The long awaited real estate crash has begun... in some cities

Trying to get good information on different parts of the economy is difficult these days... in our hyper-connected, piles of data everywhere, world.  For real estate data, the Reventure Consulting YouTube channel has become one of my go to sources.  This video is why.  He shows the heat map of U.S. real estate, and tells us which areas have begun to crash back down to more realistic prices.  He also shows a good grasp on the picture across the U.S.. 

Disclaimer

It's hard to remember back this far now, but in May of 2020, I was standing in line at my local grocery store (San Fernando Valley, just north of L.A.), and both the guy in front of me in line, and the cashier himself, were both talking about buying small rental properties, 4-6 unit apartment buildings, in late 2020, when the prices dropped.  Very typical of financially savvy SoCal people, they saw one or more small rental apartments as a key part of their retirement income, years down the road.  

In a "normal" recession, that's what should have happened, stocks crash, then real estate follows a few months later, and that's when smart investors go shopping.  These two years, 2020 and 2021, as we all know now, have been anything but "normal" recession times.  But it looks like Southern California real estate is finally beginning to top out, and will finally begin to drop in prices in the next 3-6 months, depending on the specific city or area.  All of you chomping at the bit to buy that small apartment building, or get a deal on a new home, will hopefully get your chance by mid to late 2022.  But the prices have risen since this whole crazy time started. 

When you look at the U.S. map of real estate inventory in this video, there are three main colors for the various real estate markets.  Here's the quick key:

Yellow- Inventory, the number of houses for sale in that market, are going up, in many of these areas the prices are already starting to drop.  Think of yellow as leading the pack into the real estate crash/downturn.

Gray- Inventory is about the same.  There may be a small percentage less on the market, or a small percentage more, but close to the same level.  These are the areas where the market appears to be topping out, and may head down in coming months. These areas are expected to follow the yellow areas into the eventual downturn 

Red- Inventory of houses on the market is going up.  These markets are hot!  The real estate bubble is still building, these are real strong seller's markets, and most likely prices are going up in these areas for a while longer.  These are the tail end of the market, and will very likely follow the yellow and gray areas into the downturn several months from now.  

That will give you a quick read on the real estate inventory map he shows throughout this video.  Now for a bit more detail.  

For you Californians reading this post, he talks about the Central Valley (Stockton, Modesto, etc) at 7:30.  He talks about San Diego and Los Angeles later, starting at 42:25.  While inventory is still declining in San Diego, and L.A., listing prices are either flat-lining or dropping in these areas.  So SoCal, fromm these metrics, seems to definitely be softening, with prices steady, or beginning to drop in some areas. 

 

Yellow- Crashing areas- My high school hometown of Boise, Idaho has been much talked about because of its soaring home prices in recent months.  That's over, and inventory is way up, and prices are declining.  Several mountain regions, like Southern Idaho, Eastern Oregon, parts of Nevada, and California's Central Valley, are leading the nation into the real estate crash.  Along with Boise, Provo and Ogden, Utah, Reno and Pahrump, Nevada, and Stockton and Modesto, California, are first in the nation into lower prices and become buyer's markets.  These mountain region markets are many of the places people leaving the San Francisco Bay Area went to, after Covid hit.  

There are also several Midwestern cities where this is happening as well, with rising inventory and flat or falling prices.  The Midwest cities, generally, didn't rise near as much in price, percentage-wise, and probably won't drop as much either.  Watch the video for more details.

Gray- Most of these areas, spread across the U.S., have inventory levels that either dropped about 10% or less, have stayed about level, or risen about 10%, or less.  These markets tend to have pretty flat prices, and are expected to head downward in coming months, following the yellow areas.

Red- Hot seller's markets- He starts talking about these markets at about 9:00, in the video.  Southern Florida, and the Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina coasts lead the way in hot markets right now.  Parts of New England, particularly Connecticut and Rhode Island,  as well as a few cities in the eastern Rockies, like Denver, are also some of today's hot markets.  Tampa and Fort Myers, Florida are two of the hottest, and Raleigh, North Carolina is another one.  Inventory is still declining in these markets, and prices are still rising in many of them, they're still strong seller's markets.  

For those of you old enough, or smart enough, to say "No" to the FOMO buying spree, and wait for prices to crash (like California prices always do in recessions), your time find bargains seems to be coming in a few months.  

So the insane national real estate market, sparked by The Fed's trillions in "helicopter money," is finally hitting crash mode in a few regions, and slowing down in many others.  It's been a weird ride for 18-19 months, and great for agents and brokers, but not for investors looking for bargains.  Things are finally beginning to slow down in real estate, which should mean one or two good years for investors to buy are coming.   

What creates inflation? The simple freakin' answer

Here's a super simple, 2 minute video, explaining fiat money.  What we call the U.S. dollar (a Federal Reserve Note) is a fiat currency, meaning there is not gold or silver somewhere to back up every dollar.  There's debt, U.S. Treasury bills and bonds, instead.  It's a fancy IOU, basically. 

 Disclaimer

This morning, scanning through articles on what's happening in economics and business, I saw this CNN article "explaining" inflation.  And it pissed me off, I just thought, "This is bullshit!"  There are so many articles like this one, which are written specifically to confuse average people.  The article is not complete BS, there are bits and pieces of truth in it.  But it is confusing, and doesn't actually help you understand inflation.  Everyone is seeing rising prices (inflation) in something we buy, probably many things.  So here's the simple question, and the simple answer.  

Q: Where does inflation come from?

A: The agency who creates the fiat money simply creates far too much money.  

That's it.  That's where inflation comes from.  It really is as simple as that.  Where did I learn this?  From Alan Greenspan's 2007 book, The Age of Turbulence.*  Greenspan was a longtime chairman of the Federal Reserve.  I believe Greenspan referred to it as "government spending," the money creation that leads to inflation.  Before the Great Recession  of 2007-09, the government would spend money it didn't have, then The Fed would create more money, year by year.  Afterwards, The Fed just started creating more and more money, at increasingly high levels, and the government keeps spending, at increasingly high levels.  By "agency," I mean the organization that actually creates the money in a country.  In most major countries today, that's the "central bank."  In some countries, it may be the treasury department, or ministry of finance, or have similar name. 

The "velocity" of money, and other factors play a role in how soon, and how much inflation happens, but inflation comes from a government, or a central bank, creating far too much money.  When they create a huge amount of new money, either minting bills and coins, or creating digital money, usually both, then inflation will come afterwards.  Usually it takes about 12 to 18 months after a huge, new batch of money, for prices to start rising noticeably for consumers.  

This chart is the M2 money supply chart, one way they measure how many U.S. dollars exist.  See that big spike on the right?  That's it, that's the 2020-2021 huge increase in money, created by The Fed.  That's where our inflation is coming from.  

On March 2, 2020 (beginning of Coivd pandemic) there was $15.5219 Trillion in M2 money supply.  On Feb. 1, 2021, there was $19.4119 Trillion.  The Fed created $3,890,000,000,000 that shows up in this measurement, in 11 months. increasing the money supply by 25%.  More money, though not as much, has been created every month since.  

Usually they try to hit 3% per year inflation.  In the 2010's, they couldn't create that much, the economy is really out of whack.  That money was used, and is still being created and used, to bail out the U.S. banking system, to keep it from collapsing, and to bail out major corporations, and keep them from going bankrupt during the Covid-19 shutdowns last year.  

Us Americans got a small chunk of that money.  Our stimulus checks and unemployment money are part of this, but a small part.  No one is sure just how much money was actually created (M2 is one measurement, there are other ways, because money and investments exist in so many forms today.   I've heard estimates that up to $6 Trillion was created in 2020-2021.  In short, that means we are going to have high inflation for a long time to come.  This is why stock prices and real estate prices went up during a depression (another fact, we were in an official depression, not a recession in 2020, subject for another day).

This money creation, in many different major countries, comes from the central banks, primarily.  The U.S. central bank is called the Federal Reserve (The Fed), in the European Union, it's the European Central Bank (aka ECB), in Japan, it's the Bank of Japan (BOJ).  

Since the Great Recession in 2007-2009, all of these banks have been working together to create too much money, trying to get the world economy growing again at their preferred pace, which is about 3% inflation per year.  They couldn't make that happen, except in China.  China's massive growth (due to demographics), has been powering the world economy for 12-13 years.  But now China is slowing down, and screwing up their economy even worse with political pressure.  That's a whole different mess, which will affect us over the next year or two. 

Nomi Prins is a former Wall Street quant (math geek) who worked at Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns, she's an incredibly intelligent woman, and wrote a book in 2018 called Collusion,* explaining how all the central banks were working together.  In this Talk at Google, she explains what she found in her research.  

Obviously, the whole idea of inflation, our rising prices on things we buy, can get really complicated, when you get into all the details.  But the reason inflation happens is simple, the central banks (or nations) create too much money.  That's it. Now you know.

* Not paid links.

 

Gary Vaynerchuk is all in on NTF's Here's his thoughts on them

Decrypt's Dan Roberts interviews internet marketing expert and entrepreneur, Gary Vaynerchuk, for Yahoo Finance, on the subject of Non Fungible Tokens (NFT's).  If NFT's interest you, watch this 20 minute video with Gary V.  

Gary Vaynerchuk is known for a lot of things.  Being an artist is not one of them.  He's super creative, in business and marketing, no doubt about it, but not known for creating art.  But the original doodles for his new line of NFT's, VeeFriends, just sold for a total of $1.2 million at Christie's.  For real.  Here's the article.  It's a weird, but interesting, world we're living in today.  NOW do you want to find out more about NFT's? I do.

Guess what? Inflation went up again... It's 6.2% now

Inflation went up from 5.4% (annualized) to 6.2%.  Stuff will keep getting more expensive, in general, for all of us.  Here's the link for this chart.

Disclaimer

 Here's the bar graph from the BLS for inflation this year.  The official inflation rate, which every considers a joke, and far lower that "real world" rising prices, went up from 5.4% last month to 6.2% this month.  

For years, The Fed was fighting to get inflation up to 2%, and couldn't.  Their whole plan needs about 3% annual inflation to work at its best.  Because of the pandemic, and the underlying economic crisis, The Fed created somewhere around $4 1/2 to $6 trillion in new money, increasing the money supply by about 35% in about 18 months.  Guess what, as the history of inflation and hyperinflation tells us, a dramatically increased money supply creates inflation, beginning 12-18 months after the increase of the money supply, usually.  Inflation showed up right on time, peaking out of its hole in March. 

The Fed is still adding $105 billion to the economy this month, tapered down from $120 per month, for the past several months.  The plan is to taper this amount down by $15 billion a month, so they're not adding anything, by about June 2022.  They'll probably start adding money again at some point, when stocks crash again, and real estate starts downward.  But we'll see.  

The Fed has been saying "Inflation is transitory" since February or March, I believe.  Yeah... inflation is about as transitory as Mount Rushmore.  It's not going anywhere... but up, right now.  We're going to have inflation, and probably MUCH higher inflation, through 2022, and very likely into 2023-24.  It's not going anywhere.  The monthly rate of inflation will vary up and down in time, but prices will keep rising for many months to come, overall.

Here's the M2 money supply chart.  See that big surge up on the right?  That huge increase in the money supply is where our inflation is coming from.  

Here's the link to find this chart.  St. Louis Fed/FRED database.

The NEXT stock market crash

I've thought that the 2020 stock crash wasn't the "real crash," but a huge correction.  I expected another, bigger stock crash (also tipping the real estate market down) coming in 2021, maybe 2022.  The guy here at Heresy Financial channel feels the same way, but explains the nuts and bolts economic reasons much better than I can.  Here's WHY the next stock market crash will happen, sometime in 2022.  

Disclaimer

The original post I wrote here was actually deleted, in real time, as I was trying to publish it.  Seriously, censorship and free speech suppression against people talking about financial matters is that bad now.  I was able to post just the video clip and caption right after.  

Rather than rewrite the whole blog post I just spent and hour writing (that got mostly deleted), just go to 30:00 in this video and start listening.  This is Dave's Heresy Financial video from October 3, 2019.  Over two years ago...

"Tech stocks in the fucking toilet"

-Chamath Palihapitiya, in the clip below (late October 2021) 

 Chamath Palihapitya interview video

Investor Ray Dalio's warning on where we are economically and socially 

Warren Buffet has been selling more than buying stocks, and is sitting on $149.5 billion in "cash" right now.  Waiting.  (Remember, he and partner Charlie Munger were alive during The Great Depression of the 1930's)

"... the worst bear market in my lifetime."  - Investor Jim Rogers, best known for The Quantum Fund in the 1970's, he's 79 now 

"The biggest crash in world history is coming in October" - Rich Dad, Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki   

Michael Burry, of The Big Short fame, was actually forced to stop communicating his stock market views on Twitter, by the FCC, as far as we can tell.  

Why flying cars exist... but won't ever go mainstream like in Sci-Fi movies

This video, by Donut Media, is a really solid, 9 minute look at the history of flying cars.  Yes, they do exist, but the chance of you having one is close to zero, unless you're a pilot with half a million bucks just lying around.  Here's a look at a great sci-fi idea, and why it won't ever go mainstream.

George Jetson had a flying car that automatically folded into a briefcase.  I saw them talked about in my dad's Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines in the 1970's.  We all thought we'd have one by the year 2000.  Luke Skywalker had his land speeder.  It didn't fly, but it hovered and hauled ass, which was close enough.  They were in Blade Runner.   Doc's Delorean time machine became one in Back to the Future.  And my personal favorite, Corben Dallas had a flying taxi in The Fifth Element.  Flying cars, they've been in all kinds of sci-fi novels, movies, and a few TV shows for decades.  So where the hell are our flying cars?  

Corben Dallas' flying taxi, and a flying police car, in The Fifth Element (1997).  Just for the record, taxi driving did actually get that crazy, at least when I was doing it.  "Leloo multi-pass."

If you watch the video embedded above, you'll find out that the idea for flying cars goes back to when both airplanes, and cars themselves, were still new, in 1917.  Those first attempts more like personal commuter airplanes. Eventually though, there have actually been a few vehicles that could drive legally on the road, and fly, as well.  Mostly they were prototypes.  But to answer that question above, here are our flying cars.  If you have a pilot's license, and $400,000 or more to spend, you can get one of  the 2 or 3 flying cars that are available, and legal in some places.  The Terafugia Transition seems to be the top contender, over all, in real life.  If you didn't quite put away $400K from your Gamestop stock trading wins, and you need to save up a bit more, here are 15 flying cars, or personal flying vehicles, that are either in the prototype stage or in the works (includes the ones in the previous video).  As cool as these look, and may be to fly, none of them look or fly like George Jetson's car, or the other flying movie cars we've all seen. 

Here's the German version of Popular Mechanics magazine, I believe, showing one of those "future flying car" ideas on the cover, way back in 1957.  Notice how close this is to the quad copter drone type vehicle we're all familiar with today.

But that brings us back to the question, if people have been thinking about, and actually designing, flying car concepts for over 100 years now, why aren't they in operation all over?  And why isn't there some kind of small, vertical takeoff car that's easy to fly?  With all the things that have been invented in 100 years, shouldn't somebody have come up with a legit flying car by now?  How about this one?

This is my personal favorite of all the flying car ideas, the Moller Skycar.  This test hover was in the 1990's, I believe.  One of these even featured in a Clive Cussler novel, helping Dirk and Giordino escape some bad guys, in South America, as I recall.  But, like most flying car ideas, there was a working prototype, but no models ever came to market.  

Back in October of 2019, when many of the ideas in this blog were bouncing around my head, but hadn't been organized, I got this idea to go back and watch the trailers of the top 30 or 40 dystopian future movies, and TV shows, from the 1960's to the 1990's, and see how their imagined future compared with the real world in 2019.  Much to my surprise, the original Blade Runner movie, a sci-fi classic, was set in Los Angeles in November of 2019, right when I started writing out these ideas.  Not only a weird coincidence, but I realized that people my age  (55/Gen X) are living in the future of our high school selves, when Blade Runner (and Mad Max II) came out.  

The big lesson of watching all those futuristic movies was that while sci-fi writers come up with great stories and screenplays, and some really cool ideas for new technologies, they tend to suck at actually predicting the future.  Crazy as it sounds, The Jetsons, created in 1962-63, has more technologies that actually came to be in the 21st century, than nearly all of the sci-fi movies and TV shows.  I wound up writing a 20 chapter online book/blog about my thoughts, which included  The Big Transition idea behind this blog (I recently added the "freakin'" part).  You can see that here.  There's a chapter about flying cars.

The first reason we don't have flying cars is the difference between writing and inventing.  A science fiction writer, a comic book or graphic novel artist/writer, a movie screenplay writer, can imagine anything.  The laws of science and physics don't apply.  There should be a logic in the book or movie, so the fictional world seems believable to the reader or viewer.  But you can break the actual laws of physics in some ways.  Engineers and inventors in the real world can't.  So the simple physical constraints of the real world keep us from having a flying car like Corben Dallas' taxi in The Fifth Element, for example.  Although, Nikola Tesla talked about creating cars that actually hovered a foot above the ground, in the early 1900's, something like Luke Skywalker's land speeder.  No one seems to know what forces he had in mind to do that, but he seemed to think that hovering cars (not hovercraft) were possible, it's in one of the books of his inventions  He never created one, just talked about the possibility.  But the Laws of Physics are a big reason we don't have George Jetson flying cars. 

Another reason is that hybrid vehicles, like part car, part airplane, usually kind of suck at both things.  They may work, but are not as good of a car, or of an airplane, as real cars and real airplanes.  To make a vehicle do two completely different things, like this, or this, for example, usually lowers the abilities of the vehicle in both areas.  But there are times when hybrid vehicles work for some uses, like this one did, back in World War II.

For the $400,000 it takes to buy the least expensive real flying car, you could buy a Cessna 172 airplane ($80K-$150K), a brand new Ford F-150 pick-up ($45K), and a used Lamborghini Gallardo ($110-150K).  With what's left, you could take you pick of a good runabout boat (with a trailer), or a couple of jet skis (with trailer).  So you can easily buy a great truck, a ridiculous sports car, a solid, dependable, used airplane, and a boat or jet skis, for what a real world flying car would cost you.  Still want that flying car?  

The Moller Air Car, which, let's face it, would be cool as fuck to fly around in, never came to market.  The main reason is because designer/inventors are good at inventing, and often not good at other types of thinking.  I'd call it more of a blind spot, than poor thinking.  We all do this.  My dad was a gifted draftsman and engineer, a true mechanical genius, so I witnessed this firsthand, growing up.  Designers, inventors, and engineers think about really cool physical machines.  That's good, that's what they get paid to do, think up, design, engineer, and plan all kinds of machines and mechanical systems, including vehicles.  A good engineer will go to great lengths to design smart, efficient, durable vehicles.  For example, my dad worked at Plymouth Locomotive Works in the late 1970's.  The company went out of business in 1983, but many of their custom locomotives are still in service, 35-40 or more years later, like this one.  That's good designing, engineering, and manufacturing.  

But to design, build, and make something like that Moller Air Car, and make it into a widely used vehicle, takes a whole lot of things besides a functional, working, safe, flying car.  And inventors, engineers, and designers just don't think of all those things.  I think this is why sci-fi writers write amazing novels, comics, and make great movies, but create future worlds that will never happen in real life.  They get hung up on the technology,  but don't find social dynamics near as interesting.  To predict a future society, you have to look at all the weird things that make up a society, mostly weird people.  And most people spend most of their lives doing things that don't make much sense.  Put all those things together, and you get a real (generally pretty dysfunctional) society.  Meanwhile, designers, inventors, engineers, and techie writers and directors think mostly about machines, things that do make sense.  To make flying cars a widespread thing, you have to not just create the car, you have to change society to create a place for that flying car.

 First, someone has to fund the whole design and prototype process, which reportedly cost the Moller Air Car $110 million, or something close to that.  So you need to sell the idea to people with a lot of money, to even get started.  Engineers and inventors, for the most part, are not salespeople.  Once you invent a functioning flying car, then it needs to prove its air worthiness.  More time, more money, and... DUH, DUH, DUH... government regulators.  They don't like new ideas.  

 

Then, after all that work, you need to sell the idea that people actually need these things.  OK, for the Moller Air Car, you could find a lot of people to back something that cool.  But you will also have some kind of activist group trying to keep it from happening.  Every good idea has lots of detractors, especially early on.  Haters gonna hate, no matter how cool your idea is.  

Then you need to fund, and build infrastructure, in society, somewhere, for that new vehicle.   How do you fuel them?  Where do they take off and land?  Guess what, if your loud flying car takes off from your driveway... in your gated golf community filled with $2 million houses, some neighbors WILL NOT be happy.  So you need some kind of airport.  Then you need the FAA to first buy the idea, and then figure out needed regulations, and then add those aircraft to the tens of thousands of aircraft already flying, to keep the skies safe.  Then you need insurance, for when things go wrong.  And things always go wrong, at some point, even on well designed and built ideas.  Ask NASA or Elon Musk.  

Then, if it's really a great idea, politicians somewhere need to have their palms greased, to pass needed laws or ordinances.  Then, after spending 35 years and $600 million (or whatever) getting to that point, you need to make enough money to pay alimony to your three ex-wives that left you because you loved your flying car more than them.  What's that old saying, "If it floats, fucks, or flies... rent it, don't buy it."  

Then you actually have to build a business to sell the flying cars.  That takes more capital, engineers, salespeople, tech people, and all the rest.  Then you have to sell enough of the things to get past the break even point, and actually pay a good return to your investors.  Then you have to worry about competition making something similar, but without all the start-up costs you had to front.  

It's not so much that a VTOL (vertical take off and landing) flying car isn't possible to build.  The Moller Air Car, was there, 20 or more years ago.  But you have to change a big chunk of how society operates to get the functioning flying car to a place where people can actually fly them as a recreational or commuter vehicle.   Engineers, inventors, and techies love the tech, but generally not all the weird people you have to deal with to bring an idea this big into mainstream operation.  

So why I'd love to fly around in a Moller Skycar, and buzz past the gridlocked 405 freeway below, there's little chance that will ever happen.  So that's my take on how something, like flying cars, can seem like such a cool idea for 100 years, but never actually happen in a mainstream way. 

 

Zillow stops flipping houses- stock down over 20% TODAY*

A few days ago, Zillow paused its home flipping business, Zillow Offers.  Today it announced that it's shutting down the business altogether after some serious losses in the last quarter.  Their stock went BASE jumping after the news.  

Zillow may have more data on the nationwide housing market than anyone, but that wasn't enough to launch a large, successful iBuyer real estate business in the crazy, pandemic induced market.  

Reventure Consulting covers this late breaking news well in this video.  Other iBuyer real estate stocks are down a lot as well, and so are some traditional RE agency stocks.  Is this the turning of the tide in the Covid-induced real estate market?  Time will tell.  

Disclaimer

*The 20% one day drop in the Zillow stock price includes the after hours trading, from $95.16 this morning to $75.75 at 8pm (Pacific Time).

The $83,000 Big Mac- The difference between inflation, high inflation, and hyper-inflation

To make a simple comparison about price inflation, I wanted to use an item everybody is familiar with, so I picked a McDonald's Big Mac.  Whether you like them or not, you know what a Big Mac is.  Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.  They are $4.99 for just the sandwich at my local McDonald's.  If you're old, like me, you remember the 1970's jingle above. 

Disclaimer

Prices are going up, on all kinds of different things.  Everybody's starting to complain about the price of this or of that.  That's called inflation, and in reality it's a "stealth tax" the powerful people in this world use to fuck us all over and nab some of our money.  In a "normal," reasonably healthy economy, the financial people try to keep the inflation rate at about 3%.  So if something costs a $1.00 now, it will cost $1.03 next year.  That 3% actually steals a lot of buying power away from people over time, but nobody whines much about 3% per year, we let it slide.   

But we are not in a healthy economy, and haven't been since at least 2007, and even then, it's arguable.  The Fed, the people in charge of screwing us all financially in the U.S., could not get hardly any inflation to happen for the last couple of years, and then, this spring, it shot up.  Now the official CPI inflation rate is about 5.4%.  That cuts out food and energy, which, of course, are things we buy a lot of, and that rise in prices even more.  The official CPI inflation rate is pretty much always lower than what real people are actually paying for everyday items. 

I'll get into why inflation shot up, and is staying up, in a future post.  But prices are spiking in some things, rising slowly in others, and about the same in a few things.  Some people are talking about "high inflation," and others are mentioning "hyper-inflation," in the business media. So here are some numbers to compare those different levels of inflation. In the 1970's, inflation peaked at about 6.55, dropped t, and then rose to 13%, dropped, then went back up to almost 15% in 1980, to give you and idea of the highest U.S. inflation rates in modern times. 

Like I said in the caption above, a McDonald's Big Mac is now $4.99 at my favorite McDonald's.  Here's what that Big Mac would cost with different rates of inflation over the next two years.  

Above average inflation- Using a $4.99 Big Mac as an example:

5% annual inflation- October 2021- $4.99,  Oct. 2022-$5.24, Oct 2023- $5.49

High inflation (near the highest rate hit in the 1970's)-

10% annual inflation- Oct. 2021- $4.99, Oct. 2022- $5.49,  Oct. 2023- $6.04

Really high inflation-

25% annual inflation- Oct. 2021- $4.99,  Oct. 2022- $6.24,  Oct. 2023- $7.80

Baseline Hyper-inflation (there is no official definition, but 50% per month is considered the lowest level of hyper-inflation, generally)

50% per MONTH- Oct. 2021- $4.99, Oct. 2022- $645.30,  Oct. 2023- $83,574.03 

Yes, with hyper-inflation, a $4.99 Big Mac would cost $83,574 in two years.

(I did the hyper-inflation numbers by hand, and rounded to two decimal points each step, so your figures on a calculator may vary a bit) 

Yes, with the lowest level of hyper-inflation, prices going up 50% every month, a $4.99 McDonald's Big Mac would cost $83,574 in two years.  Now you understand why some people are so freaked out about hyper-inflation.  

So what will our actual inflation rate be in 2022 and 2023, and beyond?  Looking at everything I see happening now, probably between 10% and 25% at times.  We should have a big stock market and real estate market crash coming soon, and if those happen, inflation will slow down, for a while.  But my best guess now is that real world inflation, what we will actually be paying on everyday items, will bounce between 5% and 25% in the next 2-3 years.  

Just assume virtually everything you buy will rise in prices dramatically in the next 2-3 years.  If that's the case, how to you live your daily life?  Think bout how you get paid, in particular.  More ideas on all this in future posts.  

I'm not trying to diss McDonald's, I like a Big Mac now and then, and decided to use it as a basic example of how prices rise at different inflation rates.  I could have used any well known item.  So there's a comparison of rates we are likely to see in the next couple of years, and rates we hope we don't see.  

Hyper-inflation is when the government or central banks just keep printing or creating new money (fiat currency) with no gold or other stable asset backing it.  The value of money goes into a downward spiral until the currency is worthless.  This has happened to EVERY fiat currency in history, and will happen to ours at some point (but not necessarily soon).  

 

Is the crazy pandemic real estate market bubble beginning to pop?

It looks like the crazy, soaring, pandemic real estate market is beginning to tip and head down, in some areas.  Home prices are DOWN in 10 U.S. cities last month.  For real.  One of them is the major San Francisco Bay Area city, and part of Silicon Valley, San Jose, CA.  Watch the video for more details.  Reventure Consulting is another YouTube content creator I found recently and like for his good, solid information.  

Disclaimer

 Usually when the country heads into a recession, we see a big drop in the stock markets lead the way down, followed by the real estate markets a few months later.  The we slog through months or years to get going again.  But the pandemic hitting last year changed the game.  The sudden business shutdown wound up leading to about $4-6 trillion in Federal Reserve created "helicopter money," most of that going quickly into the banking system, Wall Street, and Big Business.  But then some "helicopter money" got thrown at us everyday people as well, since tens of millions were out of work, or affected in other ways. 

In addition, the usually hot spring/summer real estate market got shut down in 2020, leading to the FOMO effect in the late summer and fall, and on into 2021.  The lower than normal supply of houses available added to the effect, along with strong buying in some areas by the new tech company "ibuyers," like Zillow, Opendoor, as well as buying by Wall Street investment banks, who couldn't find enough other things to invest in.  So, as you probably know, things have been INSANE in real estate, instead of the usual recession style crash in prices and values.  

But prices can't go up forever, even though right before every crash, most people seem to think they can.  According to the newest Zillow data, explained well in the video above, some cities seem to have reached the tipping point, and selling prices and home values are headed down.  San Jose and Santa Cruz, California, have the biggest drops, -1.2% and 1-1%, respectively, month over month.  Other cities with falling prices include Madison, Wisconsin, Flint and Ann Arbor, Michigan, Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Manchester, New Hampshire, among others.  

Perhaps more interesting, for people watching the national real estate scene, some of the hottest real estate markets in the last few months appear to be cooling down.  My one time home town (high school era) of Boise, Idaho, had prices rise only 1/10th of a percent in September.  Austin, Texas, as well as Salt Lake City and Provo, Utah, were all just barely up in prices, .1 or .2% each.  They all seem to have gone from hot seller's markets, to near the tipping point of a buyer's market.  In another obscure video I  found, in late September, nearly 18% of sellers with houses listed in Boise had reduced their asking prices, another sign the market is peaking, and about to reverse there.  

Down in The South, Florida in particular, prices are rising still, and the  markets are still really hot.  

What about here in Southern California?  It's still a strong seller's market in most counties, and a moderate seller's market in others, according to the most recent data.  It looks like things are slowing some in SoCal, and, personally, I believe we will we the markets here peak and turn, and prices begin to drop, in 4 to 6 months.  So for all those experienced investors in this area, waiting for the inevitably drop in values and prices, it looks now like early to mid 2022 (February- April?) will be the time to start looking for really good deals at much more realistic prices. 

That's my take on where national real estate markets are right now, from watching this video, and several others, of people who are watching the markets intensely.  Will Zillow, Opendoor, and even investment banks jump back in to buy a lot of properties as prices drop?  That's another open question right now, one that will affect smaller investors.  Time will tell.   

 

Welcome to the (not so) Wonderful World of Inflation

When it comes to the people I want to hear talk about today's economic world, Mohamed El-Erian is about the top of the list.  He's a very intelligent, well established investor who tells it pretty much as it is.  Right now, in this October 22, 2021 Bloomberg interview, he says the signs are telling him, inflation (rising prices) is heading up, and will keep going up for quite a while.   

Disclaimer

 The Fed (the Federal Reserve, the non-government entity that is the U.S. central bank, and creates our money) has been saying this inflation is "transitory," for a few months, meaning they didn't think it would last long.  But inflation has stuck around, and it's getting worse. 

"Inflation is the number one issue facing investors."

 - Paul Tudor Jones, another very smart, savy, established investor, in this October 20, 2021 interview on CNBC.

To calm inflation down, The Fed can raise interest rates that banks charge each other for short term loans.  When they do that, all other interest rates go up as well, in a ripple effect.  But that would mean the cheap, easy money that Wall Street has been relying on since September 2019 (Google "Repo Market Crisis"), is ending.  And that would make stock prices drop, big time.  

So The Fed is stuck, If they do nothing, inflation keeps getting higher, and most everything you buy keeps going up in price, maybe a little, maybe a lot.  If The Fed "slams on the brakes" as El-Erian says in this interview, that means raising interest rates 1/4 % or 1/2 %, and stock prices react and go down.  It looks like The Fed is going to let prices soar, and then raise interest rate too late (sometime next year, say March to August, most likely), and then stocks drop faster and harder.  That's if they haven't tanked already for some other reason, like the fact they are crazy high to start with.  

In any case, for normal, real world, working people, prices are going to keep going up, for many months, maybe a couple of years or more.  Get used to it.  Welcome to the (not so) Wonderful World of Inflation.  And even better stagflation.  That's a stagnant, lackluster economy, with rising prices at the same time.  

Economics terms defined: Stagflation, Inflation, Deflation, Disinflation

The word today is that "stagflation" is our future, for the next year or so.  So what is "stagflation?"  This 11 minute video gives a really solid explanation of these basic terms.  Oversimplified, stagflation is when prices go up, but the economic is stagnant, it doesn't really grow.  But watch the video, it really helps you understand these, if you don't now.  

Disclaimer

I've watched 2 or 3 Heresy Financial videos now, all were really solid info, which is rare with so much garbage being put out these days. 

The Great Resignation is on blast

This is CNBC video on The Great Resignation, from yesterday, October 19, 2021.  As you have probably heard, millions of people have quit and resigned from their jobs over the past few months in 2021.  Since the Spring, about 20 million people have quit jobs.  

Disclaimer 

Depending who you listen to, about 20 million Americans have quit their jobs since either January or April.  August 2021 hit a record, with 4.3 million people quitting their jobs.  For context, there's about 160 million people counted in the "workforce," roughly the people aged 16-54 who have a job, or are recently unemployed (or were less than 6 months ago).  There are a whole bunch of reasons for so many people quitting, and the group of quitters is spread from low wage service jobs to high paying tech jobs.  

The biggest common denominator seems to be that millions of American workers are reassessing their lives, after the layoffs, shutdowns, and whatever the Covid-19 pandemic did to alter their daily activities on a personal level.  Tens of millions of people are trying to figure out what they want out of their lives, and what makes life most worth living.  

This is another aspect of the Big Freakin' Transition.  WE had millions of people who have struggled increasingly hard to maintain a standard of living, as pay lagged behind inflation for the last 30-40 years.  On the top end of the spectrum, plain old burnout, working too many hours, and high stress levels over extended periods of time seem to be more of a factor.  People across the spectrum of work in the U.S. are trying to find more compelling work, higher paying work, more meaningful work, and work with more flexibility.  This huge reshuffling is another part of old, Industrial Age systems and attitudes breaking down, and new, often tech enabled, attitudes, types of work, ways of working, and actual career paths, re-organizing, in an unexpected way.  

Honestly, this huge, unexpected reorganizing of work itself, is refreshing to see.  We have had a huge, growing mismatch of jobs that needed filled, and people looking for jobs.  We've had lots of people unemployed as well as lots of jobs we didn't have people with the right skills to fill.  The Great Resignation is that mismatch beginning to sort itself out.  It will keep going for several months, most likely, and perhaps the next 2 to 4 years.  This is people finding better work fits for their lives, and businesses finding better people for their jobs, and re-organizing how they operate, if they can't find people.  

I've been wondering why mainstream business media has become so vocal about The Great Resignation.  At the same time, content creators talking about a coming collapse of stocks, commodities, and real estate prices are being censored left and right on on social media and publishing platforms.  One possible reason for mainstream media pushing The Great Resignation narrative is that as long as lots of workers are quitting jobs, major layoffs are likely to happen near as much.  That's just a thought.  We'll see how this all plays out.  The Great Resignation isn't over.  It's something happening right now, and we'll see how it plays out over time. 

Disclaimer for this blog

Disclaimer:  I am not a certified financial planner, a certified financial analyst, a CPA, an accountant, or a lawyer.  The contents of this blog are for educational and entertainment purposes only, and do not constitute financial, investment, accounting, or legal advice.  Please consult a lawyer, accountant, CPA, certified financial planner, or other need professionals, as needed, before making any investment, financial, or legal decisions.  Do your own proper due diligence before making any investment, financial, and/or legal decisions.  By reading and/or using this blog, or any post within it, you agree to hold me harmless of any ramifications, financial or otherwise, that happen as a result of acting on any of the information in this blog.  

The views expressed in this blog are my own.  The authors, speakers, or other sources I share or quote in this blog are those of the individuals, and my use does not mean they endorse my views and ideas.  I consider myself a futurist, someone who studies and analyzes trends in economics, society, business, and other human endeavors.  I express my opinions on how these trends and forces may play out in future months or years.  I do my best to give what I see as the most likely future outcomes, but there are always many other factors which may change the course of events as we move forward in time.  Please use your own best judgement, and that of experts you trust, to make any decisions regarding future business, investments, financial or other decisions.

Steven T. Emig (aka Steve Emig)

Writer and publisher of this blog

10/22/2021

Some of my futurist and economics posts from the last 4 years...

This video about automation an globalization replacing human jobs is now over 5 years old.  I was the taxi driver in this clip who lost his job to new technology, before Uber and Lyft.  I known what this feels like.  I also put this video in a blog post in June 2017.  I've been writing about the "crazy times ahead," for over 4 years now, trying to give a few people a heads up.  Now it's October 2021, is it crazy enough for you yet?  I hope not, it's going to get A LOT crazier.

Disclaimer

I've been writing about a major economic downturn, and crazy period of massive cultural, businessm and political change that I've seen coming, since at least mid-2017.  The Big Freakin' Transition is one of the main underlying causes, but not the only one.  Here are a bunch (but not all) of my blog posts from mid 2017 to late 2019, all pre-Covid era, on the economic downturn and massive period of change we are now two years into (with lots more to come).  This first one is my personal favorite blog post title:

Our economy is powered by unicorn farts- March 2019 (Here's the missing video)

Now starting with the beginning of my Steve Emig: The White Bear blog (not racist, it's a nickname from my BMX days) in June 2017:

Looking at a world beyond jobs- June 2017

Art is an industry... no, really, it is- July 2017

The jobs picture right now, in 2017- July 2017

A whole lot of facts about rural poverty in America- August 2017   Ideas for small towns and rural areas struggling right now- August 2017 You'll notice "TV/Film studios" on this list.  Right now in 2021, with the popularity of streaming, they TV/ movie industry can't build sound stages to shoot TV and movies fast enough, there are at least 6-7 major projects nationwide, most $100 million projects or more, across the country, right now.  Told ya so, people).

Work is changing... FAST- September 2017

Creative Scenes in today's economy- October 2017

What are Creative Scenes?- October 2017

Richard Florida and the New Urban Crisis- October 2017

A funny look at economic development- November 2017

The student debt ball and chain- November 2017

The FCC repeals Net neutrality, despite 22 million Americans petitioning for it- December 2017

A 4 billion dollar reason why your city's Innovation District needs a skate (and bike) park- December 2017

What will we do with all those empty buildings?- December 2017

Larry Kudlow's wishful thinking- January 2018 (This is the first post where I mentioned the stock market crash I saw coming- it took a bit longer than I thought to happen, but the Dow dropped 10,000+ points in 2020)

The Retail Apocalypse is expected to expand in 2018- January 2018

Davos 2018: A good look at the future- January 2018

States with the worst student loan debt- February 2018

Would you live in a town that Google built?- February 2018

Toys-R-Us: Another chain bites the dust in the Retail Apocalypse- March 2018

The Rise of the Warrior Sports- 20 years later- March 2018

Recession zine coming- March 2018

Great Recession II: Trump's Dump- has begun- April 2018- OK, I was a little ahead of the curve on this one.  Just for the record, the Dow peaked on January 26th, 2018, and was basically flat until October 2020, which is when The Fed began pumping billions into the Repo Market to prop up the banking system.  It is STILL being propped up by newly created money, and THAT'S WHAT it causing this crazy inflation (which will get  A LOT higher next year).

A video for businesses and civic leaders who hate the internet, social media, and obscure bloggers who get more page views than their websites- April 2018  Not surprisingly, looking back, a bunch of guys with baseball bats came out to the tent where I was living (in central NC) about two weeks later and threatened to "kick my tent in a teach me a lesson I should have learned a long time ago," if I didn't stop blogging.  My response was, "Hoke hey, it's a good day to die... go for it."  Not the response they expected.  After much deliberation on their part, they just left.  That blog, which had about 35,000 page views then, has over 128,000 now.  What can I say, The South is still The South.  Free Speech bitches.  It's in the Constitution.  

The cities that get most of the start-up business money (venture capital) in the U.S.- May 2018 

Retail Apocalypse- May 2018- Sears closing 72 more stores- May 2018

Mallpocalypse leads to a new kind of Mall Rats- June 2018

Why I think Creative Scenes are a key to our future- July 2018 

What I do IS work- August 2018

Why HUGE businesses (and towns and cities) die- September 2018

Crazy sounding, but actual financial news headlines today- October 2018

Are you ready for the economic collapse?  Gary Vaynerchuk is- October 2018

Spooky!  The stock market lost $2 trillion this month- October 2018

I told you to watch the FAANG stocks for signs of trouble- October-2018

Economic Rehab revisited- November 2018  My favorite quote in this little post is "... because former Fed Chair Janet Yellen said that they've figured out how to never have recessions again."  

This is the lead in to the recession I've been talking about- December 2018

My stock market predictions for 2019- December 2018  I was wrong.  I was over a year early, and didn't think The Fed would lower interest rates to near zero.  Even so, none of the markets dropped to these levels, because they had all gone up considerably before the 2020 crash.  Lowering interest rates how The Fed propped up stocks in mid to late 2019.  The they started throwing a ton of money (by 2019 standards, not 2021 standards) into the banking system because of the Repo Market crisis.  

Recession watch 2/6/2019- February 2019 

The Big Transition- How the Toffler's Third Wave is actually playing out in the real world- April 2019   Hmmmmm... this sounds kind of familiar.  Yep, I've been talking about this Big Transition idea for quite a while.

How I became interested in Creative Scenes- May 2019

The Unraveling- June 2019

We've just begun the prelude to The Great Recession of 2019- July 2019

The beginner's guide to the next great recession- August 2019

The economic collapse of our lifetimes will happen this month- October 2019  I wrote this post after looking up "Repo Markets."  The Repo Market had just seized about 10 days earlier, The Fed was saying they would have the mess taken care of in a few days, when I wrote this.  It is now two years and three weeks later.  Last night, 10/20/2021 The Fed loaned the banks $1.493 TRILLION in assets, overnight, in reverse repo operations.  The U.S. banking system had to borrow nearly $1,500,000,000,000 last night, to stay in business for a couple more days.  This is STILL happening every other night, on average.

The Phoenix Great Recession- October 2019- No one was ready to hear the phrase "great depression" then, so I used the word "recession."  At the time, October 2019, conventional wisdom was that there might be a minor recession in late 2020 or early 2021.  Maybe.  Guess what, they were wrong.

Why is the Retail Apocalypse happening?

Once full of customers wandering around and spending money, this mall, the Northridge Mall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is one of dozens of shopping malls that have closed down, or have found another purpose.  "The Retail Apocalypse" is the name coined in 2017 for the continuing closing of thousands of retail stores across the U.S., and other parts of the world.  This UrbEx video is an exploration of that abandoned mall, about 16 years after it closed, in 2003.  

Disclaimer

Like most people over 20 years old, I grew up going to shopping malls with my family on a regular basis.  In my birth state of Ohio, Sears, J.C. Penney, and Montgomery Wards were the three main anchor stores I remember, the huge department stores where my parent's shopped for just about everything, from school clothes, furniture, to dishes, to tools.  Yes, we had big discount stores, like Kmart and Grant's in our area, and Walmart and later Target in many other areas. 

Local shops in small town downtowns, or the big shopping centers were where my parents shopped on a daily basis.  We often went to malls on weekends.  The same was true for most of the millions of Americans around the country.  Most all of you reading this have similar memories, I'm sure.  Malls were such a part of American culture, indie director Kevin Smith made a movie called Mall Rats in 1995, just about the people hanging out in malls.  You may recognize a couple of those actors, best known for their later work.  

Then, in the 2010's something began to happen.  The big department stores had been struggling for a while.  But one by one, a few chain stores, in malls and shopping centers, began to close.  Then a few more.  I don't think anyone has a complete count, but several thousand individual stores closed from about 2010 to 2016.  

The frequency was increasing, and major chain store closures started coming faster and faster.  In 2017, the term "Retail Apocalypse" was first coined, and entered popular culture.  The phrase "Dead Mall," appeared as well, later defined as a mall with at least 30% of its stores closed, and 70% or less still remaining.  In in 2017, 2018, and 2019, about 20,000 stores closed, and many major chains went into bankruptcy or completely out of business.  

In 2020, as the pandemic monkey wrenched life for just about everyone, another 9,300 stores closed in the U.S..   A few dozen of the original 1,200 or so enclosed shopping malls in the U.S. have closed down.  Some have been repurposed, some are sitting abandoned, like in the video above, and a few have been demolished.  In the obvious irony, several have been turned into Amazon fulfillment centers.  A recent report says 80,000 MORE store closings can be expected by 2025.

Not only is there a Wikipedia page for the Retail Apocalypse itself, there's one just listing the stores that have closed, and that have gone completely out of business.  So many malls, stores, factories, and other buildings have been abandoned, that urban exploration, or UrbEx, is now a hobby for lots of people in the younger generations.  

Why is all this happening?  

A lot of people blame Amazon, you know, before they tune into Prime, or shop from their phone.  Some people blame bad management 15-20 years ago, at the former behemoth store chains, like Sears or J.C. Penney.  While Amazon has taken a huge number of sales to the online world, I don't think they are specifically to blame.  

My concept, and the reason for this blog, is The Big Freakin' Transition.  It's and extension of The Third Wave concept futurist Alvin Toffler explained in his 1980 book* by that name.  The basic idea is simple, we are leaving the old Industrial Age, and moving into the Information Age.  But that massive transition doesn't happen overnight.  That's where the simple idea gets really complex.  

I believe, and The Big Freakin' Transition explains, that we are in an 80 to 90 year long transition period BETWEEN those two ages.  The old, Industrial Age businesses, models, and organizations are losing steam, and ultimately, dying off.  New, Information Age models, usually using newer technologies, are being built, tested, and evolving.  

The Retail Apocalypse, in my opinion, is simply the old, Industrial Age goods distribution model breaking down, and dying off.  We have lots of new technologies, which has led to new ways of living, and new ways of shopping and buying goods and services.  As the shopping mall, shopping centers, and department stores become less appealing to people, that business model, and those stores, are dying off.  It's much easier, and more efficient, and more time saving, to buy many things online, or on our phones now, and have them shipped to us.  That's the new, Information Age goods distribution system being built.  Amazon is a huge part of that, but so is eBay, Etsy, online stores and sites on platforms like Shopify and others, and millions personal websites selling unique items.  

The Retail Apocalypse is the old, Industrial Age goods distribution system breaking down and dying off, and a new one, with much more online sales, and fewer physical stores, is being built.  The new system will take us into the full Information Age, as all necessary businesses make the transition, or are invented and built.  It's as simple as that.  

There was another Retail Apocalypse, in the late 1800's, did you know that?  A mail order business began to send catalogs to people across the U.S., and ship them goods from huge warehouses.  This had a horrific effect on the small town general stores of the time, eventually most of them went out of business.  In time, that mail-order company opened their own stores.  Big ones.  That mail order company was called Sears & Roebucks.  Later they changed it to just Sears.

* not a paid link.

Welcome to Dystopia... the future is now

This is a still shot of the opening slate of the Blade Runner (1982) movie trailer.  I didn't notice this slate until the second time I watched the trailer.  

Disclaimer

I woke up one morning early, before dawn, about the middle of October, in 2019.  I woke up in a parking lot with a big idea in my head.  No, I hadn't been on a three week binder, or had some crazy adventure like in a bachelor party movie.  I'm homeless, and I just slept in a small parking lot every night.  Why am I homeless?  I'm not sure, I think the reason is classified, they won't even tell me.  

But all that aside, I have a geeky side that reads big, weird, books about the economy, future trends, and stuff like that.  I've been watching the financial markets for over 30 years, though I've never owned a share of stock, and only bought a bit of precious metals and a few futures options, in that time.  I've been interested in the future, and trying to figure out what's going to happen in the future, since I was a kid.  Over the last 35 years, I've come across three theories that I think can help me, and others, understand our crazy world today, and why so many things seem so chaotic on an unprecedented level.  I've mentioned those theories in the last couple of posts.  They are Alvin and Heidi Toffler's Third Wave concept, P.R. Sarkar's Law of Social Cycles, and Richard Florida's Creative Class concept.  

I've found those three big ideas, in particular, explain different aspects of our society, our world, over the last 30 years.  I've also run across other cycles, like the fact that nearly every 30-60-90 year mark we tend to have a recession, if not a depression or great depression, going back to colonial days.  My geeky, brainiac side was watching these long term, and ultra-long term cycles play out, watching the ups and downs of financial markets, real estate cycles, and other stuff like that.  I find the dynamics of all these different trends interacting fascinating.  Yes, that's weird, like I said, I'm a geek, and not a typical geek, but an economics futurist geek, which makes me a geek among geeks.

Meanwhile, I was struggling as a taxi driver in the early and mid-2000's, as that industry got hit by new technology.  First,  computer dispatching replaced the old CB radios, which allowed the taxi companies to put far more taxis on the road, killing the business for seasoned drivers.  Later, as we all know, Uber and Lyft wiped out most of what was left of the taxi, town car, limo, and airport ride industries.  

I became homeless while driving my taxi, living in it for years, and eventually wound up on the streets, unable to find a "real " job.  My family offered to fly me to North Carolina to stay for "a while," and I wound up stuck there for ten years, still unable to find a "real" job.  I finally started selling my unique Sharpie artwork online to make a little bit of money.  While I was in NC, I started blogging like crazy, mostly about my BMX freestyle days, and worked to learn the basics of online and social media marketing.  That helped me sell about 90 original pieces of art, and some prints, over the last 5 years.  

Eventually, an old friend from my BMX bike riding days paid my bus fare back to California, to help promote an online business he was starting.  That didn't work out as planned, and I went back to the streets, and kept blogging and working on new ideas to get back to making a living.  I know most of you don't give a damn about all of that, but that's the short version of how I was the guy waking up with a big idea, in a parking lot in the San Fernando Valley, in October 2019.  

At that time, I had been blogging about the economy, a major recession (likely depression) I saw coming in the near future, and other Big Picture issues around the continual trend of new technology replacing human jobs, and our transition from the Industrial Age into the Information Age.  That, as you probably know by now, is what I call The Big Freakin' Transition, the title of this blog.  It was just "The Big Transition," for 2-3 years, but I needed a better title to start the blog, so I added "freakin'."  That's not the most creative title, but it works. 

I had all of these different ideas and theories I had learned of, studied, and pondered, combined with my own observations of markets and trends, and what I'd learned from a couple hundred other books, in my head.  It was all this big mish mash of disjointed ideas, all pointing towards a lot more change, and some pretty chaotic times in the future.  I had not tried to organize all these ideas at that point, in late 2019.  

That October morning, the big idea was for me to go back and watch the top 30 or 40 dystopian movie trailers, and TV show intros, from the 1960's through the 1990's.  Doing that, I would see how all those different writers and directors viewed "the future" from their time, and from their personal perspective.  I realized that in 2019, at 53 years old, I was living in "the future" of my childhood and high school self, the time when I was most affected by futuristic movies.  I decided I would begin by watching the trailers, then comparing the future each of them predicted with what 2019 was really like.  How close were they?  What did they get right and get wrong?  Did they miss key elements of today's world? What did they come up with that's not real yet?  From there, I would look at the future my lifetime of interest and study saw in the coming years, the 2020's, in particular.  

So I took this old laptop (which I'm still using, now about 5-6 years old), and began that work at a McDonald's and at the local library.  I also got a notebook just for this idea, and began writing my thoughts.  It was early November, 2019, when I watched this Blade Runner (1982) trailer, and saw the silent slate at the beginning.  That stopped me cold.  Blade Runner, now 39 years ago, was set in Los Angeles in November of 2019.  But some weird trick of fate, I began really getting going on this big series of ideas about the future, in Los Angeles County, in November of 2019.  I was literally living in the real future that the original Blade Runner movie tried to predict.  That's pretty crazy.  I grew up in Ohio, and lived in Boise, Idaho when that movie came out, both of which seemed a million miles from L.A. and Hollywood.  Yet somehow I ended up in L.A county, I was bouncing between The Valley and Hollywood, as I wrote out the rough ideas of this big, personal project.  I could take bus or train around, and compare the real Los Angeles 2019 with the Blade Runner version, day after day.  Obviously, there's a huge difference. 

As the ideas came together, and I realized I had something big to write, I thought about how to publish it.  With so much of other people's work involved in what I was talking about, a free blog, in the form of a book, seemed the way to go.  I built the basic blog with 20 chapters, so it could be read top to bottom, like a book, not backwards, as normal blogs work.  I figured I would have 9 or 10, maybe 11 chapters.  From late December 2019, to about April 2020, I wrote this 20 chapter book/blog thing, and called it Welcome to Dystopia, The Future is Now, Book 1.  Yeah, I not only filled up the 20 chapters, I thought a "book 2" might come along.  So far, no book 2.  To date, this is the most complete version of my thinking about the future, the theories that help me look forward, and at times predict major inflection points, and why I dubbed this decade The Tumultuous 2020's right before the decade even started.  

This blog is here for me to go deep into the more minute and detailed aspects of all the various parts of this Big Picture, The Big Freakin' Transition.  As you all know, a lot has happened in our world, and everyday life, since late 2019.  I DID expect a major economic downturn to happen, and I believe it will at least feel like a Great Depression, to most people, by the time we get to about 2027.  Technically, we are in an economic Depression (3 year contraction OR a 10% or more GDP drop- we had a 33% drop in GDP in Q2 2020), by one of the two traditional definitions.  

I DID NOT see a major global pandemic coming along to amplify the economic and social change.  But it did, and we are still dealing with Covid-19.  But that is just part of what's going on in this decade.  Even without Covid, this would have been one of the most chaotic decades ever, in my belief.  

So with that incredibly long intro, here are the links to my late 2019-early 2020 book/blog thing about The Future:

Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now, Book 1 

Chapter 1: We are the Mutants

Chapter 2: The Future the Media Shows You is Not the Future You Get

Chapter 3: Where the Hell is My Flying Car?

Chapter 4: Did the Futuristic Movies and TV Shows of My Generation X Childhood Get Anything Right?  

Chapter 5: Was There Anyone in the 20th Century Who Did Get "The Future" Right? 

Chapter 6: Why Care About the Future? 

Chapter 7: The Power of Creative Scenes (What I did instead of college) 

Chapter 8: How I Became and Amateur Futurist 

Chapter 9: The "Blade Runner Future" and the Future We Actually Got

Chapter 10: The Tofflers' Third Wave 

Chapter 11: Surf's Up Brah... The Long Term Waves of the U.S. Economy

Chapter 12: P.R. Sarkar's Law of Social Cycle

Chapter 13:  The Big Transition- The Unplanned Revolution of Everything

Chapter 14: Disruption: Apocaplyse Past, Apocalypse Now, Apocalypse Soon 

Chapter 15:  Richard Florida and The Rise of the Creative Class 

Chapter 16: Blowing Bubbles 

Chapter 17: The Phoenix Great Depression 

Chapter 18: The Economic Collapse is Here... Now What? 

Chapter 19: Rebuilding America- Dream On... Time to Make Your Dreams Come True 

Chapter 20: Our Dystopia is CHANGE- It's Time to Mold a New Reality 

 That's Dystopia as I refer to it, the best collection of my thinking on the future, the 2020's in particular, and the things I saw ahead, back in 2020.  

Personally, I think the 2020's will be so crazy, that any person or business with a 5 year or 10 year plan, will simply have to throw it out the window.  There are so many fundamental things in our world that will change in this decade, many of which have layers more change built upon them, that I don't think anyone can accurately plan beyond this decade.  

I don't think the major changes will stop on January 1st 2030, I just think most of the fundamental changes will happen between now and then.  Afterwards will be more of fine tuning what has already happened, providing we, as a species, are still here.  

The dark side of all of this is that we are in a period where things can go totally off course, and it's possible we destroy our species before 2030 gets here.  We're sitting on thousands of nukes, unstable political climates, bio-weapons, and a lot of just plain ignorant fools in positions of power.  This is a decade that many things could go completely wrong.  Game over.  I DO NOT think that's how things will ultimately play out, but it's a remote possibility in times this turbulent.  Fortunately, humans have a way of coming together in the worst crises, and working for a common good in times of great change.  

Another thing that many people may notice is that I barely even touch on global warming, and today's other trendy environmental issues.  My reason for that is because this economic and social turmoil could take us all out long before environmental issues really get bad.  If humans aren't around in 2030, global warming isn't an issue.  I think we need to make it through these economic, social, work, business, and political issues before environmental issues become the main focus.  If environmental issues are your primary focus, great.  But we have a lot of other stuff, as a society, to get through first, the way I see it.  

Since there will be great change in business and social models, there's no reason not to design new things to work in a much more environmentally friendly way, with healthier production and manufacturing, and use.  But human "civilization," by it's nature, is destructive to the environment, that was the point of chapter 1 of Dystopia.

So for anyone who has stumbled across this blog, and wants to know where my weird ideas come from, this post, and the thinking and writing in Dystopia, is the best place to find out.  Thanks for reading.  Lots more to come... 

Steve Emig 10/13/2021