Afraid to Predict?

Every New Years, I’ve tried to get people to make predictions. Hardly any of them will. The best I have received so far is a stock broker who called KNON. After I prodded him, he responded, “The rich will get richer.” That’s about the safest prediction I ever heard.

My 2022 Predictions:

• Massive evictions will put millions into the ‘homeless’ category.
• Vigilantes and illegal militias will flourish.
• Political violence will become commonplace.
• Police will tend to allow the anti-worker outrages to flame, while suppressing any activity of pro-worker forces. This was the precedent set in Germany in the 1920s and has generally held.
• Poverty and hunger will grow, especially among children.
• The formal educational system will continue to deteriorate as Republicans undermine them with schemes like “charter” schools and assaults on officials. More and more parents will begin to seek out internet solutions.
• Big corporations will try to privatize the internet and everything else, including all utilities and municipal services.
• Persistent inflation will force the federal reserve to cut back on “quantitative easing” and near-zero interest rates. Stocks and bonds will crumble but the “real economy” won’t be hit so hard.
• Little if anything will get done about the environmental crisis. Freak weather disasters will increase and worsen.
• As world economies teeter, governments will advocate new wars.
• Omicron will hit early and hard. After it peaks early in the year, a solid majority of Americans will have some immunity from vaccination or from having already suffered through COVID. By late summer, it will no longer be the top of every news story
• The democratic party will continue unraveling while the Republican Party will grow more homogeneous and harder.
• Independent movements, particularly the women’s movement, will grow. We will see a revival of unemployed and homeless advocacy groups similar to those of the 1930s.
• These independent movements will be larger, better informed, and better integrated than anything we have ever seen in history. This is because people are better informed and have infinitely better communications.
• Unions will not initially lead these powerful independent movements. Unions will be drawn into the larger movement. They will play an important role in guiding and financing the movement.
• The 2022 elections will show people voting increasingly for 3rd or 4th parties, Greens, Working Family, Democrats, and Independents.
• One thing that the strong progressive organizations will agree on is this: vote for no Republican!
• Americans will begin to experiment with the kind of political strikes that have been known in other countries.
• And slowly, the way forward will begin to show itself.

–-Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” talk show at 9AM Central Time every Saturday. The program and a supplemental “Workers Beat Extra” are podcast on Soundcloud.com every Wednesday. My January 5 podcast includes these predictions. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site