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The government will tell you what you can eat and how much you have to exercise and will deny you healthcare if you don't conform. They will monitor your food consumption when store cards become mandatory and what you purchase has to be turned over to some newly created federal bureaucracy. Drug cartels will be replaced by food cartels selling swag ice cream, butter, beer, chips and non-organic food.
The government will turn on your washing machine, dryer, dishwasher and decide how warm or cold your home has to be and they will adjust your temperature accordingly.
The government will decide what cars you can drive. The government will force you to move closer to the cities so they can suck extra taxes out of you to pay for urban programs and force you not to drive and use public transportation.
Old people will get the same treatment as aborted babies and will have their healthcare rationed in favor of younger people/workers.
The government will know where you are at all times as GPS in cars and communication devices will be mandatory, there will be cameras everywhere, unmanned aerial vehicles will patrol the streets and neighborhoods, there will be a chip in your driver's license...and there may even be a chip in you.
The government will penalize all behavior it doesn't agree with by taking money out of your wallet. Kids will turn in their parents.
Oh yeah, one more thing...you'll be overrun by polar bears.
Well...if things keep going like this, the USA will be a barren, lifeless wasteland. Hopefully Americans will get their heads out of the sand and actually find good solutions to problems instead of throwing worthless cash at them.
The government will tell you what you can eat and how much you have to exercise and will deny you healthcare if you don't conform. They will monitor your food consumption when store cards become mandatory and what you purchase has to be turned over to some newly created federal bureaucracy. Drug cartels will be replaced by food cartels selling swag ice cream, butter, beer, chips and non-organic food.
The government will turn on your washing machine, dryer, dishwasher and decide how warm or cold your home has to be and they will adjust your temperature accordingly.
The government will decide what cars you can drive. The government will force you to move closer to the cities so they can suck extra taxes out of you to pay for urban programs and force you not to drive and use public transportation.
Old people will get the same treatment as aborted babies and will have their healthcare rationed in favor of younger people/workers.
The government will know where you are at all times as GPS in cars and communication devices will be mandatory, there will be cameras everywhere, unmanned aerial vehicles will patrol the streets and neighborhoods, there will be a chip in your driver's license...and there may even be a chip in you.
The government will penalize all behavior it doesn't agree with by taking money out of your wallet. Kids will turn in their parents.
Oh yeah, one more thing...you'll be overrun by polar bears.
I like your post and was thinking along the same lines regarding government taking on a big brother type of role by 2040.
But on a more serious note, I think some good could come from it, especially when it comes to crime. If technology allows advances in brain scanning and lie detection to a point where it will hold up in a court of law, crime can be greatly reduced. If you commit a crime and they can implant a GPS chip in you, it's gonna be pretty hard for you to plan your life of crime, right ? It might be the only thing that saves us from the exploding gangster culture that threatens our future.
Im not sure the government has the will to lock all these people up, but maybe there won't be so many criminals when they know they are gonna be identified and caught. The key is to isolate them in a place where they have to work and pay for the roof over their head. If taxpayers don't have to flip the bill for prisons, then it becomes much more possible to put 10 million people away if need be. They could be sent to prison factories, mines and work farms, without so much public concern as they will be sick of crime. So again, if you know you are going to get caught and have to work for the state and victim reparation fund, would you still want to be a gangster criminal ?
I hope our future with big brother gives us something better than we have now, but they better not try and take away our guns from honest citizens, or all hell is going to break loose. If we can get on the right path with energy, border security, crime ect, by 2040 we might be in good shape. Those red wine pills might have me looking pretty good for a man of 73.
I like your post and was thinking along the same lines regarding government taking on a big brother type of role by 2040.
But on a more serious note, .
Except for the polar bears, I was serious.
In fact, I expect about three-quarters of those things to be instituted in full or in part by the Obama administration including denying or rationing healthcare (check the British system that the original Obama cabinet pick, tax-challenged Tom Daschle, was enamored with. Treatment is based on cost effectiveness and number of years you are expected to live. You can call it by another name but it still smells like rationing healthcare for the elderly.), chips in your driver's license (already under discussion), mandatory GPS in all cars, deciding when you wash your dishes/clothes and how cool or warm your house has to be according to the government (seen those commercials for smart grid? Guess what that is? Yeah, I know, it doesn't mention that in the TV ads but look it up). Unmanned aerial vehicles already patrol the US borders and I think some police departments (Los Angeles?) are either using them now or contemplating using them. Some yahoos in Congress already floated the idea of making you pay for how far you drive but the public outcry was such, it was quashed but I expect it will come up again. This "economic crisis" is going to be used to push every totalitarian idea imaginable. It won't take until 2040.
I don't think much will change either. I will be 51 in 2040, Yikes! I think for the most part you will see gas mileage go up and more people moving back to the rustbelt.
Well LauraC, our healthcare system is broken because of greed and inefficientcy. We pay twice what most other countries pay for our healtcare, without any noticeable improvement of life expectantcy or quality of care, in some cases were behind in quality of care. It hurts small business and people are dropping like flies from medical bankruptcy.
We should borrow Japan's system of social medicine that puts the people first and caps and pegs with inflation the salary rates of medical people. They eliminate the insurance companies and blood suckers all the way down the line from medical equipment manufacturing, hospital expenses, malpractice suits, every detail is micro managed to deliver the best care at the lowest cost. They have more hospitals per capita than anywhere in the world.
I don't know about the government telling you when you can wash your clothes or heat you home. But if your one of the lucky 5% or so that owns a rediculously large home, maybe you should be forced to buy a solar system, geo-thermal/heat pump and or windmill to power and heat your home. After all, your just wasting energy and increasing demand, thus making the rest of us trying to conserve energy have to pay more for it. If your that rich, you can afford it or pass on that 5000 sq/ft home.
What's wrong with using GPS to track a stolen car, a criminal running from the law, or using a robot aircraft to patrol the border, heck.....put some guns on that sucker.
Mannn you people are so depressing! What ever happened to American optimism? People have been predicting doomsday forever-- only to be proven wrong again and again. Despite the gloom that surrounds this recession, things as a whole keep getting better and better.
What will America be like in 30 years?
* Environmentalism and responsible living are considered ethical imperatives, and new sources of energy make mass pollution a thing of the past (say, solar panels in space). Food, water, and air quality standards are such that hormones, non-organic, preservatives, and all sorts of pollutants are effectively absent.
* Rural populations continue to decline (except in areas with a plethora of inherent natural beauty) and the country concentrates in mega-metro areas (BosWash, SanFranDiego, RalCharlanta, VanSeaPortland, Great Lakes). High-speed rail in mass transit, as well as a desire for all-inclusive, walkable communities encourage denser living, but with ample natural/recreational surroundings.
* Medical technology advances to the point where life expectancy for the average American reaches 100, with at least 85 of those years expected to be "healthy". Cancer still exists, but, much like diabeties today, is a disease with treatments so effective that people can "co-exist" with cancer. One of society's greatest political/social issues is how to support a massive retired population and encourage population growth.
* People find fears of the "Mexicanization" of America as ridiculous/laughable as we find fears in the early 20th century that the mass of Irish and Italian immigrants would turn America in to a Pope-run, impoverished state. Or worries in 1800 that the German language was taking over. Racism is essentially a non-factor (think about it, how many racists under 30 do you know?). Mexico and other Latin American states have become "advanced enough" (think Spain, Italy, Greece today compared to 30 years ago) so that there is no longer mass immigration. The US continues to attract the most talented legal immigrants from across the globe looking to work in our world-class universities and businesses. Because of the aging population, America actively seeks immigrants from poorer countries-- and because of the diversity that already exists, the average American does not see this as a "threat"
* The US is still the world's most powerful nation, but it must collaborate with the EU, China, India, and Brazil in "ruling" the world economy. Global conflict and interaction revolves entirely around economic concerns. Wars and conflict remain, but they are generally civil affairs in still-suffering Africa, southern Asia, the few remaining impoverished parts of Latin America. Still, liberal democracies and capitalist economies (given, with a much larger government role than today) will dominate all but the most "rebellious" nations.
* Cultural issues revolve largely around bio-ethics. Should we allow cloning? Genetic engineering? The expansion of education and social acceptability of "waiting" to marry until early-30's, in addition to very effective contraceptives, makes teenage pregnancy, the need for abortions, and divorce generally less common and less controversial. The is a general trend towards social libertarianism. But with this (primarily due to greater education levels) comes a resurgence of personal and community ethics. Organized religion in the traditional sense has lost ground. The largely Christian population attends non-denomination, Bible-believing churches that leave personal tradition choices up to the individual. The "big-bang theory" and evolution seem obvious to Christians as the method by which God carried out His creation plan. Non-believers feel no need to attend church "just because," and similar trends occur in the Jewish and Muslim communities. Cultural divisions are no longer between Catholic/Protestant/Jewish, but simply between believers (in God/religion) and non-believers.
I don't know... just a few ideas. Like 1977 to today, things have generally only gotten better (and 1,000 times better than people predicted!) Who would have guessed in 1977 that the Soviet Union would be left to the ashes of history (and no nuclear war ever happened), that the hippies did largely go away and America did not sink in to liberal socialism but instead went in to a period of great conservative resurgence, and that crime would simply plummet in the 1990's to the point that New York City was (literally) safer than Disney World (well, Orlando).
Well LauraC, our healthcare system is broken because of greed and inefficientcy. We pay twice what most other countries pay for our healtcare, without any noticeable improvement of life expectantcy or quality of care, in some cases were behind in quality of care. It hurts small business and people are dropping like flies from medical bankruptcy.
We should borrow Japan's system of social medicine that puts the people first and caps and pegs with inflation the salary rates of medical people. They eliminate the insurance companies and blood suckers all the way down the line from medical equipment manufacturing, hospital expenses, malpractice suits, every detail is micro managed to deliver the best care at the lowest cost. They have more hospitals per capita than anywhere in the world.
I don't know about the government telling you when you can wash your clothes or heat you home. But if your one of the lucky 5% or so that owns a rediculously large home, maybe you should be forced to buy a solar system, geo-thermal/heat pump and or windmill to power and heat your home. After all, your just wasting energy and increasing demand, thus making the rest of us trying to conserve energy have to pay more for it. If your that rich, you can afford it or pass on that 5000 sq/ft home.
What's wrong with using GPS to track a stolen car, a criminal running from the law, or using a robot aircraft to patrol the border, heck.....put some guns on that sucker.
I rent an apartment (in a cheap state, I might add) so I'm not living large and I don't want the stinking government deciding how warm or cold my apartment should be or that my washing machine/dishwasher has to be turned on at 3:00A in the morning because that's when it's off peak. And guess what? If I was rich I wouldn't want the stinking government making those decisions for me, either.
And the Japanese healthcare system is not the one Daschle was touting. The British one is the one that determines treatment using a formula of cost effectiveness and the number of years you are expected to live. What part about that "number of years you are expected to live" doesn't sound like rationing healthcare for the elderly?
And they will let you opt out of their national healthcare database. But, guess what? They're going to penalize doctors for not giving the system "meaningful use." Guess what that means? If your doctor is going to have to pay a penalty for you electing to opt out of the system, he's going to drop you as a patient. Again, the government knows this. Instead of telling you you have to participate in a national database, they're doing it sneakily, you know, they slipped it in, in the Act that was supposed to be about stimulating the economy. If you can tell me how a nationalized database is in any way related to job creation or putting more money in your pocket, please enlighten me. But no, they "snuck" it in to the Spendapalooza Rush Job because they didn't want to call too much attention to it/create discussion about it in some healthcare bill that would get more scrutiny than the "rush it through before anyone reads it" stimulus bill got.
Cap and trade? Hurting the big energy guys? Ha! That cost will be passed along to you the consumer making your income tax relief look like peanuts. And you don't think that was the plan anyway to force you to drive the kind of cars sanctioned by the government, use the kind of energy they want you to use, drive as little as possible? And those guys taking bailout money...you don't think the government is going to come calling to have the favor repaid? If it looks too good to be true, it usually is.
GPS in your car should be something you pay for if you want it, not something I pay for when I don't want it.
I don't care about drones patrolling the border. What I care about is, so far the technology is ahead of the law in the way these things can be used. And many unmanned aerial vehicles are armed and some of them are as small as insects. Do you know how they are being used with any degree of certainty or how they could be used down the road if the law doesn't keep up with the technology?
I know what's right for me. I don't want to cede personal decisions to the federal government and I sure as hell don't want to pay them to make personal decisions for me. And even moreso, I don't like the sneaky slight of hand way these things are being foisted on a national population by the Obama administration and Congress. I'm not three years old, I thought I lived in a free country and I thought the government works for me, not the other way around.
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