Economic Predictions For Every Country / Region In The World
https://calebjones.com/economic-predict ... the-world/
As he points out, some of the places he's predicting will go into decline ("collapsing") aren't necessarily bad places to live as an expat if you have location independent income.
I get questions on a regular basis asking how I think countries like Australia, Russia, and Hong Kong are going to fare economically in light of everything that’s likely to transpire over the next several years. So in this blog, I’m going to go through the entire planet Earth. I can’t discuss every country, but I will go through every region of the planet and cover most of the bigger countries, and I’ll do the best I can to give you the details on where these countries are probably going.
Of course, I’m not a genius. I don’t have any secret information that you don’t have. I could be wrong about any of this; these are just strongly educated guesses. I have spent the past 15-20 years traveling the world and I’ve done a hell of a lot of research into geopolitics and macroeconomics, so I think I’m right about most of this — but I could be wrong.
Also, you can’t just say that a country is “rising” or “falling.” It’s a little more complicated than that. So for this blog, I’m going to classify every country or region into one of six categories.
Category 1 — Rising
This means I think this region is going to do well over the next several decades. I think things are going to improve economically, the standard of living will likely improve, and things will continue to get better.
Category 2 — Collapsing
This is the opposite of rising. These are countries that are going to get worse as time goes on. Some of these countries will be collapsing more slowly than others, and I’ll make that clear as we go along.
Category 3 — Maintaining
This means a country or region is going to continue as it has been — whatever that means in their case. If it’s been doing well, the good times will probably continue; if it’s doing badly, it will continue to do badly. Plus or minus a few factors, things likely won’t change much for these countries.
Category 4 — Stagnating
This is different from maintaining. This means the country is going to decline very slowly, but it will not collapse. My analogy is that it’ll float like a turd in a swimming pool. It won’t do well; it will decline to a moderate to low level and then sit there for the prolonged future.
Category 5 — Psycho
These countries are crazy. They’re up and down — they do well, then they do terribly, then they do great. In some cases, psycho countries are tough to pin down because the people or governments there are so irrational that it’s difficult to predict what will happen there.
Category 6 — Unknown
This means I just don’t know what’s going to happen there because I don’t have the data on this country or region at this time.
Okay, here we go…
North America
The United States: Collapsing
I’ve talked a lot about this already. The U.S. is screwed. It won’t collapse today or tomorrow, but it is going to happen within our lifetime. It has way too much debt, an overblown government, and an irrational citizenry. All three voting blocks — the progressive left, the corporatist left, and the Trump supporters — have embraced hard-core irrationality and various brands of authoritarianism. We’ve also seen a great deal of cultural collapse. I have already written about the collapse of the USA and the rest of the West and have many, many articles complete with stats and links at my blogs demonstrating this.
Canada: Collapsing
Canada is very different from the U.S. It’s not going to collapse nearly as fast as we will. In terms of the Collapsing Trifecta — the U.S., Canada, and Europe — Europe will collapse first, the U.S. will come second, and Canada will come third.
The Canadian banks and currency are very strong right now; there are plenty of things they do right. The problem is that Canada is one of the largest trading partners of the United States. Trading between our two countries has increased by triple-digit percentage points since the 90s because of things like NAFTA. So guess what happens when the U.S. collapses: Canada’s in big trouble.
The nature of their collapse will likely look different from that of the U.S., but Canada will collapse.
Mexico: Stagnating
Mexico is a little more complicated and harder to predict. I don’t think they’re going to collapse, and I don’t think they’re going to do well. It is possible that Mexico will maintain, but I honestly think they’re going to stagnate instead.
When the U.S. collapses, yes, Mexico will be affected, but Mexico is a very different economic animal than Canada. It’s not quite as first-world as Canada, so I don’t think the collapse of the Western world will affect them as badly as the rest of us, so my best guess is that they will simply stagnate.
Central America
Here we’ve got several countries that are doing badly and several that are doing OK. Panama is the bright, shining star of Central America; it’s going to maintain. It’s going to be very stable and could even rise at some point. I’m not quite so bullish as to say for sure that it’ll rise, but I am confident it will maintain.
Then you have some less-insane, less-mismanaged countries in Central America like Belize and Costa Rica. My best guess here is that they’ll stagnate or maintain — very hard to say.
The rest of Central America — Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador — these are literally some of the most dangerous countries in the world in terms of crime rates. I think they’re going to maintain, which in their case means they will continue to do badly.
South America
Colombia — Rising
Colombia is actually rising faster economically than most of Asia. They’re going to absolutely kick ass over the next several decades.
Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and coastal countries like French Guiana — Psycho or Unknown
I don’t have a lot of data on these countries, and I haven’t visited them, so I can’t give you a strong indication of where they’re going to go. They’re not going to collapse, but they may bounce up and down a little.
Brazil, Bolivia, and Argentina — Psycho
These are the most psycho countries in the world. They are so psycho that they alternately do great and then do terrible; they’re great again, then they destroy their currency; then they’re good again, and then they have a military coup; and so on, seemingly forever. These countries are going to be psycho for the foreseeable future, which means they are very good for speculators and may be good for some very skilled business owners. Beyond that, you should be careful. You’re more than welcome to live there as an Alpha Male 2.0 if you have foreign income, but these are places that will continue to go up and down. In places like Brazil and Argentina, especially, you get the idea that they kind of like being crazy.
Paraguay will be very stable. It will not do well or do poorly, but it will continue to do what it’s doing. They’re one of those countries that wouldn’t even notice if the U.S. were to collapse tomorrow.
Chile — Maintaining
Ten or 15 years ago, I would have said Chile was rising, and it still could, but I think it’s more likely to maintain. Maybe you could consider them a midpoint between maintaining and rising — that’s entirely possible.
Uruguay — Stagnating
Uruguay might maintain, but at this point, I don’t think so. They were doing some great things five or 10 years ago, but now it looks like they’re doing all the wrong things. They’re not going to have problems or collapse. They’ll just float like a turd in the pool.
Europe
I’ve been accused in the past of oversimplifying and overgeneralizing when I say “Europe,” and that is a valid criticism. So in this blog, I cannot cover every single European country; there are between 40 and 50 countries over there, and I do not have the data to do a deep dive on all of them. I’m going to break Europe up into sub-regions and then generalize based on those.
Scandinavia — Collapsing
They’ll collapse for a number of reasons. They have way too much debt; they’re running out of oil in the Norwegian sea; their voters have lost their minds; and so on.
Now, I will say that Scandinavia isn’t collapsing as quickly as Western Europe, the UK, Germany, etc., but they’re still going to collapse. Mark my words — it will happen within our lifetimes.
Western Europe — Collapsing
And it is collapsing faster than the United States. In terms of the Western world, it will be the first region to collapse. It’s in very, very big trouble. (If was a Western European I honestly would have already left several years ago.)
Eastern Europe — Collapsing or Stagnating depending on the country
This is where the conversation gets interesting. People come to me with a thousand excuses as to why Eastern Europe won’t collapse the way the rest of Europe will. Here’s the problem: Why did I say Canada is going to collapse? Because it’s a major trading partner of the U.S., and when the U.S. goes down, so will Canada.
Well, guess who Eastern Europe trade with? That’s right, the rest of Europe. So when Scandinavia and Western Europe go down, what’s going to happen to Eastern Europe? They will collapse or stagnate, depending on the country.
Now, I’ll be very clear about this. It will collapse, but it will not be as hard-hit as by the collapse as Western Europe. For example, if you live in Moldova, you won’t experience the pain of a collapse as badly as people in Germany will because you’re already lower on the economic totem pole. But don’t think for a moment that Eastern Europe will be just fine when the rest of Europe collapses; they’re still in Europe.
The Caucuses:
Armenia — Maintaining
Georgia — Maintaining
Azerbaijan — Stagnating
The future of these little countries is kind of complicated. Georgia is doing well, Armenia is doing some smart things, but Azerbaijan, not so much.
As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t love countries that border nations hostile to them, and Georgia shares a border with a country called Russia whose dictator likes to invade other countries whenever he feels like it. It’s possible Russia may invade Georgia at some point (some of you have pointed out that Russia already did invade Georgia in 2008), but barring that, I think Georgia will maintain.
The Middle East
Here’s where the real chaos is.
The basic overall statement here is that the Middle East is completely psycho with the exception of a few of the smaller, more organized nations — countries like Oman, the UAE, and Bahrain. These countries will maintain.
Outside of that, countries like Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran, Israel, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan are psycho, and they have been psycho for all of human history. There are geopolitical experts who say the Middle East will always be psycho with the exception of those few I mentioned above. The general consensus is that the Middle East is destined to remain psycho forever, barring some radical change in the human condition.
Africa
Lots of countries in Africa — 54 or so altogether. First, I’m going to list the ones I think are rising.
Understand, I don’t mean they’ll rise the way Asia is rising. These African nations are going to rise slowly over many decades, in some cases. But I’m convinced they will rise for two reasons: first, they’re so low on the totem pole that the only place to go is up, and second, because of population growth in these areas.
If you look at population data, you will see that white people are dying off, but black people in Africa are reproducing like rabbits. This is going to result in a lot of explosive economic growth down the road, once business owners and corporations get into these areas and start exploiting them.
Likely Rising African countries: Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria, Guiana, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Seychelles, Namibia, and Botswana.
South Africa — Stagnating
South Africa is kind of part of the Western world, but I don’t think they’re going to collapse. They’ve done a lot of things wrong down there, but not enough to collapse their country. You could argue they may stagnate for a while and then start to rise on the tail end of Africa’s rise, but that would be a long, long time from now.
The entire rest of the African continent is psycho. It’s very hard to predict; it may just be psycho for the rest of eternity like the Middle East. It’s a very chaotic place outside of the areas I’ve already mentioned.
Central Asia
These are the -stans — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and so on. I’m going to have to mark these unknown for now. My wild guess is that these countries will either maintain or slowly rise, but that is purely a guess on my part. I really don’t know.
I’ll be spending some time in these countries in the next two or three years, so maybe then I can get a little bit better idea about their economies and where they may be going. Landlocked countries are often at a disadvantage, but they may benefit from the rise of the rest of Asia and China’s amazing Belt and Road Initiative. We’ll just have to see.
Pakistan — Rising or Psycho
This is a country that straddles the fence between two possibilities. I really don’t know which one it will be yet. It’s very similar to Russia in that respect — they’ll either be up and down indefinitely or they’ll rise slowly.
India — Psycho
This is one of the most tragic countries in the world, in my opinion. They have a population of over one billion, and they have some of the smartest, hardest-working people in the entire world. There’s no reason India isn’t a massive superpower right now except for the fact that they’re addicted to bureaucracy and big government. They magnified the bureaucracy they got from the British and left themselves with this crazy country in which some people are doing very well, but there are still 500 million people who are so poor, they literally defecate in the streets. At one point, India made some of its own currency illegal, which shut down entire cities over there and caused all kinds of gridlock. They have a bizarre communications infrastructure that requires people to have a new cell phone every time they pass into a different region, they experience some strange sexual societal programming, their divorce rates are skyrocketing as they assume more Western attitudes, etc, etc.
I could go on and on but I think you get the point. As much as I like the Indians as a people, the country psycho in terms of how it’s running itself.
If they can get their heads out of their asses, India will rise faster than China. I just don’t see that happening though.
China — Rising
China will run the world in the 21st century. People love to dispute this, but they’re wrong. If you look at their economic growth rates, they have slowed, but they are still far beyond anything the U.S. is experiencing in terms of growth.
China will experience a lot of problems over the next few decades. They have a serious demographic problem (not enough women); they have the biggest real estate bubble in all of human history; and they have a goddamn authoritarian president who is appointed for life. They will experience a lot of problems on their way to number one, just as the United States did during its rise to prominence over its lifetime.
Bottom line: China will rise to number one (with a lot of problems) within our lifetimes.
Mongolia — Unknown
This one is almost impossible to predict right now. I just don’t know enough about its economic future to say anything about it.
South Korea — Maintaining
South Korea is one of the four Asian Tigers, and it’s already on top of its game. When you’re at the top, it’s hard to go higher, so they’ll maintain their spot moving ahead into the future.
North Korea — Maintaining
Yes, they will maintain their current terrible condition. One thing about North Korea, though: It is entirely likely that within our lifetimes, someone will finally kill that guy and the country will open back up and reunify with South Korea. I think it’s only a matter of time, although it could be a hundred years from now.
But when Korea reunifies, that will represent the biggest economic opportunity in the world, perhaps in all of modern history.
Koreans are extremely intelligent, motivated, hard-working, organized people. When you have all that drive, capital, and enthusiasm from South Korea funneled into North Korea, you’re going to see an economic boom like you’ve never seen in your life.
Japan — Collapsing
It is the only country in all of Asia that is collapsing. In a few decades, there will be no Japan. They’re not having enough babies, they’ve been in a zombie economy state for 25 years, their stock market peaked then, and the only thing the government seems to know how to do is either print more money or raise taxes.
As I’ve mentioned previously, Japan is a failure on a civilizational level. It’s sad and painful to watch, similar to my feelings about India.
Taiwan — Maintaining
Just like South Korea, it will maintain its spot. I wouldn’t live in Taiwan, just like I wouldn’t live in South Korea, because I don’t like to live in countries that border hostile neighbors. There are just too many Chinese missiles pointed at Taiwan for my taste, but in terms of economics, Taiwan will maintain.
Hong Kong — Maintaining
I get a lot of questions about Hong Kong; I expected China to put its foot on Hong Kong’s neck sometime around 2030, but I was 10 years off because they started doing that last year.
Although I have Hong Kong down as maintaining, I think eventually it will very slowly begin to collapse. It’s going to take a very long time for that to happen. For the time being, there won’t be any radical changes there, especially for an Alpha Male 2.0, if you choose to live there.
But Hong Kong has definitely peaked, and now they’re slowly coming down the other side. It’s not going to collapse “soon” like the rest of the West.
Southeast Asia — Rising
As I’ve said before, this is the greatest growth region in the entire world. With the possible exception of the Philippines, just about every country in southeast Asia is rising fast and hard-core! It’s a sharp upward movement. This region is on its way up — Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, and even Bangladesh, most likely.
Some of these will, of course, rise faster than others, and some of them will likely experience growth that is quite slow, but they’re all on their way up.
Singapore — Maintaining
Singapore won’t rise because it’s already basically in the top spot, and it’s hard to go anywhere from there, but it will continue to do well.
Indonesia — Rising (slowly)
This will happen very, very slowly, and mostly, it’s going to benefit from the economic activity of southeast Asia to its north.
The Philippines — Maintaining or Stagnating
I’m leaning toward stagnating for the Philippines; they’re fantastic people, but they’re a little psycho, so this one is harder to call.
Australia and New Zealand — Stagnate
These two are the quintessential examples of countries that are stagnating. These are the only two countries in the Western world that will not collapse, and there are two reasons for this. First, they don’t have the debt the rest of the Western world has, and second, they’re going to benefit from the rise of Asia and Southeast Asia. There’s a lot of Chinese and Southeast Asian money in Oceania, so they’re not going to collapse, but they’re not going to do well, either.
Russia — Psycho or Rising (slowly)
Russia really is a coin toss. I’ve said this before, and I’m happy to double down on it now. I don’t know which direction they’ll go, but they will either go psycho or rise very slowly.
Russia has a lot going for it — a lot of natural resources, the military might of a superpower, and so on — but unfortunately, it’s hopelessly mismanaged. Putin runs Moscow and St. Petersburg, but not much else. Corruption is everywhere. It’s a culture with a lot of darkness, unfortunately; I’ve talked before about dating Russian women. Overall, Russia probably has more pros and more cons, in terms of sheer numbers, than any other country I can think of. It has a lot of both, which is why it’s so difficult to predict.
Conclusion
What I’ve discussed here is the state of the world from a macroeconomic perspective. What I have not talked about here is whether or not you should live in any particular place. As an Alpha Male 2.0 with location independent income, you can live in all kinds of places that might be psycho, stagnating, or even collapsing, and still be OK if you know what you’re doing.
So I’m not really talking about the best places to live; I did another video about that recently, and you can check that out if you like.
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