The Great Depression Ahead by Harry S Dent, Jr

When I was in my early 20s, I looked back and thought about how lucky I was because I'd been just the right age to see many important cultural changes.I was just the right age to read comics a year after Stan Lee re-created Marvel Comics, inventing such still-popular characters as The Fantastic Four, Spiderman, The Hulk and The X-Men.I was just the right age a little later to appreciate when Ballantine and Ace reprinted Edgar Rice Burroughs (author of the Tarzan books and even more exciting fantastic adventure stories).I was a little too young to be listening to the radio when The Beatles first sang on The Ed Sullivan Show, but I began by late 1964, and so grew up with the best AM radio music in history, followed by FM, followed by the more sophisticated rock sound of the 1970s.A few years later I was just the right age to appreciate when Lancer reprinted the Conan stories and other works by Robert E. Howard.I was a tad young when I heard about The Lord of the Rings after it first became a fad on college, but I was in high school when Ballantine published it in paperback and I re-read it.And through my high school years I took for granted reading the two best book series of all time -- the Ace Books Science Fiction Specials edited by Terry Carr and Ballantine Books Adult Fantasy ostensibly edited by Lin Carter.Yet, looking back, I didn't connect this remarkable luck with how my elementary school teachers complained about our large class sizes (usually around 30 kids) or with how it just seemed natural that my high school class was the largest in the school's history, but next year my sister's class was even larger.What's all that have to do with a book about the coming depression?Simple. I'm a baby boomer. The country's entertainment industries didn't give me just what I wanted at the age I needed it either by coincidence or because they loved me personally. It was because they knew there was a huge market of boys and girls the same age as I.And now we're starting to reach retirement age.We'll be vacating many jobs. We'll stop buying stocks and bonds out of our paychecks. We'll stop paying Social Security taxes out of our paychecks. We'll start paying down debt instead of spending money on our latest toys. We'll start selling off stocks and bonds to finance our cruises, golf games and heart surgeries.According to Mr. Dent, the U.S. had high inflation and unemployment in the 1970s because that's when so many baby boomers started looking for work and spending money to start new families.As we advanced in our careers, we created the boom that began in 1982. The entrepreneurs among us launched the innovative companies that have reshaped the world and its economies.Dent goes into a lot more detail about what's causing this. He essentially says that we've just gone through a boom and bust in stocks and real estate -- nobody can dispute that. He says the commodities boom will bust soon. That remains to be seen.He also talks a lot about other cycles that, frankly, I am not at all sure exist.Yet I know that the demographic, lifestyle cycle does exist.If you wish, you can argue with Dent. He's certainly been wrong about a lot of details. We certainly didn't see the tremendous stock market bubble he predicted for the past few years.I'm sure that many of his specific predictions about the next ten to thirteen years (demographics will come to our rescue about 2023) will be wrong.But I do believe that anybody who discounts the adverse effect the aging of us baby boomers is going to have on the U.S. and world's economy is foolish.Just look at Japan. Their baby boomer generation started retiring in 1990. Japan's economy hasn't recovered yet.Much of this book is fascinating speculation about the world's future. (Hint: China will grow old before it grows rich. The most likely long-term contender to dominate Asia is India.) dr seuss cat in hat history