing jobs have disappeared in the United States since the year 2000. Although some of this is due to outsourcing to countries that pay lower wages, advances in robotics have been a major contributor.
In the long run, we’re going to have to redefine the meaning of work and the expectations we have of people with respect to how many hours per week they spend providing the goods and services we depend on.
We’re quickly moving into uncharted waters with respect to what counts as realistic economic expectations. The current 7.7 unemployment rate in the United States may come to be seen as an index of relative economic health.
This means it doesn’t help to look to historical precedents to get an idea of what is reasonable to expect or even to have as an economic goal. The conservative and Republican regressive outlook of trying to impede progress or restore the United States to a previous state of affairs is both foolish and counterproductive.
This is one reason why the sequester is sabotaging to the positive economic momentum that has been slowly building over the last several months or so. We need to invest in scientific research and education. This is our hope for continuing to be a leader in the world.
The federal government has a big role in this since over half of the basic scientific research in the United States is funded by the government. Moreover, the government can play a big role in leveling the playing field with respect to ensuring education opportunity for people of different economic means.
Fortunately we have a progressive president in Obama and a Democratic majority in the Senate. What is unclear going forward is the extent to which the Republicans will be successful in using their majority in the House to obstruct or derail Obama’s second term legislative agenda.
In his State of the Union Address, President Obama laid out an ambitious progressive agenda for 2013 that included immigration reform, gun control, universal pre-school, and climate change legislation.
At least with regard to immigration reform and some modest gun control policies, my reading is that these two issues are going to make it through the Congress in 2013. On social issues, the Republicans are much less likely to act as a unified caucus and vote as a block. With just a few Republican votes in the House, important bills can get through.
With respect to economic issues, the prospects are less certain. Although the Republicans had to give ground on the deal to avert the fiscal cliff and the automatic end to all of the Bush era tax cuts, they came back with renewed determination on the across the board budget cuts in the so-called sequester and have prevented any action to keep that from going into effect.
Their recent budget plan is almost the same package that Romney and Ryan ran on in 2012. It would seem that their economic game plan is relatively unchanged from what was supposedly voted down in the last election. One element of this plan is a repeal of Obamacare. They seem unwilling to compromise on any deal that involves an increase in revenues.
They have trumpeted the sequester as a win for their plan of cutting government even while they openly admit that it’s not the best thing for the economy and will cost jobs.
They seem to have a tunnel vision focus on reducing the deficit as the most pressing economic concern. In contrast to what most people believe, however, the deficit has gone down significantly in every year of Obama’s administration except the first when the stimulus increased it.
If the economy continues to grow, we’re on track to have the deficit completely under control by the end of Obama’s second term without the need for any additional draconic budget cuts.
This is a formula for economic stalemate between the two parties for 2013. My reading is that tax reform and any meaningful changes to entitlements are not happening this year. The economic can will be kicked down the road.
The Republicans are hoping to take over the Senate in 2014. The Democrats want to win back a House majority in 2014 and buck the trend where the second term of a president’s party loses seats in the House in the off year elections.
My reading is that the Democrats will come out ahead in this scenario and pick up seats in the House in 2014 while retaining a majority in the Senate.
Congressional Republican economic positions are becoming increasing out of phase with public opinion. The doom and gloom perspective of the Great Recession that helped them win so big in 2010 is giving way to a growing sense of relative economic prosperity.
The public wants government services and whatever concern they have over the deficit and the national debt is going to diminish as the economy recovery gains speed later this year and in 2014.
Although the sequester is currently largely perceived as irrelevant to people’s everyday concerns, it’s going to take a bite out of a lot of things that people care about in the coming months. It’s a foreshadowing of what Republican economics is really about, and it will result in a further erosion of support for the Republican brand.
The 2016 Presidential race is starting to come into clarity. For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton wins the nomination easily if she runs. There is a second hand report that she has already decided to run. We won’t know for sure until late in 2014 or early 2015. Her health and age may be a factor since she’ll be 69 by Election Day in 2016.
My reading is that she wants to be the first woman president and that she will run and eventually win in 2016 to become our new president.
Marco Rubio has been touted as new face of the Republican Party. He would appear to be exactly what the Republicans need. He’s young, attractive and has a compelling personal story of success from modest origins.
Moreover, he’s Hispanic and has the potential to appeal to middle class voters as someone more like them in history and lifestyle. He speaks the rhetoric of demographic inclusion the Republicans so desperately lack.
His response to the State of the Union Address was supposed to be his big introduction to the American electorate. It would appear though that an untimely drink of water has doomed his chances to be president.
At the present moment, he’s just not ready for prime time. The water incident had the effect of cracking his well polished image and there isn’t much substance behind the façade. He is like a Hollywood frontier movie set where when you look behind the store fronts you see that they is nothing behind the surface.
Moreover, Marco is an intellectual equal with Sarah Palin. In spite of his somewhat populist rhetoric, he’s an extremely conservative candidate aligned with the Tea Party.
Rubio could still end up being the nominee if the Republicans ended up with the same dubious cast of characters they had in 2012 to run against him. My reading though is that Rubio is not going to be the nominee because there is someone else out there who is much smarter and will crush him in the debates.
I don’t mean Chris Christie. He’s already been ostracized by the conservative wing of the party. Although he’s a candidate that could possibly win in the general election, he’ll not be perceived as conservative enough to make it through the primaries.
My reading is that Ted Cruz will be the nominee. The party isn’t going to go for someone who could appeal to independent voters. The crisis the Republican Party is in is going to result in a default to ideological conservative consistency.
The party is not going to embrace the future and go for a broadening of their appeal to emerging demographics. They are going to regress and pick someone that is an unmistakable representative of their core conservative beliefs.
Although Cruz was born in Canada, his mother was a US citizen at the time so he’s still eligible to be president.
It will be interesting to see how the so-called Birther Movement reacts to Ted Cruz as a presidential candidate. The same reasoning that sees Cruz as eligible to be president makes it a moot point where Obama was born as long as his mother was a US citizen at the time which was the case.
Interdimensional Times 