Life in 2050, or the far future has always been a fascinating topic for humanity. From novels like H.G Wells’ ‘The time machine” to movies like “Back to the future”, people have found predicting the future to be both a fun and a useful activity.
However, as fun, as it can be to think of flying cars and teleportation technology, accurately predicting the future must take a realistic approach that uses data trends and research to project the direction that humanity is taking in its future.
Why should we consider life in 2050 in the US?
1. Th economy
According to a study conducted by Pew research center, the majority of Americans have a mostly bleak vision for the future in most regards, but especially economically.
The public mostly predicts a future where the income gap between the one percent and the rest of the population continues to grow wider and wider. This seems to be a great concern, especially for the Americans, as 58% of Democrats believe that the federal government should prioritize decreasing this gap.
How the American economy will be like in 2050?
While this prediction is only what people think will happen. I believe that it’s indicative of a trend of greater anxiety amongst the American people towards class disparities. In the long term, this may lead to greater class consciousness and more political diversity in the American political scene.
This may cause the economy to head in a more egalitarian direction. Which will make the traditionally capitalistic American economy lean more and more towards socialism. This is already happening as Americans today have a far more favorable view of socialism, and a far less favorable view of capitalism than previous generations, according to Pew research.
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This, coupled with Americans believing that life in 2050 is going to bring tougher times economically, will ultimately direct the nation towards a more radical approach. One that involves solutions like higher taxation, more publicly funded healthcare and education, and possibly even universal basic income (UBI), which is being slated as a solution to the unemployment problem that automation is going to cause in the future.
2. Politics
As mentioned before, the US is already experiencing radical changes to its political scene that had been unthinkable in the 20th century. By the year 2050, the political scene is going to be much more diverse than it is today. Ever since the very first days of the union, most American politicians –and certainly all presidents- have been some flavor of liberal. This norm may be changing as more and more young people get radicalized by the frequent economic crisis.
How politics will be in the future?
A future where the historically center-right Congress will probably be packed with politicians from all over the spectrum. From hardcore communists to social-democrats, and ending with anarchist libertarians and fascists. This diversity will bring with it new tensions and divisions that will test America’s institutions. And it will test their power to keep the country stable and steer it away from civil conflicts and riots.
American hegemony over the world will have completely disappeared as more and more nations in the world create their own ways of projecting both soft and hard power. China, Russia, India, and the European Union are already taking steps to rise up as competitors to the united states on the world stage and are likely to become equal influencers in global politics as opposed to the current arrangement where every nation is second to the united stated.
3. The environment
According to the guardian, the world will be a very different place in 2050. Life in 2050 will be different. It will be a hostile, barren place with more trees, but fewer forests. The world will have heated by an estimated 3 degrees Celsius, perhaps even 4. The rich will be hidden behind well irrigated and well climate conditioned, while the rest of the world suffers from extreme heatwaves and natural disasters.
Many areas of the world will be unlivable because of the extreme heat. Also, many areas will be completely submerged underwater. Unless they take immediate and radical actions, 2050 will be unrecognizable, bordering on apocalyptic for most humans on the planet.
4. Innovation and technology
Future technology is notoriously difficult to predict because it is ever-changing by its very nature. One never knows how and when a paradigm-shifting breakthrough technology is going to appear. the founder of IBM, Thomas Watson, famously declared in 1943 that there is room in the world “for maybe five computers”.
How technology will shape life in 2050?
It’s still possible to make some predictions based on the cutting-edge technology that we’re witnessing right now. According to the guardian, the main technology that’s going to drive the future is going to be artificial intelligence. We already see a primitive form of this today. Algorithms dictate our entire lives through the of use machine learning to serve us ads, news, data projections, and more. In the future, this will be much more common.
In fact, 80% of Americans believe that most of the work is going to be done by robots in the future. This will cause a very significant increase in unemployment. This only means lower living standards for everyone, including the few people who still have jobs. But who will receive lower wages due to the high demand for work? As mentioned before, a lot of solutions have been suggested to solve this issue from UBI to increased social security legislation.
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Why we should pay more attention to climate!
On the climate technology front, there are a number of possible scenarios available to humanity. None of which sound very good. If we can get our emissions down to zero, there may be hope for the Earth to stay livable. However, that doesn’t seem very likely as the people in power will be the last to feel the effects of climate change.
We may also have to perform mega-scale injections of Sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere to turn the heavens a milky-white. Also, a whole generation never sees a clear blue sky.
Did you expect how life could be in 2020?
In the end, everyone has their own expectations and hopes for the future. Some have an optimistic view and others are very pessimistic. But, that’s the thing about the future, it’s a complete mystery.
If you’d asked me about life in 2021 a few years ago It would’ve never occurred to me that America would be fighting a worldwide pandemic. That apparently started because someone in China decided to have a bat soup for dinner. I suppose all we can do as humans are work hard, and hope for the best.
How do you think life in 2050 will be like?
