How do you see the United States socially, culturally, politically, and in international influence in 50 years?

29 comments

  2. I’m going to level with you- if you told me to predict where we are now, five years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to. Fifty forward? Not seeing it.

  6. Only thing we can follow is trends. US is expected to get more racially diverse and decline in influence a little. I believe in 50 years we will be less polarized than we are now, given that the US has historically been through periods of calm and periods of disorder. Gen Alpha will be dominant. Who knows what the climate will be like, will it be a disaster or will we be carbon neutral?

  7. Remind me in 50 years and I’ll have a more accurate answer. If I’m still alive.

  8. US global influence is already showing signs of waning and I believe this will continue. The 20th century was the decline of British dominance, I predict the 21st to be the decline of ours.

    Honestly, not being the center of attention in the global news cycle would be kind of nice.

  9. No clue, and I think it’s a fool’s errand to try to predict it.

    One of my great grandparents served in World War I when he was a young man. In the world in which he lived, women wore hoop dresses and giant hats, the economy was based on agriculture, the federal government had almost no role in regulating the economy, Christianity had an essentially unquestioned role in public life, and the idea of a multi-racial democracy was thought to be inconceivable.

    He was still alive 50 years later in 1968. The world was wildly, wildly different by that point. I don’t think I need to go into the details. But I can’t imagine that he would have been able to conceive of how different the world would become. I’m sure that many, many things will be different in ways I simply can’t imagine in 2072.

  10. No way to know. It seems to me like every iteration of Americans has a larger proportion of dead-weights and problematic members of society. Social media was exacerbating cultural divides then covid turbocharged it.

    Now we’re seeing a breakdown in rule of law across all levels of society, top to bottom.

    I’d like to think we’ll recover to a more stable level of civility and become a more responsible productive society. But that’s not easy. The us vs them mentality is very difficult to dismantle. Everyone seems to agree that our democracy is under attack and failing but depending on who you ask it’s for totally different reasons and one groups proposed safeguards are what the other group sees as the problem in the first place.

    Too much of the movie idiocracy has already come to pass and I suspect more will follow.

  13. Read *The Storm Before the Calm: America’s Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond* by George Friedman. He covers this exact topic. In short, it’s not as doom and gloom as people make it out to be.

  15. I can’t really see beyond 10 years, or even the ’24 election. I would like for it to be a more liberal culture and politics, and to strengthen and expand its international influence without Russian and Chinese dictatorship in the world.

  16. A lot of awful politicians will be dead in 50 years so I guess that’s something to look forward to

  17. I would not be surprised if as a result of automation, like 50% of the population is unemployed and survives off of a universal basic income. They will occupy a new socio-economic class between poverty and lower middle class. “What do you want to do when you grow up” will change to “are you interested in getting a job when you grow up?”

  18. Cultural/social I’d still say it would be number one. I mean no other country is putting out the music and movies that the US is doing. Political, maybe not number one but still probably top 5

  19. We will have a conservative wave followed by a more liberal wave socially. I think now we have a very liberal social culture that will become conservative in like 10-15 years (like 81-01 here) and then liberal about 20 years after that.

  20. Definitely not as it is in its current capacity. It’s becoming increasingly obvious the US isn’t sustainable as is, terrorism is a weekly occurrence, income inequality is moving into unstable levels, and political division is at a breaking point. Idk how anyone can predict anything else at this point.

  21. My friends and I happened to look at a magazine from the mid 70’s a little while ago. When we looked at the letters to the editor, it could have been written yesterday. Letters about drug legislation, racial inequality, gun control, and the environment… Saying almost the exact same arguments on all sides as are currently in the news.

    We haven’t really made much progress in the last 50 years. Why should the next 50 be much different?

  22. I would not be surprised if as a result of automation, like 50% of the population is unemployed and survives off of a universal basic income. They will occupy a new socio-economic class between poverty and lower middle class. “What do you want to do when you grow up” will change to “are you interested in getting a job when you grow up?”

  23. Barring the breakup of the union, the US will still be a top 5 world power due to its sheer size (area and population) and potential economic might alone.

  24. Buddy, even we don’t know what we’re gonna do next. Americans are a lot of things – predictable has never really been one of them.

  27. Domestically? I predict another rough decade or two while the smaller younger generations have to support the dying Boomers via Medicare and Social Security, then a massive bounceback once the population balance equalizes a bit. Boomer wealth has to go *somewhere* when they die, and younger generations are increasingly near-universal supporters of, without getting specific, sets of policies that I think will be greatly beneficial to most of the country.

    Social media has been a massive wedge for older generations sociopolitically, leading to more arguments than ever before, but my extremely hot take is that it’s doing the opposite for younger generations (young millennial and below). The level of unity you see in sociopolitical beliefs among the young is staggering. Any time you poll young people on some political issue, you’ll get results skewed as highly as 70/30 or 80/20. Compare to Boomers/GenX, where even beliefs that are culturally associated with those groups are rarely more than 55/45 or 60/40. My hypothesis about this trend is that:

    1. Social media/globalism in general has erased geographic bubbles, so if you’re some small town red state kid, you actually get to interact with “godless coastal liberals” now and realize they’re not actually demon worshippers who drink babies’ blood for breakfast. I think increased social interaction with Europeans in particular has been a really underappreciated aspect of this. You grow up your whole life being told that it’s a dystopian nightmare to have government healthcare (or really just strong government institutions at all), and then suddenly you meet people who look at you with a combination of disdain and pity for not having it. The whole conservative platform is based on the idea that government institutions inherently suck and cannot be made to be useful. Talking with these people provides a *direct* counterexample that blows up the whole thing. Really changes your worldview. Compare to the pre-Internet generations, most of which have probably never even spoken to a European before (the US’s geographic isolation is a *massive* boon economically, militarily, and diplomatically but has some weird cultural effects). To be fair, I think the average European understands the US about as well as the average American understands Europe (i.e. *extremely poorly*), but that is a different topic.

    2. (Not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, but a thing nevertheless) social media tends to not be very friendly to minority opinions, so once any given belief hits 51% of the group or more, it will continue to snowball via peer pressure to much greater majorities. This sounds draconian on the surface and is not fun if you ever are the one with the minority opinion, but *for better or worse* I believe it has contributed greatly to generational unity. Even if a given belief isn’t actually a better answer… honestly, it’s kind of nice to just be on the same page with your peers and not have to worry about constantly fighting them.

    Internationally? It would take the better part of a century to knock the US off its perch. The only remotely possible thing short of a near-apocalyptic collapse that could threaten our role as the single global cultural and political hegemon would be the EU actually uniting as one single country, which would then still be slightly economically weaker but might wield more cultural and diplomatic power due to their location and better relations with much of the rest of the world.

    And of course it all bears saying that the “current” levels of disfunction and conflict are the norm in the US and have been since before James Madison even put quill to paper. One of the greatest contributions that Hamilton made to modern culture, IMO, is increased awareness of just how much the revered founding fathers fought with one another and even literally killed each other in disputes. We had a literal Civil War that killed more Americans than World War II. GenX’s adolescent years of relative peace, prosperity, and happiness are the outlier. Not the post-Bush fighting and hatred.

    Note that the above is just wild guesswork from someone who isn’t even a sociopolitical expert. Just a random regular person’s hot takes, presented as such.

  28. Difficult question. With different answers depending on which branch of our country we’re talking about.

    Economically, good. Depending on Chinas rise or tumble probably number one. Our ability to “brain drain is outmatched for several reasons, and unfortunately for other nations some of those cannot be copied. On top of that much of the world will be facing water scarcity whereas America is fresh water wealthy.

    Socially, not sure. I don’t expect a civil war by any means. I expect tensions to slide a bit when the next GOP president gets into office that isn’t Trump. Even someone who is like him politically (DeSantis) won’t tweet videos of people yelling “white power” or telling the proud boys to “stand by.”

    Soft power? Probably even more influential. A lot of younger people may disagree or foreign posters want to argue, but just look at the Ukraine and the South China Sea. Europe was divided to long to be effective and even today Germany, their best bet for leadership, is showing weakness. In the SCS, plenty of nations are bucking at China and wanting stronger relations with the States.

    Culture, our grip is getting stronger even today. Other nations that could compete due to funding and what not are viewed as rigged, cold, or just “uncool.”

    Obviously things won’t be roses, but they aren’t today either. I don’t things will chance as much as others do.

  29. Even more blatant centralized authoritarianism than we see now but with an even bigger decentralist/libertarian backlash. To put it short and sweet.

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