Part Two Of Vote For Karlos: The Moats Plan
PART 4: CONTEXT-THE WORLD IN 2040
My friends, the globe’s demographics have changed greatly since 2012. The world is nine billion strong now. Europe and East Asia are “old-age homes”. 1/3 people are older than 65. Working-class populations have fallen by 1/10 in China, ¼ in Europe, and nearly ½ in Japan. China moves—however unevenly—towards democracy. The Cold War II is over, and we won. China’s Communist-Capitalism lost to America’s Capitalist-Capitalism.
My friends, the Cold War was the first and longest (1945-1989) economic war. But it wasn’t the last. There have actually been numerous wars fought on the economic battlefield since 1945. Bankers and lawyers are these wars’ foot-soldiers. Gordon Gecko’s “Greed is good”, not “Be all you can be” is the creed. Japan and the United States waged war during the 1980s and 1990s. The prized jewels this time were not Pacific islands or commonwealths but billion dollar corporations (Toyota, Coca Cola). But a real estate bubble left-hook and crony capitalism haymaker KO’d Japan into a Lost Decade. And a larger foe entered the ring: China.
It was a battle of the titans. East versus West. A resurgent ancient power pitted against a fading prodigy. Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke were our generals of the 2010s by day. Chinese hackers broke into Google accounts and both sides scanned for national electric grid weak-points by night. The monthly China-USA trade deficit demarcated our ever-changing tide of war. We bombarded China in recent years with manufacturing—not bullets. Meanwhile, the floating yuan tick-tocked as China’s time bomb.
My friends, China’s economy just surpassed $123 trillion. China’s per capita income just surpassed $85,000, more than double Europe’s. But China’s 2010s real estate bubble popped and its aging population had to be paid for. Taiwan is now China’s Wall Street Island. Today, an uneasy economic alliance has been forged. The global economy is split in two. China is the globe’s great manufacturing economy; we are the globe’s great service economy. But both sides agree democracy and capitalism is the way forward.
Now, the Middle East has democratized. The façade of Arab strongmen cracked. The rusted monuments and rebar exposed depraved men clinging to fists full of petro-dollars. Their towering walls of brick and mortar were no match for the pixellated Facebook walls of ones and zeroes.
14-year-old Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Taliban on a ruthless school bus shoot-out in Afghanistan in 2012. In 2040, 42-year-young Prime Minister Malala Yousafzai leads Afghanistan towards a path of education and reform and hunts down the last vestiges of the Taliban.
Yes, Iran got the bomb in the late 2010s, but the region’s true explosion was its population–not its nuclear power. 60% of the Arab world population was under the age 25 back in 2012. These youths were born after the fall of the Shah of Iran but just in time for friend requests. Tahrir Square emblazoned the generation with its own moment. And they were more committed to make it last.
Their democracy was stamped “Made in Cairo” and “Made in Damascus” with young heroes—and growing pains—all their own. These youths no longer had to listen to their grandfathers recount their revolutions. These youths had revolutions and protests—all their own.
Yes, we saw the rumblings of discontent during the Arab Spring of the 2010s. Lawyers, bloggers and students toppled Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, and Bashar al-Assad with grassroot protests from the bottom-up. But the top-down change came when the youths of the 2010s—long fed up with chronic unemployment and rising global grain prices—matured into the more moderate leaders of the 2030s.
My friends, the United States is different than 2012, sure, but it’s also stronger than ever. We are younger, more diverse, more urban, and more Southern than ever before. Whites—like myself—became a racial minority earlier this year. My opponent and the Republican party as a whole fear these changes. I do not. I welcome it. Because, my friends, we were always a nation of immigrants and we always will be. To NOT quote the late George Wallace, Immigration Now, Immigration Tomorrow, Immigration Forever!
