Prosperity in The Age of Decline: How to Lead Your Business and Preserve Wealth Through the Coming Business Cycles

Chapter 2The Status Quo Never WasSeven Major Trends and Assumptions That Won't Last

After the recession of 2008–2009, business leaders, politicians, economists, and pundits of every sort were struggling to define what the “new norm” would be. People feel that their world has been turned upside down, that the life they once knew is no longer conceivable, and that there is a new, more dangerous future ahead. They may be right about the more dangerous future, but they are certainly wrong to think that somehow a unique major disruption to the status quo has befallen us. What has happened is that economic conditions have changed, which they always do. It is usually human perception and flawed memories that make the changes seem seismic. The actual changes themselves are much more gradual and almost always foreseeable. We argue that perceptions of China surpassing the United States and flawed memories of the one-time conventional wisdom how inflation would not give way to deflation are at work now and that they combine in a way that makes it nearly impossible to get an accurate read on the future. How can one project future events if the trends driving the outlook are waning, to be replaced by newer, more relevant trends?

The status quo for the early part of the twenty-first century has been shattered, but that status quo was starkly different from the 1990s, which were remarkably different than the 1980s, which was a decade nothing like the 1970s. We think it best to assume that ...