Want to know what's to come? Here's are my guesses!
As usual I’m doing my best to make accurate predictions about the year ahead; mainly for fun and often not very well. This year’s no different so I’ll do my best to make three accurate predictions. As always: predictions are hard, especially about the future.
1. Political violence will continue in the US.
Before the attack on the Capitol building in Washington DC on the sixth of January I had long been thinking about writing a piece arguing that Biden should pardon Trump to help the US to heal after the divisive Trump years. However, after the events at the Capitol pardoning Trump would be political suicide for any Democrat which will make it harder to decrease the hostility between Democrats and Republicans. Furthermore, with Trump’s Twitter account being shut down conservatives’ fear of social media platforms’ liberal bias can be argued to be confirmed. All of this combined with the stolen election narrative being widespread on the American right makes continuing political violence a real possibility going forward.
2. Large economies' budget deficits will continue to be high even after the pandemic is over.
In 2020 many large economies spent lavishly to counter the ill effects of the pandemic which is perfectly justified in the Keynesian view. However, with interest rates at pretty much an all time low it will be hard for many politicians to resist spending more than they should. Of course, this will vary greatly by region; Germany and the Nordic are most likely to not overindulge whereas the France, Italy, the UK, and especially the US and Japan are almost certain to spend more than they can afford.
3. The pandemic will live on beyond 2021.
The pandemic will hopefully be sorted out in the year ahead in the rich world such that life will go back to normal. However, the virus and the disease itself will definitely stick around and I wouldn’t be surprised if there will be new outbreaks of Covid-19 in the future. Relatedly, there have been countless people who have said some version of ‘there is no going back to normal, the world is forever changed after the pandemic’ which I unequivocally refute. The world sure has changed but in the end many changes won’t stay for long, unfortunately the corona virus most likely will.
Let me know what you think, are my predictions reasonable? If you want to read more of my writing you can find last week’s post where I looked backed on my predictions for 2020 to see if any of the predictions I made were accurate here. If you enjoyed this post consider sharing it with a friend or co-worker. Come back next Monday for a new post.
Written by Karl Johansson
Cover Photo by Danielle Rangel from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson
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