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

The Great Resignation- the latest phase of the populist uprising in the U.S.

I first heard about The Great Resignation in mid August, and wrote about it in a report I wrote in early September.  It's continuing.  According to this PBS report above, over 25 million Americans have quit their jobs since January 2021.  In a recession! (Which is technically a depression).  WTF is going on?  I have a pretty good idea.  But I'm an amateur futurist, I've had a head start at all this.

Disclaimer

I've been blogging about economic and work-related issues since mid-2017 (like this post from June 28, 2017).  I saw a very serious economic downturn coming our way, even back then.  But as an amateur futurist who was keeping an eye on some ultra long term cycles playing out, I saw more than just another recession coming, or even another "Great Recession."  

Since late 1989 I've been watching a theory, a concept play out, called The Law of Social Cycle, by a mid-20th century thinker from India, named P.R. Sarkar.  In late January 2020, before Covid-19 was close to hitting U.S. shores, I wrote a chapter in my 20 chapter online book/blog thing about this theory.  In part, that theory, analyzed for the U.S. by economist Ravi Batra, predicted a major, long term, populist uprising in the United States.  My 12th chapter in this online book/blog, written 20 months ago, in the last paragraph says, "...but the Laborer class are still rising, and will force massive change at some point.  This is not even close to over."  That's at the end of my explanation, of my understanding, of P.R. Sarkar's Law of Social Cycle.  You can read that chapter (or skip to the last paragraph) here.  

After reading about this theory in late 1989, and watching much of what Batra predicted play out in the early 1990's, I believed that a MAJOR populist uprising, a wide scale "worker's revolt," of some type, would happen in the U.S. years in the future.  I believe it started with the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011, and rose up again in the support for both populist candidates, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, on the Left and the Right, in the 2016 election.  

But I knew there was more to come. Life for average American workers has been going downhill for 30-40 years.  It has simply been getting harder and harder to make a good living, and raise a family well.  A time of reckoning was coming.  

And that is just one part of the major changes I saw coming, according to the thinking of Alvin and Heidi Toffler (last two blog posts), P.R. Sarkar (this post), and also Richard Florida (more on his Creative Class concept, in future posts).  

In late 2019, I tagged this decade as The Tumultuous 2020's.  There are a whole lot of reasons why, and that's what this blog is for.  Simply put, there are all kinds of societal changes that need to take place, on virtually every level, for human society to move forward.  The major cycles and concepts I've watched for years, even decades, all started converging as we headed into the 2020's.  It's like they were all heading for major transitions, major inflection points, at the same time.  That made me think, "Oh shit."  

There's a lot going on, and it's NOT the crazy conspiracy stuff many people are hearing from bad media and worse websites and stupid friends.  We have all kinds of relatively new technology that makes whole new lifestyles possible, and society itself needs to catch up, and integrate all this technology into lifestyles that work for real humans.  In a sense, we all need to upgrade the world to fit the tech and lifestyles and other issues (economic, climate, social injustice, political, etc) going on in our world.  

It seems the time has come to remodel... the whole freakin' world.  Really.  

There's a lot more to come.  I've been blogging about this big group of inter-related ideas for four years now.  Now that what I've seen coming is partly visible to most people, I've got a lot to say on where we're at as human society, and where we're headed.  Then you can decided what, if any, of my ideas, make sense in your lives.  Then it's time to figure out how we all live in today's world in a more functional way. 

The "Napster moment"- EVERYTHING has to change to an Information Age model

Honestly, being a Gen X guy who began using record players when I was 4 or 5 years old, about 1971-72, it's hilarious that there are actually how-to videos on using one.  That said, I can barely operate a cell phone, which most of today's 3-year-olds have mastered.  Times change, and that's the whole point of this post.  So, thank God for YouTube how-to videos, for the young, the old, and everyone in between.

Disclaimer

In the last post, I explained that my concept, The Big Freakin' Transition, is that we are in an 80 to 90 year transition period between the Industrial Age and the Information Age.  That's one half of the idea.  The other half of the idea is that during this long, increasingly chaotic transition period, EVERY business, every industry, and every human institution, will have the old business or social model disrupted, and a new model will emerge.  So those two ideas are the core of The Big Freakin' Transition.  Again, this whole idea is basically a continuation of The Third Wave * concept that futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler discovered, and Alvin wrote about in his 1980 book by that name.  

My favorite model for disruption is the music industry.  The older generations of people, and the older Millennials, can remember when the file sharing service Napster exploded onto the scene in 1999.  Before that, the music industry was well entrenched in a stable business model.  Record label company executives looked for talented bands and singers.  They offered their favorite ones a "record contract."  The  record label paid for the studio time while a band created an "album," usually of fifteen songs.  Then the band was sent out on tour to promote the album, and build a following of people to hopefully buy millions of those record albums, usually for about $15 each.  The record label paid for the tours, where tickets were fairly cheap.  They also promoted the new record with single songs on FM radio, with coverage in music magazines like Rolling Stone, and with music videos on MTV, after it came out in 1981.  When the albums sold a lot, the record label made back their money, and tens of millions of dollars more, and the singer or band made a small percentage of that, sometimes millions of dollars.  

So the record labels put out money to find bands, record the albums, and promote them with tours, radio, magazines, and MTV.  All of that was promotion to sell millions of physical records.  That was the money maker, those big, black, "vinyl" discs.  They also sold audio cassettes, and in the 90's, CD's became the new albums.  But selling lots of the albums was the business model.  

Then, on June 1st, 1999, two guys none of us had ever heard of, uploaded a new piece of software on the fledgling internet.  Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker created a file sharing software called Napster, which allowed people worldwide to share Mp3 music files with each other.  With a single click of a computer mouse in 1999, the music industry was doomed.  That's what I mean by "Disrupted."  There was an old business model that was working just fine... for the record companies and a small number of hit artists and bands.  But new technology had been evolving, and some unknown guys had a cool idea to use that new technology.  "Hey, what if we could design software so we could all share our music with other people?"  Napster Disrupted the old business model with one click. 

Now, the music industry didn't collapse overnight.  But in the next few months, 80 million users (myself included), started looking for music files on other people's hard drives, and downloading them, often burning our own CD's of personal mix tapes.  Suddenly music was free, and the traditional music industry went berserk.  They even sued their own customers for a while.  Teenage kids were getting multi-million dollar lawsuits filed against them for downloading 100 songs.  

You can argue for the rights of the old music industry.  You can argue about intellectual property until you're blue in the face, you can say this was piracy, theft, or just plain stealing.  The reality is, everyday people LOVED the free music file sharing idea, and it was simply going to happen, eventually, no matter what.  Napster, as a free service, lasted about two years, then became a paid service after being shut down by court order.  But the Information Age music revolution had begun, and other tech people, notably Steve Jobs and the Apple posse, created new business models.  

Now, 22 years later, we have far more music available to us far cheaper.  Hundreds of thousands of bands and independent musicians and singers find followings, and sell some music to their fans.  Concerts and box sets of physical CD's or vinyl LP's cost a lot.   Most people don't buy albums, they buy single songs or rent music from streaming services.  Nearly every consumer of music would say they like this system better than paying $15 for an album that had three songs they liked, back in the 1980's or 1990's.  The music industry is still evolving, but it has made the transition into an Information Age business model.  

The Big Freakin' Transition idea is that every single business, every industry, and every human institution (religion, law, education, non-profits, membership organizations, political parties, etc), EVERY organization, will be Disrupted by a new model, using new technology, and new social norms made possible by that new technology.  

When this idea was really coming together in my head, 4-5 years ago, I tried to think of some business or industry that would not be affected.  "What everyday item WILL NOT be completely redesigned or disrupted," I asked myself.  Of all things, toilets came to mind.  The toilet in my grandma's 1920's built house as a kid looked pretty much like the ones today, and I imagine the toilets in 20-30 years will still look pretty much the same.  Yes, there will be some weird, high tech versions as outliers, but the basic design probably won't change all that much.  So did that make the toilet industry immune to Disruption?  I thought about the business.  Even if the basic item, like a typical toilet, doesn't change much, the materials, the raw material sourcing, the manufacturing process, the factory location, the price, the marketing, and the distribution that got the toilets from a factory to a new house, that WILL all change due to new technology.  

Ultimately, I could not think of one product or industry that will not be Disrupted by all of our new and evolving technology, and our new social norms and lifestyles made possible by the new technology.  This is why The Big Freakin' Transition is an 80 or 90 year period.  Humans, by nature, don't like change.  We like to think we do, but we don't like very much change at all.  The initial high tech change started slow, then one new product here, one there.  They began to gain a synergy with each other, and more new technologies were developed, and as they came in to everyday life for regular people, our lifestyles began to change.  Other new changes came along, more new technologies, and our lives transformed more and more, faster and faster.  

But there are still many industries that are running on old, Industrial Age mindsets, even if they use many new forms of tech.  Banking, for example, uses more high technology than most industries.  But the whole idea of putting your money in a bank, in a physical building, so they can loan money out at interest to someone else, goes back to the Medici's, in 15th centuryItaly.  Even then, banks had been around for centuries, but that model has not really changed.  We all know now that all kinds of other options are now available, Paypal, Venmo, Apple Pay, Facebook pay, cryptos, wiring money across the globe, even old Western Union.  But the banks, as fancy buildings, each with  a huge safe (which doesn't contain digital money, obviously), still exist.  So banking, and many other industries still using Industrial Age business models, will face their "Napster moment" at some point.  The 2020's, seem to be shaping up as the decade when all the lagging business and social models (like churches, political parties, membership organizations, etc.) that haven't changed yet, will be forced to change.  One one hand they need to catch up, and the other hand, we are in a deep financial crisis, which will drive more change, and drive lots of old models businesses out of business.  

To repeat, at it's core, my concept of The Big Freakin' Transition" is two basic things.  We are in an 80-90 year transition period (from 1956 to about 2035-2045), between the Industrial Age and the Information Age.  Two, EVERY business, industry, and institution will have to figure out a new business/social model, and put into action, to survive.  That's the basic idea.  

As a business owner, or a leader of some kind of organization, you need to ask yourself, "What is the Information Age version of my business or organization?  What is the role of this kind of business in light of all the changes in new technology, and in how we actually live, day to day?  If you don't adapt, someone else will figure out the new model, and Disrupt your business.  So that's the Disruption that every business or institution will have to deal with.   

*not a paid link

The Big Freakin' Transition in a nutshell

I'm going way back, for a classic comedic look at the factory worker's life in the Industrial Age.  Charlie Chaplin trying to get through the day in Modern Times, from 1936.

Disclaimer

The Big Freakin' Transition is my concept, an extension of The Third Wave idea put forth by futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler, and published in Alvin's 1980 book, The Third Wave *.  

This is a big idea, and involves a lot of different aspects of our society.  But at it's core, my concept of The Big Freakin' Transition is two basic ideas:

One:  We are not IN the Industrial Age anymore, but we are not IN the Information Age, either.  We are in an 80 to 90 years transition period where American society morphs from the Industrial Age into the Information Age.  This transition period began in 1956, according to futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler, and I estimate the end will be about 2035-2045.

Two:  To remain viable in modern society, EVERY business, industry, organization, institution, and individual must make the transition from an Industrial Age living and working model, to an Information Age living and working model.  When pretty much all of society has made the switch, then we will be fully in the Information Age.  The world seems so crazy these days because we are in this huge, long, major transition phase.  

There are tons of details and factors, but that is The Big Freakin' Transition concept at its core.  

To grossly oversimplify things, originally humans were tribal people that we usually refer to as hunter/gatherers.  The First Wave of civilization was the transition from hunter/gatherer society to an agricultural society  People began to plant crops and farm, stay in one place, and villages became permanent, and turned into small towns, and eventually into cities.  That began about 10,000 years ago, probably in the region that is now Turkey.  It took a couple of thousand years for agriculture to travel the Earth, and become the dominant form of human society.

The Second Wave of civilization was the transition from agricultural society to an industrial society.  This, the Tofflers tell us, began about 350 years ago, and took a couple of hundred years to circle the Earth, to become the dominant form of society.  The factory based Industrial Age continued well into the second half of the 20th century.  

The Third Wave, as the Tofflers saw it, is the transition from an Industrial-based society to an Information-based society.  As it's called now, the transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age.  Alvin Toffler's book on this came out in 1980, four years before the Apple Macintosh computer, the first personal computer for "regular people."  He also wrote it right as the thousands of American factories began to either outsource jobs to other countries, or replace human workers with industrial robots and other technology.  So most people who did read The Third Wave when it was knew thought, "OK, the factories are shutting down or moving overseas, we have Silicon Valley, high tech, computers and cell phones, we're in the information-based age now."    

Of the people alive today, the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers, and Generation X were born at times when the Industrial Age was still going strong.  The Millennials, Generation Z (you'll get a new nickname, don't worry), and today's kids, were born into times when the Industrial age was fading fast, and the Information Age was (and still is) coming on strong.  So to our older generations the Industrial Age is "normal," and to the younger generations, the Information Age is "normal."  That alone explains a lot in today's culture.

The Big Freakin' Transition is my idea that the Toffler's Third Wave concept is still playing out.  I think that we didn't jump right into the full blown Information Age when all the factories shutdown, or moved overseas in the 1980's, 1990's, or 2000's.  I believe we are actually in an 80 to 90 year long transition period BETWEEN the Industrial Age and the Information Age.  We have a lot of the technology of the full Information Age now, but a lot of our businesses, industries, and institutions are still working from Industrial Age models, and have not fully integrated their business or working models to ones that work in the Information Age.  The Tofflers put the beginning of this transition period at 1956, the first year "white collar" office workers outnumbered "blue collar" factory workers in the United States.  I believe this transition period will last at least until about 2040, maybe longer.  

Very simply, we are about 2/3 the way through this long, crazy, chaotic period of transition from one type of society and lifestyle, to another.  No other civilization has had to make this big of a social transition in the span of a single lifetime.  We are going from one way of life to another, and it's weird, scary, crazy, and chaotic.  We are in between the Industrial Age and the Information Age, and have aspects of both working in our world right now.  

That's the Big Freakin' Transition, in a nutshell. For the record, I've been referring to this idea as"The Big Transition" in my personal and online writing, for 3 years or so.  I figured that I'd come up with a catchier name at some point, but I never did.  When I decided to write this blog, and go into more detail on all that the idea ties into, I finally googled "The Big Transition."  There's one religious book by that name, on totally different ideas, and several other things that came up in my search.  So I added the word "freakin'" to set it apart, and to not make it too serious and boring.  I think this concept, as a context for the craziness of today's world, can help us explain and understand what's going on. 

In future posts I'll go into much more depth on this general idea, and into the details of the various aspects of it.  The basic idea to get right now is, yes, the world seems crazy for a reason, we're in a huge transition period that is crazy and chaotic, by it's nature.  It's OK to be freaked out by all that's going on.  I hope this concept can help other people understand this transition, and then find their own way to work within it.

* Not a paid link.

Would you want to know if a hurricane is coming?

This is some seriously crazy footage of Category 5 Hurricane Michael, which hit the Florida panhandle on October 10, 2018.  My question is, if you lived in this area when the hurricane was coming, would you want to know about it ahead of time?

Disclaimer

It sounds like a ridiculous question.  If a huge hurricane was heading towards your house, your town, would you want to be warned about it?  Or would you rather have the weatherperson say, "It's another lovely day, we might see a bit of rain and some wind this afternoon?"  You feel secure, and then a Cat 5 hurricane rolls in and levels your house.  Nearly everyone is going to say, "I want to hear about the hurricane before it gets to my house."  That's common sense.  Hurricanes can be so incredibly destructive, that an elaborate tracking system has been put in place to see them as they form, track them, and warn people where they are most likely to make landfall, so everyday people have a warning, a chance to take whatever action is needed.

If the storm is big enough, and it's coming close enough to where you live, a warning system gives you time to board up the windows, and either evacuate the area, or shelter in place somewhere that's safe and storm proof.  A warning system for a catastrophic storm that will affect thousands of people is a no-brainer.  Yes, people want to know about dangerous weather before it gets to them.  Then they can decide whether to board up, put sand bags around the house, go somewhere else during the storm, or stock up on food and water and hunker down.  

But for some reason, economic "storms," that affect tens of millions of people, are a different story.  Most people seem to not want to hear that there's a recession coming, or a depression.  Most people seem to want the "weatherman," meaning economists and financial forecasters, to tell them, "Oh, we're just in for a light shower and a little wind," and then get blindsided by what really happens. I know I'm a geek, and I think in longer times spans than most people.  But it baffles me that most people don't seem to want to hear a major economic crisis is coming before it happens.   

In today's hyper-connected, media saturated world, this seems to have gotten even worse.  I recently heard stock market media guy saying that Millennials, in particular, don't want to even hear negative reports on financial matters.  When a legit online analyst warned that a stock was getting  bit too high priced recently, and could be due for a correction, he said so.  Many of his followers got upset, "Why are you being so negative?" they asked.  He wasn't being negative, he was being responsible, and accurate, using his judgement and years of experience.  He was warning them things were getting too hot, and a correction could be coming.The influencer knew his followers could lose a big sum of money if the stock corrected, and the price went down dramatically.  He said he lost quite a few viewers of his YouTube channel, who seemed to go find another person who had a "positive" outlook on that stock.  A couple days later, the stock did go down, and many people lost a serious amount of money.  

This blog, and this whole idea, The Big Freakin' Transition, are my analysis of a major financial storm" I saw brewing, back in 2017-2018, and which first hit last year.  I see this blog as a continuing "financial weather forecast" of sorts, my thoughts on rough times ahead.  Yes, an economic recession or depression is a negative event, and lots of people lose lots of money, and often jobs, real estate, even vehicles and other personal property.  

But having a heads up before it happens, gives people time to see if they need to take action.  They may want to sell one investment, and buy others.  They may want to refinance a home, or sell that car that's really too expensive for their budget.  They may simply want to stock up on some extra food, toilet paper, and household items, in case there are supply shortages at some point.  Simply put, a heads up gives people time to react in some way to a potentially threatening event.

We have recessions every 4-7 years, on average, in the U.S..  But for some reason, people always seem to believe that the last recession was the last one ever.  "Those people in Washington D.C. have things figured out now, and there will never, ever, be another recession or depression," we hear the talking heads say.  When people in the business media are saying, "That will never happen again," is usually right before it happens again.  

Like I said in the first post, I've been an amateur futurist for most of my life, fascinated by trying to figure out where things in our world will head in the future.  In early adulthood, as I started reading business books, I got interested in economic trends, and social trends that affect economic trends.  That has continued to this day.  My basic thoughts are, if something bad it heading my way, like a potential recession or depression, I'd rather accept it's there, analyze it in the ways possible, and figure out how big of a threat, if any, it is likely to be.  Then I have some good information to decide what action makes the most sense.  We can't always do that, but we can a lot of the time.  

So that's the thinking behind this blog.  Yes, there are industries that don't want you to understand the financial world, and don't want you to think ahead.  But those industries, and the people in them, aren't going to pay you back the money you lose in a major downturn.  Also, major "negative" events, like recessions and depressions, also offer many of the biggest business, financial, and investing opportunities.

So this is the basic idea of this blog.  I've followed some ultra long term trends for years, and some long term trends, and several are reaching big inflection points in the 2020's.  That tells me that we will probably see a lot of trouble, a lot of change, and a lot of opportunity, in the 2020's.  So this is my long term "financial weather forecast" on the potential issues, good and bad, that I see heading our way.  If you have an ultra short term, gambler or day trader mentality, this isn't for you.  But if you are drawn to the longer term financial thinkers, like investors Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger, or Ray Dalio, or Robert Kiyosaki, then you might find something worthwhile in this blog.  Much more to come.  thanks for reading.

Where is our human society headed? A futurist is a person who spends time trying to figure that out

Here is the late Alvin Toffler, the futurist I most identify with.  He died in 2016 at the age of 87, survived by his wife Heidi, partner in life, and partner in figuring out where the world was headed, decades ago.  From his first bestselling book, Future Shock, in 1970, through Revolutionary Wealth in 2007, the thinking of Alvin and Heidi Toffler, in the series of books he wrote, and talks he gave, inspired and influenced tens of thousands of people around the world.  Leaders in China, notably, made Future Shock required reading for officials at one point. 

Disclaimer 

I believe their concept of "The Third Wave," first published in Alvin's 1980 book by that name, is still playing out, and can help us understand the chaotic world of the 2020's.  Like Alvin Toffler, I've spent most of my life, since childhood, thinking a lot about the future, and trying to figure out where society was headed.  I'll go into more detail in future posts, but the extension of the Third Wave concept, into today's world of 2021, and well into the future, is something I've been calling "The Big Transition."  Very simply put, I don't think we are in the Industrial Age anymore, but I don't think we're in the Information Age either.  I believe we are in an 80 to 90 year transition phase between the two, and I think we are the late part of that long transition period.  

With that idea as a Big Picture, the chaos of the 21st century world makes a lot more sense to me.  I've been able to see and sense a lot of trends coming, and I've made some financial market predictions, several of which seemed crazy when I made them, but later came true.  I've been writing on these subjects for over three years now, across several blogs.  But these posts from my brainiac side have been mixed in with posts about Old School BMX freestyle, the new, little sport I got seriously into while in high school, and which was the main theme of 20 years of my life.  And the reality is, most BMXers don't really give a damn about the future, although they've played more of a role in it than most "average" people.  More on that in future posts, as well. 

So this blog is going to focus on my thinking about where society is, why we are where we are, and where I think we are headed.  I've literally had my life and well being threatened over these ideas at times.  There are some people, more specifically, some political ideologies, that don't want ideas other then their own out in the world.  But I'm an idea guy, and I'll keep putting my ideas out there into the world as long as I'm able.  If you get something worthwhile from reading this blog, and my other work, that's awesome. If not, there are about 4.2 billion or more other web pages for you to choose from, and 129,864,880 books published, as well as other media.  I'm sure you can find something you like.

So that's the basic idea of this blog.  I knew I needed to find a slightly better name for my Big Picture concept than "The Big Transition."  There are a few other, completely unrelated things, that come up in a Google search of that phrase.  After thinking about it for a few minutes, "The Big Freakin' Transition" is what I came up with.  So that's the name of this blog.  Yeah, still not super creative, but it will do.  It's kind of a reminder to have fun with these posts, and don't take anything too seriously.  All of our best made plans get messed up, and the future always seems to surprise us sometimes, no matter how much we think about it.  Enjoy.