

In 1964 U.S. News Predicted the Future - taylorbuley
http://www.usnews.com/news/slideshows/in-1964-us-news-predicted-the-future-see-how-well-we-did

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pgrote
It is a slideshow. Here are the topics:

1) U.S. Population: 395 million

2) “Trillions will have the place in the vocabulary that millions had 50 years
ago and billions have today. Overall spending will be in the trillions. So
will debt.”

3) “A population crowded into great strips of cities will be struggling to
enjoy driving 200 million or more automobiles where there are 66 million now.”

4) “Supersonic transports that, within a decade or so, are to carry passengers
across the American continent or to Europe in an hour and a half probably will
be in the process of being replaced by rocket transports capable of cutting
that time in half.”

5) “China within a half century will be pushing past 1.5 billion people and
will face a desperate need for more space. If the world is to see a nuclear
war, that war might be one fought between Russia and China for control of the
wide-open spaces of Russia’s Far East.”

6) “An American in another 50 years long since will have been on the moon.
Space will have become an element of supporting defense platforms,
communications satellites, maybe launching platforms for ventures not yet
dreamed of.”

7) “Hydrogen weapons will have proliferated among many nations of the world.
China is sure to have them. France will, too. So will Germany. Israel and
Egypt may. American officials place at 15 or 20 the nations that will have
nuclear weapons before the end of his century.”

8) “If the record of the past is repeated, the dollar of 2014 will be an
11-cent dollar in terms of 1914 … In terms of today that value will have been
cut by 67 percent.”

9) “The 60-hour week of 1914 that became the 40-hour week of 1964 probably
will be the 30-hour workweek of 2014 – a six-hour day five days a week.
Average family income, now $7,800 a year, is likely in another half century to
exceed $20,000 a year in 1964 dollars.”

10) “Life in 1964 may appear as the ‘good old days’ when contrasted with the
scramble for an existence in the crowded turmoil of a concentrated, automated
and computerized world of tomorrow. It will be a world moving at rocket-like
speed.”

~~~
taylorbuley
Adjusting for inflation, $7,800 in 1964 is $59,858.71 in 2014 dollars
[http://data.bls.gov/cgi-
bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=7%2C800&year1=1...](http://data.bls.gov/cgi-
bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=7%2C800&year1=1964&year2=2014)

$20,000 in 1964 dollars is $153,483.87 in 2014 dollars.
[http://data.bls.gov/cgi-
bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=20%2C000&year1=...](http://data.bls.gov/cgi-
bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=20%2C000&year1=1964&year2=2014)

~~~
simulate
Thanks for the stats. That means the actual median income of $53,046 between
2008 - 2012 is about 10% lower than the median income 50 years ago, adjusted
for inflation. I knew real income was lower over the past twenty years or so,
but negative real income growth for the last 50 years is much worse than I
thought.

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loumf
They say that called the US Population correct at 395m, when it's 316m. It was
191m in 1964. So instead of over 100% increase it was 65%. Doesn't feel close
to me. For something like this, where we have good models (for example Social
Security needs to predict US pop correctly) -- need to be a lot closer to call
it "Correct".

Looks like they misread the baby boomer trend -- and didn't predict the effect
of widespread, effective, legal birth-control, women entering the workplace in
larger numbers, etc.

~~~
loumf
According to this:

[http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=9828&page=43](http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=9828&page=43)

The UN 30 year projections for the US/Australia/Japan group is around 5%
error.

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5h
Following from the last point, It's a nice thought to consider that in the
future our present will be viewed by some as "the good old days".

I wonder what aspects of today will be desirable to hackers of the future.

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driverdan
Terrible slideshow format and poorly formed conclusions that don't support the
data. Too bad they didn't predict the decline in journalism.

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michaelochurch
The one that matters most (#9) and is objective is the milestone that, not
only did we miss it, but we've actually back-slid.

~~~
bryondowd
If the randomly selected inflation calculator I used is correct, the median
family income today is about $6,785 in 1964 dollars. Quite sad. EDIT:
Correction. They must be using mean instead of median for their 'average'
family income. A quick check shows the median 1964 family income was $6,569.
So at least we're slightly up from that. Source
[http://www.census.gov/statab/hist/HS-25.pdf](http://www.census.gov/statab/hist/HS-25.pdf)

~~~
michaelochurch
... also, the 2014 number is with two incomes, expensive and shitty
healthcare, unaffordable real estate, and ridiculous college tuitions.

~~~
maxerickson
That is the narrative of anger.

On the other hand, there are 113 million households and 155 million people in
the work force, so 2 incomes isn't typical for a household (It's only possible
for ...oops). Edit: (This ignores people collecting benefits or retirement
payments, but I guess those aren't bleak signals. It makes the statement I had
made about 1/3 nonsense though.)

Much of the care that makes medicine expensive simply wasn't available in the
1960s, so is a hard sell as a regression (you know, trauma care, the huge
improvements in care for heart disease, the huge improvements in treatment of
cancer, the panoply of drugs that treat conditions that may or may not exist,
etc).

Real estate is expensive in many cities, but in towns, you can't sell a 2,000
square foot house, never mind selling it at a price resembling expensive. Real
estate pricing is a symptom of other things going on in the economy, not a
particularly huge problem all on its own.

Mean student debt runs less than $30,000 and activists won't even report the
median. Pointing out what is wrong (if anything significant...) with this
article might make for some good discussions:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2013/09/2...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2013/09/24/five-
myths-about-college-debt/)

None of that means I think that the U.S. system of paying for health care is
sensible or that I am opposed to figuring out a better way to make education
available or anything like that.

~~~
pessimizer
No, that is the narrative of twice as much work for the same compensation, and
of the working class missing out on all of the productivity gains of the last
40 years.

>Much of the care that makes medicine expensive simply wasn't available in the
1960s, so is a hard sell as a regression

So was it only that medical care that increased in cost, or was it all medical
care?

>Real estate pricing is a symptom of other things going on in the economy, not
a particularly huge problem all on its own.

I'm not even sure what this is supposed to mean.

>Mean student debt runs less than $30,000 and activists won't even report the
median

Is this supposed to be a low number compared to the numbers from 50 years ago?
And your reference, while attacking the use of the mean as deceptive,
intentionally conflates the amount of debt that a student has when he/she
leaves university with the cost of education.

~~~
maxerickson
Right, it's a narrative. What are the numbers? It's clear enough that the
working class has gotten the short end of the stick over that time period, but
some actual exposition of what has happened is more interesting than
declarations that something happened (that's pointed more at the first post I
replied to, not at your response).

Real estate in general isn't all that expensive. The fact that desirable jobs
are concentrated has driven up prices in some areas; if employment were better
in general, those jobs would likely be (relatively) less desirable and it is
likely the price pressure would relax. Coming at it from a different
direction, the price of housing in San Francisco or Brooklyn simply isn't
relevant to an awful lot of people (edit: which sounds dismissive of the
problems it causes for people local to those areas; that isn't what I was
trying to do, I was talking about the many millions far away from those
metros).

The positions cast in that article are definitely the weaker part of it. But
$30,000 of debt is not a huge liability to take on in order to gain access to
a better career path. I don't mean to argue against reducing it, I'm just not
convinced it is outrageous.

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UPCequals666
This was not a prediction,its them showing you what the elite had in store for
the people.

