George Friedman’s latest book,
The Storm Before The Calm,
is well worth reading. Friedman has looked at America’s history and identified two
cycles. One cycle is America’s periodic rethinking of the government’s role,
and that seems to occur about every 80 years (World War II’s massive expansion
of government power was the last one). And then there is a 50-year economic
cycle, in which we disrupt the economic model. Both are coming to the end of
their cycle together in the 2020-2030 era, which he predicts will produce
substantial unrest (the Storm), but then, as we always have in the past, we
will accommodate to the new reality (the Calm).
This is fundamentally an optimistic book, but Friedman does
think we will go through turbulent times in the next decade, for which Trump’s election
and Sander’s rise is not the cause but simply a symptom of the growing problems
that will drive the cycles.
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