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Monthly Archives: January 2013

Shadows of the Past

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This is a story I like to tell, and it seems appropriate on Dr. King Day.  It’s hard for those of us too young to remember “how it was” to understand the progress we have made – and how important Dr. King’s legacy is. 

The rumor spread down Flagler Street with a sense of urgency.  Miami was a city of rumors, each of us trying to stay ahead of the latest in unrest.  There was a way these things came through, a procedure.  It came to me in broken Spanglish, filling the pause between the order of Café Cubano and the exchange of money.  “They found the shadows yesterday.  I think they’ll just leave it.”  I wasn’t sure exactly what they were talking about, but I knew it was exciting.  “It was the old Colored fountain.”  What?

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Managing Innovation

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What does the future hold?  The job is often left to Futurists, which is nice work if you can get it.  Then again, we still don’t really have flying cars, do we?  It’s always hard to predict just what will happen as technologies advance, and by that I mean a lot more than just information technology.  There’s still a lot to be done with advanced materials, machining, finance, and other more mundane things.

We have determined in Barataria that as the world’s population grows richer, more uniformly, working age populations are going to stabilize and even decline in the next two decades.  That means that future growth will come not from more workers but from new technologies.  That puts pressure on the Futurists, for sure, but it puts even more pressure on the delicate art of managing innovation – the process of rendering a bit of magic into practical use.  It’s a topic worth exploring.

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With a Moslem Beat?

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Looking back through history may not seem like a good way to determine our future, but it’s all we have.  We can reasonably guess that if all the trends continue the current Depression will run its course by 2017, give or take a few years or a major meltdown. We can also be pretty sure that this current period of evening out between the developed and developing world will be followed by relatively low growth as working age populations flatten across the planet.

Where this gets tricky is the realization that Western finance, including stocks and bonds and constant price inflation, is not remotely set up for a low-growth world.  Something has to change.  The best recommendation any of us can make is what is working in economies built around sustainability and resilience today as well as strategies that functioned well before the great wave of industrialization.  And that’s where I’m going to start with a few suggestions and predictions as to how finance as we know it could change.

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Growth is … Good?

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Growth is good.  That’s been the mantra of just about every society at every point in human history, at least until recently.  More people means more to work the land and higher productivity.  If it gets a bit out of hand, high growth can create a larger army to go knock off the neighbors and open things up even more.

The pattern held through the industrial era and right up to the point where large undeveloped nations started to have trouble feeding themselves.  There were incidents of mass starvation in some empires, likely even the Mayan, but until the 20th Century growth has always been something that everyone relies on.  Peaceful societies have put growth to work taking care of the vulnerable and generally enjoying the few years we all have on this Earth a bit more.

But what if growth slows down, or even stops?  One of the defining features of the next generation is likely to be dealing with declining growth across the planet.  It’s also one of those issues that no one is ready to talk about.

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A New Generation’s Prospects

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Employment opportunities for those ages 20-24 are worse than the general economy and not improving as rapidly.  So are they going to college instead?  The answer, apparently, is that they are not according to the latest figures.  College enrollment is down slightly – and graduation rates within a 6-year time frame have ebbed to a new low, 59% of those who started in 2006.  Graduation rates are improving at 2-year institutions such as community colleges and tech schools has increased from 21% to 37%, suggesting students are more serious, but are still pitifully low.

The problem for the young is much bigger than reduced employment opportunities today – it also includes reduced achievement in higher education which implies reduced opportunities tomorrow.  This is part of a growing backlash against the “Educational Industrial Complex” that encourages debt but is unable to payoff with job opportunities.  Will that backlash grow into a generational revolt?

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