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Trends 2006

Has a nagging anxiety about the state of the world been nipping at your heels lately? Have you had the sense that life is about to get harder? Well, you would be in good company. According to The Trends Research Institute, 2006 is going to be a difficult year.

Still, one individual’s anxiety is another corporation’s opportunity. The Trends Research Institute is the place where corporations and financial institutions turn to find out how to reposition, where market gaps exist, and what new opportunities are on the horizon.

The Institute released their Trends 2006 forecast in December 2005. For us mere mortals, these are some of the trends on the rise:

• This year marks the beginning of the end of the major television networks’ monopoly. Internet television will see huge growth.

• Americans are in a long-term down-sizing mode: cars, homes, extravagant living. Simple living will see an up-surge and more of us will choose to purchase items that are of better quality that can be repaired rather than replaced.

• For the first time ever, we’re looking backward for inspiration rather than forward. We’re disillusioned with what’s out there. Both the Boomer and the Millennium generations are looking backward to find their heroes. Like Dylan and Lennon…

• Sustainable living is the hottest trend. Living off the grid and being self-reliant is where many of us are headed. It’s not a social statement. It’s the realization that we’re on our own and our economic and physical survival may depend on it.

• The world really, really hates us. Our response to Katrina in New Orleans seems to have been the straw that finished breaking the camel’s back.

• The economy will take a major hit. With enormous national and individual debt loads (much of our recent economic growth came from spending borrowed money), we’ll truly suffer the consequences of high fuel prices, increasing inflation, slow growth, and the fizzling real estate bubble. The Trends Research Institute calls it a Category 5 Economy.

• Labor unions will make a strong come back for the workers from the lowest economic strata who feel as if they have little to lose and not much to risk.

• Main Street USA will be the preferred place to shop. With fuel prices rising and personal time and incomes shrinking, we’ll be more willing to pay a little extra to patronize local merchants who are really close to home. Big Box stores will hurt this year as a cross-generational opposition toward them grows. We’ll shop less and buy better, closer to home.

• The survival business will boom for the first time in decades as more people understand that the government can’t protect us against terrorist attacks or economic disasters or natural disasters or, possibly, pandemics.

• Americans are entering a new green era. We see the handwriting on the wall and we want to save the environment. Not because it’s the socially trendy thing to do. We want to save the environment to save ourselves.

• Alternative energy becomes a large and growing movement. It’s an area ripe for investment and IPO opportunities. While the more traditional alternatives (wind, water, solar, fuel cells, and geothermal) continue to grow and advance, surprisingly, the best opportunities will be in cold fusion, zero point energy, charged clusters and permanent magnets. Also the highly controversial hydrino power.

Every thirty or forty years, we seem to have cataclysmic upheavals in our society. Social revolutions that radically change our direction for the next several decades. Although I lived through the one in the 60s, I was too young to really know what was going on, other than realizing that JFK’s assassination and civil rights and growing dissent over Vietnam were changing us. Now, it seems as if we’re dealing with issues as large and important—as life changing—as the ones in the 60s. It’s hard to see what’s on the other side when we’re in the middle of it. The 2006 trends more than suggest that we’ve lost confidence in our government and that’s worrisome. Happy and contented people don’t normally begin thinking about planning their own survival.

While the trends seem to be largely depressing, I think there’s a glimmer of hope in them. We apparently have a growing will to survive, reform, and advance, come hell or high water. I hope we pull through this one intact. It’s probably going to be messy.

Companion piece: USA Today: In the Year 2006: Online TV, secession, survivalism

Posted on 02/04/06 at 05:34 AM
 




pablo

Okay, first, the world hates because of our response to Katrina/New Orleans how? Because our pathetic response showed the world how our leaders are heartless? And so they’ve concluded if we won’t even take care of our own, we can’t have the best interests of the world in mind either? (Just trying to understand.)
Second, what is the track record of this Trends Research Institute? How accurately have they been predicting past trends?

United States   Posted by pablo on 02/04/06  at  12:11 PM





Kate

To quote:

From Europe to Latin America – around the world and across the globe – America has gone from being the most admired nation on Earth to the most despised.

Already in the international dog house for pushing around her superpower weight by starting the Iraq War, abrogating treaties, and threatening all those who won’t play by her rules, when Hurricane Katrina struck, friend and foe saw an ugly side of the USA they never knew existed.

In other words, having gone from official policy of pushing the rest of the world around, we went to electing the administration over again which did nothing to endear us to the rest of the world, but there was still belief in the innate American decency. After images raced around the world of a sea of black faces waiting in the blazing sun without water or supplies, the belief in innate American decency took a powder, too. I think what they’re saying is that the much of the rest of the world has the impression that the Ugly American thing goes way deeper than the government and they are repelled by it. Which, of course, doesn’t bode well for US corporate interests/sales abroad. Not to mention diplomacy (such as it is) or tourism.

As far as how accurate the Institute’s trend predictions have been? I don’t know in terms of percentages. I know the head of this outfit has been a regular on television, NPR shows, and quoted/interviewed extensively by the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, New York Times, LA Times and other large papers. He’s been around for a long time. I don’t who’s on his client list. I presume that’s because of confidentiality clauses in the contracts.

Do a Google search on his name, Gerald Celente, and you’ll come up with pages upon pages of info on him. He seems to have had sticking power, lo these past 26 years, so he must have something going for him. I guess without more particulars, you either take him with a liberal grain of salt or not. It’ll be interesting to see how these trend forecasts pan out.

United States   Posted by Kate on 02/04/06  at  01:46 PM





pablo

Understand that I don’t disagree with the assertions. I am just trying to follow the argument, and your quote seems to spell it out for me. And this is coming from a man who has a son who has just begun a 2+ year stint in Africa (Kenya) with the Peace Corps. If Americans being viewed with increasing disgust, it comes home to me. (No help with this problem is the fact that he reports that most of his fellow volunteers—privileged white Americans—spend all of their free time over there getting drunk and stoned. Seems like it’s just a big dorm party to them. What do the locals think about Americans when they see this?)

Also, I hope the Lad has finished making his offerings to the toilet gods. That had to be tough for you both as a mother and as a squeamish person.

Oh, and my server site seems to be down, so Roundrock Journal is somewhere in limbo.

United States   Posted by pablo on 02/05/06  at  09:04 AM





Kate

No, I didn’t sense you were dissing the info, just requesting a refinement in terms.

I’m not so sure that some of the trends reported should be observed as particularly ground breaking or surprising. I think many of us have already seen or sensed some of those trends.

Now that the US and Iran are nose to nose in a standoff (so far) with neither side backing down or blinking, I figure we’re due to see those trends escalate into a full fledged reality. All it’ll take is for the fourth largest oil producer in the world to turn off the spigot and we’re all hurting units.

It’s probably to your son’s advantage that he is surrounded by fellow volunteers. At least there’s that buffer, whatever the local population thinks of their antics. But then maybe small allowances are made for their youth and the good that they do?

I am currently in the grips of a good deal of pessimism and it’s not looking like it’ll get any better in the near term. I really don’t think the future is very bright, right now. I hate that feeling, but I just don’t see very much positive on the horizon. The world is a mess and, sooner or later, the intended and unintended consequences of this government’s actions/inactions are gonna hit us square between the eyes.

I noticed that blogspot sites were all down last night, too. I sat down to do some reading and I suddenly realized just how many reads on my list are blogspot sites. It’s a good thing I have a tall stack of books to work through. smile

I hope your site is back up soon. It’s still down....

United States   Posted by Kate on 02/05/06  at  09:59 AM





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