Again, mariner chooses to post an article from Axios, a reputable news organization, rather than ruin it by trying to write an extract. What makes this article different is that it takes a top-down look at the future rather than using words like ‘salary’, ‘cost of living’ and ‘broken government’.

“Multiple disruptive forces will converge by 2028 — toxic political fragmentation, super intelligent AI and a platform shift bigger than social media — hitting simultaneously, not sequentially:

Multiple disruptive forces will converge by 2028 — toxic political fragmentation, superintelligent AI and a platform shift bigger than social media — hitting simultaneously, not sequentially:

• 🗳️ Politics: Two wide-open, bitterly contested presidential primaries are nearly certain as both parties reimagine their platforms in real time. Old issues (jobs, inflation, the economy) will fuse with new ones (AI, growing anti-Israel sentiment, drones).
• 🤖 AI: The models will be exponentially more capable by 2028, and likely to be fully embedded in every job across every industry. It’s difficult to imagine that no defining AI event has occurred — a cancer cure on the upside, a grid attack on the downside.
• ⚡️ Platform shift: Every major information platform of the last 30 years — from cable news to social media — created a new power structure. Winners got rich. Laggards got irrelevant. The shift from web to LLM-based information is potentially bigger than all of them. The next phase: hardware. Devices worn, carried or embedded will route nearly all information through AI interfaces. The smartphone made the web the default. The next devices will make the LLM the default.
• ⚖️ Inequality surge: By 2028, the top 10% will likely drive more than half of all U.S. consumer spending. The rich will get dramatically richer off AI. We may mint the first trillionairs with nation-state wealth in private hands. Imagine the politics of that.
• 💰 Debt: Based on government projections, we’re staring at roughly $43 trillion in total gross national debt. Nearly 15% of all tax revenue will service debt — without being invested in anything. Congress won’t act until a crisis hits.
• 🃏 Wildcards: China, an energy crunch, a new war, a climate shock. Any one of these could rewrite reality.”

Note that all disruptions will occur simultaneously.

Ancient Mariner