Ask HN: What are your 2022 predictions?

125 points by zerotosixty ↗ HN
Just curious what kind of predictions you have for the upcoming years 2022, 2023, 2024.

I think the obvious one would be the EV wars. Also the delayed shipping dates for those vehicles. IE: If you order an EV truck now you wont get it until 2024.

Hopefully staying remote and rent not going up, but one can only hope...

272 comments

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My heuristic is to extend pre-2022 trends outward:

Higher stock market even though everyone keeps calling it a bubble

More inflation, but not as much gain in the CPI as 2021

Strong GDP growth, same for corporate profits

Big tech gets bigger; Facebook, Tesla , Amazon, Google Microsoft stock keep going up.

No anti-trust action against big tech companies

No bursting of 'higher ed bubble' despite Covid

US dollar continues to be strong

Bezos, Musk remain richest men alive

Biden wealth tax fails

Fed raises rates maybe twice; bond market and stock market unperturbed

Higher real estate prices in spite of insistence of it being a bubble

More political division and unrest online, people are angrier than ever at each other online

Covid never goes away although daily case counts will remain below 2021 highs

> No bursting of 'higher ed bubble' despite Covid

Do you mean students will keep taking on debt to go to school? Or tuition prices will keep going up? Or both?

- COVID will continue to be a thing. Some new variant will come along and force everyone to lock down again.

- The fed will have no choice but to keep interest rates low. This means we will have another year of rapidly rising asset prices.

- Supply chain issues will get worse throughout 2022, massively fueled by US-China tensions and COVID related shifts in demand. Major inflation like we haven't seen since the 1970s.

- Crypto will undergo a major crash in 2022. It follows predictable, cyclical patterns, and we are nearing the end of the classic boom/bust cycle. It is unclear whether this will cause the Tether situation to blow up.

- Mainly due to supply issues, we won't get a taste of any AR/VR metaverse type stuff next year. There will be a lot of hype-laden news articles about it, but nobody will actually live this future yet.

- Nothing will happen in China with Evergrande or any of these other companies. Nor will China invade Taiwan (yet).

- The "lie-flat" movement massively picks up. People don't realize how widespread this sentiment is in Gen Z, which doesn't need excessive consumerism to be happy, all they need is a computer. It is unclear what effects this will have on the economy.

>- Supply chain issues will get worse throughout 2022, massively fueled by US-China tensions and COVID related shifts in demand. Major inflation like we haven't seen since the 1970s.

Due to this, GOP is probably going to retake the house largely because people won't realize that the inflation has little to do with Democrats policies but is entirely because of COVID fucking everything.

... which facilitates and end of free and fair elections in the US
Elections in the US have never been entirely free or fair.
Sure but the GOP are pushing extremely hard to ensure that it's even more not fair and not free.
Last I checked, a virus doesn't effect the monetary system but shutting down the country for an extremely long "15 days" and then printing money to pay people who were "non-essential" and to keep the stock market up does. I guess it was COVID that created 40% of all US dollars in the last year. The GOP and Democrats are both to blame for this.

I digress, I don't like either party's policies because every law enacted is a little bit more of your freedom taken away and the crazy printing of money is just another tax on the American people. States and cities are making out like bandits with this inflation.

This is a pretty standard cycle in American politics. One party wins the presidency and the house, then the house flips in the midterm. The senate doesn't follows these trends because of how their terms work.

[Edit] I found the 40% number in a news article but it didn't have sources. You can view the M1 money supply chart here, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=M1SL. This chart shows why we are seeing higher levels of inflation.

Major inflation like we haven't seen since the 1970s.

That's what the U.S. government needs. $29 trillion in debt paying $417 billion in interest per year = average interest of 1.43%.

Now imagine average interest rate across the curve goes to 2.86% and now we're paying $834 billion in interest per year.

Then it goes to 5% and we're paying $1.45 trillion in interest payments per year. That's over a third of the total tax revenue of the Federal government! More than we spend on defense!

The U.S. government is so far in debt that it needs inflation to erase it. Nothing else will.

So no surprise, the Federal Reserve balance sheet has grown to $8.5 trillion:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...

The Fed continues to buy $120 billion in bonds per month, interest rates are close to zero, we're mailing checks out to people each month, we just approved $1 trillion in stimulus a few weeks ago and on the cusp of approving almost $2 trillion more.

*1 & 2 trillion over ten years.

The actual addition to the federal budget isn’t that dramatic.

Do you have any idea how much money a trillion dollars is?

If you paid $1 per second, it would take you:

12 days to spend $1 million

32 years to spend $1 billion

32,000 years to spend $1 trillion

Imagine spending $1 every second for 32,000 years. It's ridiculous! Yet we throw that number around like it "isn't that dramatic". We will never be able to pay off that borrowed money! And it will work until it doesn't. And then we will wish we were never so foolish.

US GDP is over 23 trillion dollars on an annualized basis, what you’re saying lacks any sense of proportion. Even assuming no growth, 3 trillion dollars represents 1.3% of gdp over the same period.

If you just want to throw large numbers around, why not just convert everything into cents? Imagine spending 1 cent per second for 3.2 million years! That’s a long time.

The population of the United States was around 331 million per the 2020 census, so $1T is a little over $3000 per resident. The GDP of the United States was approximately 21 trillion in 2020 (a pandemic year) per World Bank, so a $1T loan is about 5% of gross annual income. It's not that hard for an individual or business with good credit history to get such a loan.

Comparing things on the scale of the national budget of the country with the world's largest economy to things on individual scale is kind of like comparing a person's height to the radius of the moon. It's going to confuse more than it elucidates.

Edit: To be clear, my comparison is bad too. Comparison to individuals is just not the type of tool that makes sense for looking at national level things, because by cherry picking the comparison you can convince it to say anything you want.

so a $1T loan is about 5% of gross annual income

No, this is not right at all. The total income of the United States government is $4 trillion per year. So a $1 trillion loan is 25% of gross annual income. The $3 trillion being added to the debt is 75% of gross annual income.

GDP is not the income of the United States government. But this new debt will be debt of the United States government.

The reality is that we are $29 trillion in debt now and adding to it rapidly. That is 7.25 years of gross income in debt. What would you say to someone that made $100,000 per year and was in debt $725,000?

GDP is the gross income of the United States. The revenue of the federal government doesn't quite have an individual analogue, because it's somewhat arbitrary (it is effectively a fraction of GDP that can be unilaterally increased or decreased by Congress, though doing so has side effects).

If you're trying to make a comparison with an individual, you'd need to come up with such an analogy. Gross income isn't it.

Setting aside your remarks about GDP not being relevant for government financing, The government is not a household, it exists in perpetuity. The time scales with which it can service debt are completely different.
Important to note every two term president doubled the national debt (except Clinton) going back to the fiscal conservative the Right puts on a pedestal, Regan, who tripled the national debt.

Congress has 1 job to balance the budget…and they have fucked it up since WW2, yet the still get unlimited terms, full pay, full benefits and full pensions.

The interest rate on most government bonds is fixed, the rates don't go up like that.
This might be a dumb question... Are most of the treasuries we've already sold - e.g. I assume that's what $29 trillion in debt means - already fixed coupon rate from the govt? I know it trades on market which inverse reflects real return.

Just googling I found floating rate notes, which seem to respond like an adjustable mortgage would. But they seem small and short term.

But I do understand we have a deficit and have to sell more treasuries every year.

Maybe that would be a driver to have a more even budget.

But from my perspective Dems pass policy that a large % of the country likes. Raise taxes to pay for it. Republicans then win election and repeal and cut taxes but leave said popular policy. next Dem majority raises taxes but probably not even above the baseline before Rs cut it (e.g. the current draft reconciliation bill doesn't actually raise taxes much at all. it's crazy to me how cheap some of this stuff is when you take legit CBO scored credit for instance not handing out billions to pharma)

Your thinking is correct, the only thing you're missing is how frequently the treasury rolls over debt into new debt. Most debt isn't 20 or 30 year bonds. Take a look at the link below and see how much of the total outstanding debt is in t-bills. These are instruments with a duration of less than a year. That means throughout the year, the treasury has to issue new debt to pay off the old debt, essentially refinancing constantly. This makes the government particularly vulnerable to interest rate risk.

https://www.sifma.org/resources/research/us-treasury-securit...

During the previous admin, there was talk of issuing a 100 year bond while rates were so low in order to reduce some of this risk, but nothing ever materialized. I'm not sure if this idea is on the present administration's radar at all.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-mnuchin-idUSK...

> Crypto will undergo a major crash in 2022. It follows predictable, cyclical patterns, and we are nearing the end of the classic boom/bust cycle. It is unclear whether this will cause the Tether situation to blow up.

Crypto and stocks seem to be correlated at this point. Both are considered risk on assets by institutional buyers. I don't anticipate crypto to crash unless stocks start to crash. If the Fed keeps interest rates low and assets continue to rise, I think it's likely that crypto continues to rise as well. From what I've heard, there is likely to be heavy institutional buying in Q1 2022 as hedge funds and others who like to take risk will add risky assets at the start of the year.

> Crypto and stocks seem to be correlated at this point.

A bunch of folks from the Man Group and Campbell Harvey published a paper saying that Bitcoin specifically seems to have a positive beta with the US market:

> Finally, we are in the midst of another technological disruption in the form of the cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin. Some have advocated the inclusion of bitcoin into a diversified portfolio as an inflation protection asset. However, caution is warranted given that bitcoin is untested with only eight years of quality data – that lack a single inflation regime. Moreover, bitcoin is more than five times more volatile than the S&P 500 or gold. This high volatility could lead to bitcoin being an unreliable hedge. In addition, there is increasing evidence that bitcoin is a speculative asset and it has a positive beta against the US market.

* https://www.man.com/maninstitute/when-inflation-hits

* https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3813202

It's still early days, so more evidence certainly needs to be gathered, but so far as a hedge against inflation crypto doesn't look too good (especially because of volatility).

And Campbell published a pro-DeFi book recently, so it's not like he's against crypto generally:

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57720429-defi-and-the-fu...

* https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3711777

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell_Harvey

we have the possibilities:

1 crypto crash, stocks rise

2 crypto rise, stocks rise

3 crypto crash, stocks fall

4 crypto rise, stocks fall

I think #4 is least likely

10 Loopring says you're wrong ;)
> 4 crypto rise, stocks fall

this is describing a world geopolitical situation that would rival the cold war imho.

So like....DoD and every branch of government being pwnd during SolarWinds etc, top US military leadership citing incompetency while resigning, dog money having tens of billions of dollars of market cap......
I'm inclined to say that the Fed keeps interest rates low _and_ crypto undergoes a major correction, but I feel like these are almost mutually exclusive scenarios. This isn't to say that crypto is inherently a good inflation hedge, but it definitely seems like the recent crypto bull run is a direct result of asset price inflation.
- COVID will continue to be a thing. Some new variant will come along and force everyone to lock down again.

- Supply chain issues will get worse throughout 2022, massively fueled by US-China tensions and COVID related shifts in demand. Major inflation like we haven't seen since the 1970s.

- Crypto will undergo a major crash in 2022. It follows predictable, cyclical patterns, and we are nearing the end of the classic boom/bust cycle. It is unclear whether this will cause the Tether situation to blow up.

If the first 2 happen, then I do not think crypto will crash. I'm fairly sure the reason it blew up this year was a combination of people being bored at home because of lockdown and people trying to protect against inflation.

Crypto can't be a real inflation hedge because it's not a productive asset (this is not a criticism). It may be going up because people are worried about inflation and so are moving some money to riskier assets that offer a higher return, but if inflation were to continue people would be forced to move their crypto assets to things like food, housing, equipment, that are actually productive, which would drive down the price of crypto.
This doesn't sound exactly right to me. "forced to move their crypto assets to things like [x]" just sounds like a different way to say "buy [x] with crypto" instead of with USD.

Edit because I was downvoted:

This genuinely goes against my intuition. The recommended alternatives were housing, food (don't know if the parent meant stock up on nonperishables or buy farmland & livestock), and equipment. This sounded like preparing for complete economic collapse. If that's the level of inflation we're talking about, then we have much bigger things to worry about than how crypto will be doing.

(comment deleted)
Gold isn't a productive asset either, but people all around the world use gold as, essentially, a short against fiat currencies. Crypto could take over that role; I'm not sure that it will.
I prefer bitcoin over gold only because gold is not in my hands, and if it were, it's subject to theft.
Your Bitcoin is also subject to theft. Hard theft or soft theft (lack of access). The chance of theft of either is relatively small. Seems like a non concern
The gold most people invest in isn’t on anyone’s hands either: most people buy gold ETFs or futures. You can totally buy those?
It already has.

Has outperformed gold the last decade.

Gold is also a scarce and not cheaply substitutable physical material that is used in electronics (it's an excellent conductor that resists corrosion) and jewelry (it's a beautiful, non-toxic metal that can be made durable while remaining malleable.)
If the governments start locking down again Conservative states will see house prices rise.
I think that will happen even without the lockdowns. The states that tend to lock down seem to also have the highest housing prices. And with millions now free to work from wherever they like, they will seek out cheaper shores.

When I moved, someone at my old office said, "How can you stand to live in a state represented by Senator X?" I told him, "When Senator X picks up my dry cleaning or valets my car, I'll care. Until then, Senator X has zero bearing on my everyday life."

I think people overestimate the weight that politics plays in selecting a place to live.

It must be nice to belong to a demographic that is unaffected by politics.
Yeah, the privilege is absolutely nuts. I've had to make very concrete plans to move if elections in my state ever starts to turn really red. I don't give two shits about most politics, but I have zero choice but huddle up against the Democrats because they're the only ones not actively trying to harm me and at least pay lip service to my issue. In the absence of R's treatment of minorities, stupid manufactured culture war wedge issues, and sudden onset bootlicking, I would probably be one. I don't get that choice though. Like the only thing that has kept me safe the past decade is my state supreme court and the ACLU.
Thinking about this as a red/blue issue was your first mistake.
90% of Americans aren't wrapped up in the manufactured anger industry. They just want to feed their family.
Or, you know, you could be a woman needing to terminate a pregnancy and the laws in your state prevent you from doing that. Or you can't get legally married to your partner, and so on.

What may seem to be manufactured to you can affect people unlike you in tangible ways.

Must be nice to be in a demographic that you can believe this.
I don't understand this viewpoint.

I get that a ton of poeple don't like politics in the sense of grandstanding politicians, debates on social issues that don't go anywhere, flame wars on FB, etc.

But the actual governments, fed state down to local have a huge impact on virtually everything we do in our daily lives. And in the US it's almost all politics. We aren't are less of a technocracy (idk if that's the correct term?) and not an authoritarian state.

Roads, pipes to bring water, sewer treatment, schools, healthcare (both subsidized and also the regulations on for profit insurance holders), cars, the food we eat, gas for our cars, etc etc etc. And oftentimes it's the smallest level politics that have the largest impact; city council & school board.

Maybe the internet might still be one of the largest still under regulated / touched by govt $ policy we have left.

>>Until then, Senator X has zero bearing on my everyday life

Where have you been the past two years?

.. and death rates rise.
Florida and Texas seem to be doing just fine.
Ah yes Florida where jailing scientists and statisticians is par for the course
"A single data scientist amongst a department of data scientists, who did actual, illegal stuff, and is being charged for that."

"par for the course"

We have different measures of normalcy or different news sources.

Adjusted for age, Florida has done better than CA.
Yeah now that vaccines are being shown to have rapidly waning immunity and minimal resistance to new strains I wonder what the permanent lockdown states end game is.
Low interest rates + nothing for higher earners to spend their money on supposedly leads to a crypto crash?
I think your last prediction is right, but targeting the wrong generation. The oldest Gen Z's are 25 which isn't old enough to be differentiated from the normal spending habits of broke young adults. It's the younger half of Millennials that are the ones to worry about because this would be the time where it's expected they would start having kids and buying houses and such but culturally they've got way more in common with Gen Z nihilistic anger than they do with Gen X or Boomers.
You are so cute with your nihilistic anger, do you really think you can teach Gen X anything about that?
Most oldest millenials/youngest Gen X don't give a shit on angst or everything. They just didn't care or rebel against their parents. They acted by doing the things they cared for, they didn't pose.
> Major inflation like we haven't seen since the 1970s

I'm quite happy to bet that inflation over the next year will be no more than 10%. I'd even take 5% at good odds. If it does hit that, it will do incredible things for my fixed-rate mortgage as well as my portfolio. No, I do not have significant "cash" savings.

Otherwise I agree with your predictions. There may well be a crypto boom or two to go with the busts.

I really don't see us ever locking down again. If we do lock down, it will be a half-assed "lock down", even more half-assed than before. Or it would be because of an especially bad variant, and even then it would have to be actually coordinated and enforced or there would be mass riots. I feel guilty saying it, but most people are tired of lockdowns and will refuse even if it's the moral choice.

If we lock down in 2022, what's to stop another lockdown in 2024 and in 2026 etc.? Imagine the mental health implications, especially on children and teenagers, whose entire childhood would be altered by covid. Imagine "who knows if we're going to have Christmas this year? We have to see the forecast for cases and hospitalizations", every year for every special event. People will celebrate Christmas and hang out and go to huge events or they will literally go insane.

Also, there would be massive supply chain issues like you said. Possibly big enough to actually kill people. So now we have to actually weigh the casualties of lockdown vs the casualties of a virus.

It was different in 2020. The lockdown in 2020 was designed to be short-term. It was also much more serious, because we had no idea just how dangerous covid was, and we actually had a chance of eradicating the disease entirely. That's why we could shut-down schools, cancel events planned years in advance, make court appointments virtual, and otherwise significantly alter critical parts of society.

And even then, even in early 2020, there was a not-so-small vocal minority of people (idiots) who refused to believe covid existed.

That's not to say we'll do nothing and assume covid is over. I do believe society can adjust to "stay safe" in the long-term with routine vaccination, mask-wearing in public spaces, and just being aware that covid exists. Also things like WVH and online classes (for those who want to take online) are here to stay. But people are not going to follow a "new normal" where every social interaction is weighed against the virus.

Yes, covid is endemic now. Everyone will just get on with life.

Over time mask wearing will fade away. With luck the annual covid vaccination will be be free (and mandatory for many occupations) and it will be combined with an annual flu shot, and under-12s will get it also.

(Super cynical remark: for a decade or more policy wonks have been agonising about the coming "tsunami" of healthcare needs as the Boomers age, and the political pressure to provide that care--Boomers know how to vote! I think that government planners secretly won't be too unhappy that covid takes out some of the sickest, most high-need elders.)

If there is a lockdown again, there had better not be high government officials ignoring it (especially ones who advocated for it). Otherwise, there will almost certainly be violence. We are done with hypocritical bigshots telling us what we have to do "for the greater good", and then deciding that they're too important for the rules to apply to them.
> Otherwise, there will almost certainly be violence.

People still have their Big Macs and Netflix, they will seethe in relative silence while they're smothered.

Some parts of the world will definitely lock down again in 2022. I'm in Ireland and fully expecting a hard lockdown in January.

I want to believe that the pandemic will move some health systems away from almost just-in-time lean resourcing towards having more unused capacity to soak up shocks without being overwhelmed. I predict a single step in that direction for 2022.

They're preparing to lock down in Austria right now. 2022 is only a month and a bit away.

So yes, I very much expect this "prediction" to be more like continuing current news.

I agree that at first a lockdown was arguably a somewhat half-reasonable option when the dangerousness of covid was unknown but since then it have been very clear that it's impacting only a very small segment of the population (very old people and those in overweight), yet it has been handled as if everyone were at risk.

At this point covid is a manufactured crisis used by governments as a power grab over citizens freedom, and pharmaceutical groups to get magic money. This has to stop. The lives of young people, who need to study, socialize, meet a partner, start a career are heavily negatively impacted by all those measures taken to save a few retired people that already did all those things. This is profoundly injust. Scared of covid? Then fine, do a personal lockdown but don't ask for the whole society and human interactions to stop for this. People would barely notice it's existence (like in Africa) if the media weren't speaking about it.

Everyone is at risk, since people don’t suddenly die from COVID, they take hospital space and resources. So if covid patients start filling up ICU’s a hospital’s capacity to deal with other emergencies become limited. You and I may not be at direct risk of COVID but definitely will have an impact on our health.
> I really don't see us ever locking down again.

I wish that were true. But I live in Austria (Europe) and there is a full lockdown starting tomorrow (Monday). Officially it's just going to be for a few weeks, but that's what they said every time before, and it always got extended before, so I don't have any reason to suspect this time will be different. I imagine (but I could be wrong) that it'll extend into 2022.

Perhaps it'll just be limited to Austria, but generally in the past when one country went into a lockdown other countries were in a lockdown a few weeks or a month later...

> Major inflation like we haven't seen since the 1970s.

The (demand-pull) inflation of the 1970s started because there was many years of war spending because of the Vietnam War. Once that wound down, then there was (supply-push) inflation of OPEC's oil embargo.

What we're seeing now is a sudden spike because of concentrated spending, much like happened due to the Korea War, where inflation lasted between 12-18 months:

* https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economic-issues-watch/in...

Curious as to why you are so confident there won't be any fallout from evergrande

The Chinese economy is deeply dependent on real estate for GDP and tax revenue growth and appetite and liquidity is at an all time low.

Admittedly, I know very little about the economy, let alone the intricacies of the Chinese real estate market. But it seems that this whole situation is just a typical sky is falling media frenzy. I have seen so many stories over my life saying "oh THIS is the domino that will cause China to fall." But China remains a very powerful country, they are led by smart people, and I think these China collapse narratives definitely feel good to read in the West but that's all they are, feel-good pieces.

My layman's understanding is that these companies are going to go bankrupt. The Chinese govt could easily solve the problem by simply bailing them out, but they haven't yet. But I think in the end China will just bail the companies out, and nothing will come of it.

I like you would absolutely admit there is a lot I don't know about China. I would say that that is a complicated enough topic where no person on the planet truly comprehensively understands it.

However if you want to hear what I think is a really well stated case for why China's housing problem is more structural than it might appear on the surface I encourage you to check out this bit regarding how China's local governments utilize property prices via LGFVs to do off balance sheet financing off it's social security system and really it's entire economy. If you find it interesting the whole video and the whole 4 part series is really worth a watch:

Housing Crisis — China's Reckoning (Part 2):

https://youtu.be/EgVXRtq5EIg?t=1045

I recommend you to change it to 2x speed.

The reason Evergrande plays into this is not directly a Lehman like systemtic solvency issue IMO, it's a consumer confidence problem which indirectly leads to solvency issue. Regular Chinese citizens are seeing other regular Chinese citizens who pre paid on Evergrand units losing their shirts. Data already show's that housing demand and prices are already way down from pre Evergrande issues.

I would argue if this translates into failures in the local government land auctions, China is basically instantly in a solvency crisis, which, it can deal with, but which will have major consequences.

I don’t want to sound contrarian, but my take on almost all of these is the exact opposite of yours. Was literally discussing a couple of those with a friend yesterday :)

- COVID will continue to be a thing. Some new variant will come along and booster vaccines will follow. Most countries will restrict lockdowns only for the unvaccinated, as everyone accepts the “new normal”

- The fed will keep interest rates low, but it won’t matter, as inflation picks up, earnings get slammed and stocks will either crash or trend completely sideways.

- Supply chain issues will get worse throughout 2022, massively fueled by China economy deceleration. Inflation will remain higher than we’ve seen in the past decade, but with a slowdown in consumption, will not go into hyperinflation levels.

- Crypto will NOT undergo a major crash in 2022, contradicting the consensus it’s crashing any minute now. The large volume of “staked” coins and the Futurization of Bitcoin will prevent a full on crash, but will also prevent further 100x runs (at least for next year)

- AR/VR metaverse type stuff will go big next year, from Apple to multiple Chinese brands launching their products. No megahit product will be announced though, and Apple’s entrant will get the same muted initial adoption the Apple Watch did (and be equally prototype-y)

- China will officially start its perma-recession era, just like Japan in the 80s. China won’t invade Taiwan (yet).

- GenZ digital consumerism remains on the rise, with the first series of Fortnite-exclusive Yeezys selling millions of copies. Robux credit cards get introduced, becoming one of the main forms of “banking” for many teens. The Digital Objects economy will start to get mainstream hype

> - The "lie-flat" movement massively picks up.

This is a serious symptom that is being swept under the rug. Efforts needs to be put in to better understand the issue and enforce steps to resolve it.

I lack the basic training in trying to understand the issue - sociology, psychology or whatever is the relevant field. But I feel that "lie-flat" is just an acute variant of the general issue - "checking out of reality". The other versions are "staying in echo chambers" and being incapable of even listening to different views. "Getting lost in other worlds" - the gamers that spend whole day in games like Fortnite or always flipping through videos in tik tok.

The fact that they could still live while "checking out of reality" means that those who are 'lying flat' are being supported by someone who is not doing so.

It isn't a problem until there aren't enough people working, and too many people are 'lying flat', so much so that there's not enough food or necessities being produced and you get mass starvation.

> "checking out of reality".

The lie-flat movement came about in response to the 996. Workers realized they were being worked to death in factories for little pay and opportunities to climb up society's ladder dried up. The older generation sees it as laziness but if you look at it from their perspective, its a natural conclusion. The only people that benefits from being overworked, little pay, and few opportunities are the owners (i.e. the older generation and their offspring). Both the lie-flat and 996 are two extreme ends of the same spectrum.

I disagree that they are checking out of reality. I think they are looking at the reality of their economic situation and making a logical conclusion. They realized they could earn more per hour basis by working less and being more happy.

It is very much the same situation happening right now in the US. Blue collar workers realize they no longer want to work as waiters, and rather spend time leveling up and becoming white collar. You have all these restaurant owners calling these people lazy while ignoring the fact they hardly pay a living wage.

Thanks for taking the time to write this down. It would be great if this was more widely understood but sadly it is not and won’t be - instead it will remain “a mystery”.
Does it need solving? If you support yourself and enjoy your current lifestyle, keep going!
Large, squid like aliens will show up and announce they have been grooming humanity for the last 4,000 or so years to manufacture and repair microelectronics for them.
If I finally get an RTX3080 I might be OK with that outcome.
The squids are the ones taking all of them, duh.
Explains the shortage as well as Apple letting people fix their own stuff.
Sad to say this sounds nowhere near as bad as the scenarios at the low end of my estimation error bars for how next year could go.
Do they let us work remote?
So far. Transplanting things to a different biosphere is just so.. icky.
Galactically-feared aliens arrive on Earth and come up with a diabolical plan to force us to work 4 hours a day, three days a week with full medical, dental, and prescription coverage along with 60 days of vacation per year.

The rest of the galaxy scratches their...whatevers...wondering why the humans throw down their tools and rush to work for the invaders.

I'd buy that book.
I actually saw this recently (within the last week) on /r/hfy. (Not the book, just a short story. The aliens were going to kidnap a million humans, work them 20 hours a week for five years, then send each one home with a kilo of gold. If we didn't agree, they were going to destroy the earth. They thought they were being big nasty conquerors, imposing harsh terms...)
So long as we get to make a heroic - if futile - last stand, I wouldn’t even be that upset. At least we’d know we are not alone.
Don't be so hasty... let's find out what the pay and benefits are, first.
Countries will look for viable Small Modular Reactor designs that aren't too expensive. If they succeed, it will kickstart a huge nuclear renaissance and whoever can supply the finished reactors fast will make a lot of money on it. If not, the entire technology will probably be dead (in the civilian sector) forever.

Some of the longevity trials will show significant reduction of epigenetic age in humans. I am almost sure that TRIIM-X will. That is pretty close to the first flight of the Wright brothers, only in the anti-aging field.

During the next 10 or so years, all the debt-fueled spending is going to bite us back hard.

We might have a new round of Yellow Vests in Europe if consumer prices of electricity and fuels go up again. If such protests really happen, governments will crack down on social networks heavy-handedly.

The digital giants will open up their app stores voluntarily to escape antitrust prosecution.

>During the next 10 or so years, all the debt-fueled spending is going to bite us back hard.

that's like saying it will happen eventually, which is not that helpful or useful of a prediction

Timing the market is a hopeless task. We do not know yet if our treasuries will make an attempt to wean themselves off cheap credit or not.

I am afraid they won't, but even then the curve may vary a lot.

I know this isn't a very good prediction. The only thing that bothers me is that the contemporary ruling class seems to operate as if the borrowing could go on forever.

What precisely is going to stop it? Where else is the safety-seeking money going to go? Even the periodic threat of a gratuitous default doesn't rattle US bond prices.
The U.S. might be a special case, with the dollar being a reserve currency.

Italian lira was weak and Italians used to buy a lot of property. Until today, an average Italian family has much more real estate than an average German family.

Polish zloty went into a tailspin in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1995, they decided to start again and remove four zeros off the new zloty. IDK what happened to all the debt held in non-zlotys.

Covid-19 will continue into Covid-22 (as in the same virus into 2022, not a new virus entirely).

Return to office will tick up more than expected

City -> Suburbs/Rural will revert back to pre-covid trend of Suburbs/Rural -> City

Bayern will win the UCL
The companies that are double or triple ordering this year, in fear of suppliers not delivering, are going to get a lot of stuff in 2022. In other words, the shortages and empty shells will be followed by fire sales and stories of companies destroying their inventories.
Title should be "Ask HN: What are your* 2022 predictions?"
NY Mets will be out of contention by early June.
I think the fake 'inflation' we are seeing (which is really supply-side shock) will vanish, and reveal that we are in a huge deflationary environment.

Remote work is here to stay.

Rents go up as over-leveraged landlords will have to pay back rising interest rates (QE is tapering already now).

Climate issues, real and not so real, will be used to achieve the control agenda of established power in the same way the pandemic was.

The culture wars will continue humming away in the foreground, distracting us from our declining quality of life and the transfer of wealth from the lower and middle classes taking place before our eyes.

Overall, it will get worse as our current predicament perhaps needs to.

I'd argue that rents will fall as large volumes of "investment" housing starts to hit the market. The end of a decade (almost 2, actually) of quantitative easing and and resulting increase in interest rates is the death knell for asset value-derived investment. This includes any stock where the value is not correlated with revenue.
I purposely avoided the asset bubble collapse because it's all so volatile and overhwelming right now. But you're right - and it would quite likley crater rents.
> large volumes of "investment" housing starts to hit the market

Are people currently not living in this housing? How much un-lived in property is there? I don't see much, if any, in Houston. But house purchase prices here still doubled in the past few years.

> I think the fake 'inflation' we are seeing (which is really supply-side shock) will vanish, and reveal that we are in a huge deflationary environment.

> Rents go up as over-leveraged landlords will have to pay back rising interest rates (QE is tapering already now).

I think these two contradict each other. Inflation is fake, but interest rates rise?

> Climate issues, real and not so real, will be used to achieve the control agenda of established power in the same way the pandemic was.

Yup.

You’re spot on! Except for the deflation part.
>I think the fake 'inflation' we are seeing

There is going to be an excess supply shock in first quarter of q4. Most of the suppliers are over stocked up to such an extent and most 3PLs are over capacity and unable to take up any new clients.

And not sure how "fake" the inflation is. The cost of container from china was $1k before pandemic. Now its $10k-$20k. Though rates are falling back its not enough https://www.statista.com/statistics/1250636/global-container...

>I think the fake 'inflation' we are seeing (which is really supply-side shock) will vanish, and reveal that we are in a huge deflationary environment.

The inflation is not fake. It is being caused the but incredible amount of dollars that have been created in the last 2 years. There were $12 trillion added to the money supply in May 2020 alone, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL. Before May 2020 There were only $4.7 trillion in circulation in April 2020. This the text book case of inflation.

Rents going up (faster than usual) is nearly a per se inflationary environment for most Americans due to rent being a high % of income. You're arguing that would happen, but you'd label it a deflationary environment?
I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla gets their self driving software to a human level within the next 5 years. And that this will be a huge wake-up call for mankind. To think about the future in the face of AI.

I often watch videos of people who drive with FSD for the first time. Those are the most intense reactions to a product I can remember.

If one day we wake up and see self driving cars all around us, we will start thinking about how the world will look like when everything is automated. This will be a huge challenge and adventure.

I would actually expect the opposite - that FSD gets banned in the short term because mistakes are a. inevitable and b. super, super dangerous.

I think self driving cars only become safe when every vehicle is capable of self driving, and infrastructure is adapted accordingly.

happy to be proven wrong though!

I expect Tesla to give up on driving by cameras, and simplier solutions requiring less processing power, but a more bespoke combination of hires maps, cameras, lidars, and other sensors, to acheive practical FSD before Telsa.
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You could have made the same prediction for the past 6-7 years and you would have been wrong every time. Sure, it might happen some day but I don't know why 2022 should be different from 2021.
I have worked on some hard engineering problems in my life, where one could not have been sure if it is possible to find a solution. In my experience, when you get to a "From here on it is just more of the same" situation, that is a strong indicator that a solution will be found in the near future.

And that is the feeling I get when I watch FSD videos these days.

5 years ago, people were celebrating lane changes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7jNHFwZ3Ec

Nowadays, FSD drives through all kinds of weird scenarios:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LISLFHCPWrw

And people complain about specific situations FSD can not handle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT2H42k7Z1g

I'm pretty sure someone at Tesla sees this and thinks "Hmm.. we can solve this in a similar way we solved lane changes".

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* Queen Elizabeth II will die, prompting complaints about how much coverage the BBC will give the event.

* A large earthquake (>6) in the SF Bay Area.

* COVID cases will reduce but not enough to rescind mask-wearing rules.

* A large "stablecoin" will crash but the crypto market will (unfortunately, probably) recover reasonably quickly.

* The NFT craze will not persist.

* In the US, the GOP will make significant political gains primarily through gerrymandering.

Obviously some people will complain to the BBC, but I really don’t think that will be much of a thing. It will be an undeniably monumental event.
It will definitely be big news when it happens. Her death doesn't occur in a void - the throne will have someone else's cheeks assigned to it.

It will be impossible to not talk about the future of the monarchy when she dies, next year or in 2028. It would be BBC's duty to report extensively on it.

> COVID cases will reduce but not enough to rescind mask-wearing rules.

In a lot of the US there aren't really mask requirements anymore outside of maybe hospitals. I moved to Seattle from Utah recently and the change in attitudes is pretty astonishing.

> I moved to Seattle from Utah recently and the change in attitudes is pretty astonishing.

Could you be more specific here? What's the difference in attitudes between Seattle and Utah?

No one cares if you don't wear a mask in Utah (there are also no mask mandates for most places, hospitals might be an exception, and some workers still need to wear them I think) and you're not even allowed to sit in a coffee shop without being vaccinated in Seattle.
It's on the surface like this in Seattle, but not really. Places I visit have silently dropped real enforcement, and no one bats an eye if there's folks without masks. Of course the fact it's all theater still makes it annoying.
Windows 11 and WSL2 will finally deliver the year of Linux on the desktop.
China will invade Taiwain.
Hopefully not, but if there is some major "internal" US trouble (like a big economic crash) they probably will.
2022 starts the Roaring 20s. Covid takes a backseat as new therapeutics become available. Remote work trend allows mass migration out of the Western states and into more rural areas.

Prices and employment stabilize as the Fed tapers QE.

TikTok launches new Metaverse product.

Biden steps down to allow for Kamala to take over.

Lebron James wins one final NBA championship and retires. Patriots return to win the Super Bowl and Alabama wins another College football championship.

>Biden steps down to allow for Kamala to take over.

I second this. Although I wonder if it will be Biden stepping down or the 25th Amendment being enacted. I think Kamala takes over after the mid-term elections. Her current poll numbers would necessitate them waiting at least until then.

Sorta predictions, sorta hopes...

GPT-4 or another huge language model like it will be released, and we will see diminishing returns continue to plateau.

Graph-based approaches in NLP will continue to grow in significance, with KGs, ontologies, and semantic graphs seeing growing adoption for their interpretability.

Model robustness in ML will probably remain a significant obstacle to productionization, holding back use-cases that need high reliability e.g. self-driving and front-facing chatbots.

Reinforcement Learning may see increased research focus for applications in NLP and user interaction.

> GPT-4 or another huge language model like it will be released, and we will see diminishing returns continue to plateau.

It was my understanding that GPT-3 showed pretty well that the returns are not dimishing but rather surprisingly still scaling along with data rather nicely.

Figure 3.8 in the GPT-3 paper (SuperGLUE Performance) pretty clearly shows a plateau in performance, with the increase in performance from 13B to 175B parameters (13.5x params, +6 score) not being significantly different from the increase between 6.7B to 13B (1.9x params, +4 score).
- Companies that are buying up large swaths of real estate figure out that "money pit" is a real thing, and owning a thousand houses isn't a good way to make hard cash. They start merging with one another to stave off a crash.

- A new social media company starts to gain traction. Because that's what happens every few years.

- People start unloading their streaming subscriptions when they realize that for many people, they cost more than cable or satellite. But rather than go back to the other delivery methods, they just consume less video. Streaming companies start to cannibalize one another, and set up for merging.

- My wife will continue to complain about her neck pain, but refuse to stop scrolling through Instagram hunched over on the toilet. She will continue to try to hide this from me.

My old landlord was a couple who owned 11 houses, 10 of which they rented out.

Over the couple of years we lived there, we discovered they weren't even all that rich... but they sure will be. They own the house they live in, and rent out their other houses. It started with them renting out a house to help pay their mortgage, and then they found ways to accumulate mortgages for more homes.

Clever but I suspect they were stressed out pretty big time, too. If any one of them failed, it would collapse in full domino style. But if it works (and it surely will), they retire fully owning 11 properties in their name, for whatever they might want to do with them.

My landlord also owns 11 multi family buildings. He bought them in the early 2000s, in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood on the Brooklyn waterfront, for 100-200k each. Each building is now worth 2-5million and he charges 2,800-4,000 per unit (in 6-8 unit buildings) for rent. He told me that he’ll never sell and will keep using leverage to buy up more buildings.

My grandmother’a brother bough 2 buildings in the same neighborhood in the early 90s for even less and had them fully paid off by 2000. Each one was making him 20k a month before he sold them for >3 million to developers who will come in and jack up rents by 50-100% on the old people that have been living there the past 15-20 years.

In the UK: Covid will dimish in importance enough for people to disentangle the negative consequences of Brexit, leading to widespread use of the Pikachu shocked face meme. Scottish independence will take a step forward, with a new referendum scheduled for 2023.

At least one company (probably Apple) will exceed $4T market cap, current >$1T companies will all pass at least one more trillion milestone. No new companies will break $1T besides those already there.

Tax rules will come into effect across Europe rendering crypto/NFTs unattractive. The market will crash then rebound, but coin values will end up roughly where they are right now.

Russian troops will be invited into Belarus to formally support defence efforts, increasing tension with the EU.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline will become operational, but only after rocketing gas prices stir minor unrest in western Europe.

Chinese naval aggression will lead to a war of words with Japan but no direct conflict, but at least one weaker neighbour will lose fishermen or naval personnel in a small skirmish. The international community will continue to do nothing.

Taiwanese airspace will be entered by Chinese jets at least once a month, but no shots will be fired.

Genome sequencing will become an "optional" way to "reduce" health insurance premiums in the US. Sequencing of the wider population in Europe will be explored in more detail than previously, but not progress due to privacy debates.

> In the UK: Covid will dimish in importance enough for people to disentangle the negative consequences of Brexit, leading to widespread use of the Pikachu shocked face meme. Scottish independence will take a step forward, with a new referendum scheduled for 2023.

Very interesting, transfer of such a financial liability as Scotland from UK to EU may even offset at least some of the Brexit damage! Followed by more Pikachu faces, but under different flags.

Yes, in many ways Brexit makes Scottish independence more difficult. Previously trade and people would have been able to flow across the border but that isn't a given now.
It will be exactly the same as 2021; covid cycles, market will be ok, crypto will fluctuate, inflation will rise slowly, interest rate will stay the same. Earth will continue to suffer with global warming. People are displaced with fires, floods and sea levels. Civil unrest in many poor countries as autocrats seize more power. And finally Trump will still think he can convince us he won the election, it wont be on twitter
They're gonna find intelligent life up there on the moon And The Canterbury Tales will shoot up to the top of the best-seller list And stay there for twenty-seven weeks And the Chicago Cubs will beat every team in the league And the Tampa Bay Bucs will make it all the way through January

The stars are gonna spell out the answers to tomorrow's crosswords And the Phillips Corporation will admit that they've made an awful mistake And Bill Gates will single-handedly spearhead the Heaven 17 revival And the Chicago Cubs will beat every team in the league And the Tampa Bay Bucs will take it all the way to the top

And I will love you again I will love you like I used to

I would love for this to become a regular thing on HN. And it would be even more wonderful if we had a standard template where we expressed our predictions in probabilities.
and some type of score keeping for who gets things right over time.. to know who are the bellwethers
Payment for order flow will be banned, to the detriment of retail investors.
Why would it be banned? Doesn't wall street love order flow?
Because members of congress and many retail investors believe it harms the interests of the small-scale investor.
Huawei/HiSilicon will start producing highend chips again, fabbed outside the reach of US sanctions. Probably first the chips sitting inside their 5G base stations.

This will mark a turning point in the US-China tech war.

It doesn't matter where they are fab'ed. There is so much pressure worldwide to not add them to communications infrastructure by those that depend on US defense (basically everyone outside of Russia an China) that, if anything, I think this situation gets worse for these two.
As it is now they (Huawei and ZTE) cannot fab the chips they have designed for their base stations, meaning the rollout of 5G in China is in danger.