The Next 100 Years

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A
wall is being built along the southern border of the United States. 
The goal is to keep illegal immigrants out. The United States built 
its economic might on the backs of immigrants, but since the 
1920s there has been a national consensus that the flow of immigrants 
should be limited so that the economy can absorb them, and to ensure that 
jobs will not be taken away from citizens. The wall along the Mexican bor­
der is the logical conclusion to this policy. 
In the 1920s, the world was in the midst of an accelerating population 
explosion. The problem facing the United States, and the world, was what 
to do with an ever- increasing pool of labor. Labor was cheap, and it tended 
to move to countries that were wealthy. The United States, facing an on­
slaught of potential immigrants, decided to limit their entry in order to 
keep the price of labor—wages—from plunging. 
The assumption on which U.S. immigration policy was built will not be 
true in the twenty- first century. The population surge is abating, and people 
are living longer. This leads to an older population, with fewer younger 
workers. It means that the United States will be short of workers no later 

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than 2020 and accelerating throughout the decade, and will need immi­
grants to fill the gap. But it will need new workers at the same time that the 
rest of the industrial world needs them. In the twentieth century, the prob­
lem was limiting immigration. In the twenty- first century, the problem will 
be attracting enough immigrants. 
The second collapse of Russia will appear to open the door to a golden age 
for the United States. But a massive internal economic crisis caused by a short­
age of labor will emerge just as the confrontation with Russia is ending. 
We can already see the leading edge of this crisis today in the graying of 
the population of advanced industrialized countries. Part of the crisis will be 
social—the family structures that have been in place for centuries will con­
tinue to break down, leaving larger numbers of elderly people with no one 
to care for them. And as I stated earlier, there will be more and more elderly 
people to care for. This will create intense political struggle between social 
conservatism and ever- changing social reality. We are already seeing this in 
popular culture—from talk shows to politicians—but it will intensify dra­
matically until a crisis point is reached in the mid-2020s. 
The crisis will come to a head, if history is any guide, in the presidential 
election of either 2028 or 2032. I say that because there is an odd—and not 
entirely explicable—pattern built into American history. Every fifty years, 
roughly, the United States has been confronted with a defining economic 
and social crisis. The problem emerges in the decade before the crisis be­
comes apparent. A pivotal presidential election is held that changes the 
country’s political landscape over the following decade or so. The crisis is re­
solved, and the United States flourishes. Over the next generation, the solu­
tion to the old problem generates a new one, which intensifies until there is 
another crisis and the process repeats itself. Sometimes the defining mo­
ment is not readily apparent until later, and sometimes it can’t be missed. 
But it is always there. 
To understand the reasons why I believe we will see a crisis in the 2020s, 
it’s important to understand this pattern in some detail. Just as you can’t in­
vest in stocks without understanding historical patterns, you can’t make 
sense out of my forecasting here without understanding American political 
and economic cycles. 

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In its history so far, the United States has had four such complete cycles 
and is currently about halfway through its fifth. The cycles usually begin 
with a defining presidency and end in a failed one. So the Washington cycle 
ends with John Quincy Adams, Jackson ends with Ulysses S. Grant, Hayes 
with Herbert Hoover, and FDR with Jimmy Carter. Underneath the poli­
tics, the crises are defined by the struggle between a declining dominant 
class linked to an established economic model and the emergence of a new 
class and a new economic model. Each faction represents a radically differ­
ent way of viewing the world and a different definition of what it means to 
be a good citizen, and reflects the changing ways of making a living.