By Les Dunaway
The economy will be THE underlying issue in politics for the foreseeable future. America has, finally, woken-up to the fact that spending money we don’t have must stop. Now the conversation is turning to how do we dig out of the hole the tax & spenders have gotten us into. To answer that question, we must look at what’s likely and/or possible for the next 20 years. Detailed prognostications for such a time line are impossible. However, broad trends are easily seen.
If you haven’t read and followed Harry Dent, I recommend this paper as a very good overview of Dent’s theory. For those who don’t follow it or don’t believe it, I’ll simply tell you that his methodology is how every manufacturing company in the world plans their production. Demographics is not theory, it is fact; with a timeline reaching back centuries. For more detail read or buy the book.
OK, now you know that sixteen years after someone gets married is when they buy the most potato chips. More important, you’ve looked at the graph 
and you have seen that the current “down turn” will last until about 2025. As more people, 10,000 per day, move into “retirement” they spend less.
Take the housing market, when we were on the up-slope – more people were moving into the max-spending ages, more and more bought the “big house”. That annual increase is over until baby boomers kids hit that stage. That means that many people who were employed in home building must find another line of work. Small businesses will, as usual, be the driver of this transition.
When any candidate begins to talk about how he will “create jobs” remember two things:
- The only way any government can “create jobs” is to reduce red-tape, reduce taxes and get out of the way!
- If the candidate can’t describe what the new jobs will be and how they will be filled, he/she is blowing smoke up your kilt.
So, for the upcoming campaigns, I have a top-line slogan for you