Globalization’s Future Depends on Stable U.S.-China-India Order

My Comments: The word economics is enough to give some people the heebie jeebies. And you may be wondering why in the world I would devote at least one blog post every week to this idea which so effectively causes people to shut down. After all, the reason for a blog in the first place is to cause people to want to pay attention and become followers.

As I’ve said many times, in our society, having more money is much better than having less money. The trends and influences that exist across the globe today that will result in you having more money are largely economic forces. The challenge is to understand them well enough to take advantage of opportunities.

The concept of “globalization” began following World War II when the US and the Marshall Plan began to help countries devastated by WWII recover and grow. The past sixty years have been hugely successful in that large parts of the world have seen the slow development of a middle class whose goals and aspirations resemble our own. State on state conflict has largely disappeared from the planet as standards of living have improved across all nations.

By Thomas P.M. Barnett | 30 Apr 2012

By my calculations, China, India and America will all converge on the year 2030 in a similar fashion, despite their varying power trajectories. The key reasons for choosing 2030 as our waypoint include the following macro dynamics that will be consummated by then:

America’s industrial renaissance triggered by the fracking revolution will be in full swing.

America’s political transition from the Boomer generation to Gen X and the Millennials will be complete, ending the zero-sum dynamics of today’s gridlocked Washington.

India will have surpassed China in available labor, and the transfer of low-end manufacturing jobs from China will be peaking, eventually granting India globalization’s “rising” crown.

China’s adjustment to the S-curve reality of developmental economics, whereby extensive growth eventually slows to incremental, productivity-driven growth, will have unfolded.

China’s per capita income will have reached $20,000, a level no large-sized authoritarian polity has attained without succumbing to democratization.

China’s demographic aging will be inescapably pervasive, as the old begin significantly to outnumber the young.

China will have surpassed the United States as the biggest importer of oil, but also of food.

And most importantly, all three states will have effectively processed the widespread angry populism that currently infects their societies by pursuing progressive political agendas that thereupon define their soft-power appeal throughout the world.