A Given: DEMOGRAPHICS: Rising non-white population; nation as one of multiple minorities
Which means: transfer of power is inevitable.
A Fact: INCOME and WEALTH DISPARITIES: record levels, with accretion happening daily
Which means: the current verbal pushback will intensify.
A Fact: FINANCIAL DISPARITIES overlap with ethnicity
Which means: race is always an issue.
A Strongly-held Opinion: RACISM is the country’s cancer, with little evidence of remission
Which means: race is always an issue.
A Fact: the MIDDLE CLASS is earning no more than a decade ago, is shrinking, is angry, and skews white
Which means its frustration overlaps with every issue above.
A Strongly-held Opinion by many financial professionals: the Federal Reserve, during the decade-long economic upturn from the 2007-08 debacle, has already taken all the pump-priming financial steps necessary to address a recession; what tools remain then is the open question.
Which means: there could be fragility to asset values even if an actual recession is not severe.
A Fact: America leads in the propensity for individual violence, and, on average, everybody has a gun.
Which means: frustration + means = highly predictable bad outcomes.
A Strongly-held Opinion: Western Europe is not substantially different from the United States in terms of having to struggle with an expected reduced secular rate of economic growth; stress related to the assimilation of an immigrant and refugee population while the native-born population is barely at a replacement rate; and the angst of lessened political stability.
Which means: if one American is distraught, he or she can escape to a location elsewhere in the world but if millions are distraught, there is no logical escape. Thus, all the above sources of change and frustration have to be duked out.