QUESTION: Marty, Socrates has forecast a global recession into 2028. Unemployment remains low, yet layoffs continue to make headlines. Inflation has slowed, but grocery prices keep rising. Corporate profits have climbed, but small businesses are struggling. Europe is imploding as you warned they would face a depression, while we have stagflation. We are also entering a period of increased earthquakes and volcanic activity, as you forecast. You also forecast that we will be entering a period of dramatic population decline going into 2040. At the 2024 WEC, you said the Democratic Party was moving toward a split. All of this is a backdrop to your war forecasts. You also forecast that China would surpass the United States a decade ago. You said that AI is like the Internet, which also displaced jobs.
Is all of this part of the reorganizing of the world post-2032?
Ken
ANSWER: Yes. I have explained before, the birth rate declines the richer a country becomes. The Roman Emperor Augustus (27BC-13AD) passed Family Laws for this very reason. The average age for a girl to have her first child in 1933 was 23 years old. That is now reaching 30 years old and the birth rate is collapsing. This is part of the reason why they have let in the migrants. By 2030. the birth rate in the UK will be short 1 million babies while there will be 1 million more pensioners. The pension systems are ponzi schemes that were based on the presumption that the population was always rising. The entire financial system is in crisis.
The US, Japan, Europe, and even Singapore are facing population collapse by 2032. France reported the lowest birthrate since 1919 with World War I. The typical excuse is that having children is a burden. It is too costly and the future is too uncertain. When my parents were living, one salary supported the family. Today, because of excessive taxation and regulation, it takes two salaries and people are not confortable with that.
We are also in a transition period. Our most significant risks is like the 19th-century transition to the Industrial Revolution. Marx and others did not understand the transition process. They saw a farmer now as a factory worker and the capitalist made money from his labor, while ignoring the creation of jobs.
It is a Schumpeter version of creative destruction. The old establishment collapses, replaced by the new economic trend. Marx was influenced by Aristotle, who also did not understand the transition as Athens became the world’s new financial capital. Brokers were encouraging farmers to produce more because they could sell grain to other city-states. Aristotle called them the men who made money from money. Aristotle saw that this was changing what I call the Villa Economy, where people were self-sufficient and were being transformed into a market economy.
The transition to the Industrial Revolution ignited socialism/communism. These radical ideas of monetary equality rather than civil right equality led to class warfare. By 1912, Teddy Roosevelt launched the failed Progressive Party. But by 1913, their hatred and class warfare gave us the income tax to punish the wealthy and this level of monetary resentment led to two world wars. All of this is a trend that unfortunately leads to war as the final culmination of class warfare and hatred.
Communism collapsed 72 years after the upheaval of 1917. The Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957. The 72-year Revolution Cycle brings us again to 2029. Socialism is collapsing the same as communism in Russia and China. The radical idea of the 19th century which have killed hundreds of millions in the name of equality, are coming to their same inefficient realization. This is why you see Europe desperate attacking free speech etc.
There are times when earthquakes and volcanoes cluster together. That took place during the 19th century. That led to the year without a summer in 1816 and Napoleon was defeated by two volcanoes. The year 2025 should have produced more volcanoes and earthquakes. We just had a double earthquake one in Japan and then in Alaska. They are clustering again.
Japan sits on the western edge of the Pacific Plate, where the Pacific Plate subducts beneath. Alaska sits on the northern–eastern edge of the Pacific Plate, where the Pacific Plate subducts beneath. Japan and Alaska are on opposite sides of the Pacific Plate and both are part of the Pacific Ring of Fire as both experience megathrust subduction earthquakes. The computer simply looks at the data and calculated the cycles. This does not look like it will calm down before 2032.
