Executive Summary
Looking back on 2019, one trend stood out – the extent to which we have all become victims of deception. While people have been cheating ever since we learned to deceive others, including cheating on spouses, taxes, exams and games of chance, this year witnessed an epidemic of cheating the likes of which Americans have never seen. If civilizations, like fish, rot from the head, then our Head of State led the cheater’s parade by trying to force Ukraine to help him cheat in the 2020 election, just like Russia helped him cheat to win in 2016. Following close behind him were the uber rich parents who cheated to get their kids into elite universities by faking athletic prowess or bribing people to actually cheat on college entrance exams. In their wake, an avalanche of petty fraudsters and scamsters using deceptive tactics assaulted us by phone, email, text and snail mail trying to separate us from our hard-earned money. It’s so bad at my home that 99% of the calls I get are selling something that I don’t want. I don’t even bother to answer my phone anymore.
When I was a kid growing up in a very different America, I was taught that we were the nation of boundless opportunity, a meritocracy where ambition and hard work would be rewarded, where everyone could succeed if only they tried hard enough. Of course, even as a child, when the ghettos erupted in flames, I realized that equal opportunity for all was a vision, not a reality, but at least it was something that Americans believed in with near universal assent. Following that belief, I studied hard in school and, though I was the son of a high school dropout, I continued my education at UCLA all the way to a Ph.D. Over the course of a 40 year career, I have been amply rewarded both financially and personally for the hard work I have invested in myself and my career.
As I look today from that 50 year old perspective, I am deeply saddened to see the decline of equal opportunity, which is at the very heart of the American dream. As I watch my sons struggle to launch their careers, despite the benefits of a middle class upbringing, it is apparent that what they know matters little; it’s all about who they know and their connections to the rich and powerful, who control everything today. We are no longer a meritocracy; we are an oligarchy controlled by an aristocracy of the rich and famous. Unless you are born into the 1%, your chances of joining them are virtually nil. You literally have a better chance of standing outside your home waiting to be hit by lightning. No wonder working class folks play the lottery! The American Dream is on life support and the powerful are clamoring to pull the plug on the rest of us while they cheat to keep everything for themselves and their heirs.
Politics
Impeachment Redux
For only the fourth time in our history, a president has faced impeachment for violating his oath of office. The House hearings uncovered evidence that Trump pressured the newly-elected President of Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rivals in exchange for military aid that he was withholding in an extortion attempt. After a whistleblower exposed the plot, Trump was forced to release the aid, all the while claiming his behavior was “perfect.” His enablers in Congress leapt to his defense, claiming Trump wasn’t actually demanding a quid pro quo from Ukraine, he was really interested in fighting corruption there. Besides, Ukraine eventually got the aid, so “no harm, no foul.”
Actually, no, there was clearly a foul and harm done to our ally and our own global image, but apparently everyone left in the Republican party now believes anything Trump does is fine. Somehow, I doubt Republicans would be so sanguine about foreign interference if a future President Bernie Sanders invited Cuba and Venezuela to meddle on behalf of his presidential campaign. Would Lindsay Graham obsequiously rise to defend President Sanders? Of course not!
This is the third impeachment in my lifetime, after we had gone nearly 200 years with only one, back after the Civil War, when our country was most deeply divided. Of the three I’ve lived through, this one features the most galling behavior. Even Nixon, for all his dirty tricks, did not solicit a foreign nation to interfere in our election. He merely authorized his cronies to break into the Democratic Party headquarters in search of dirt on his opponent and then obstructed justice to cover it up. At least Nixon had the decency to recognize his crimes and resign rather than drag the country through the sewer of his impeachment trial.
Bill Clinton got impeached for lying about a blowjob. That was a partisan hit job by a Republican-appointed special prosecutor, so he was easily acquitted during a Senate trial. He has ended up one of our most popular modern presidents, presiding over the best economy our nation has seen in the past 50 years.
Trump, like Nixon, has engaged in abuse of power that strikes at the very heart of our democracy – our elections. Having learned how beneficial Russian help was to him in 2016, he plans to invite even more foreign interference in 2020. The Republicans in the Senate are backing Trump to the hilt, since they have no problem with election interference that benefits them. After all, they have been engaged in domestic voter suppression for decades, so now foreign interference is perfectly okay too. The Republican National Committee has accepted donations from Russians and Ukrainians in violation of federal election laws, but no one is enforcing those laws anymore. I expect Trump to be acquitted in the Senate, probably without a trial on a party line vote. This will cause an emboldened Trump to engage in naked election interference in 2020. If he loses, he will declare the election “rigged” and may not leave the White House voluntarily. Can you imagine having to evict Trump from the White House?
The 2020 Presidential election should provide plenty of drama on the Democratic side too, with a dozen candidates vying to oppose him. Though no clear frontrunner has emerged, Democrats have a lot of options, from the young and untested Pete Buttigieg to the venerable septuagenarians Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, who are so old, they predate Boomers. It’s too bad that the party of diversity seems destined to select another white male as its standard bearer, but Democrats are reluctant to tackle Trump again with a female or minority candidate, fearing another White backlash. Personally, I think Elizabeth Warren would be an outstanding President, but I’m afraid, as a former Harvard law professor, she’s too smart and too threatening to fragile male egos to ever be elected.
Brexit
Across the pond, our former colonial masters are embroiled in their own circular firing squad over their membership in the European Union. Boris Johnson, a Brexit architect and Trump ally, has just won reelection and is determined to sever the ties that have bound the UK and Western Europe in a union that dates to the end of WWII. In the process of divorcing Europe, the UK itself may also dissolve as Scotland and Northern Ireland consider independence so that they can continue to remain in the EU. In Moscow, Putin is celebrating the demise of the European Union and eyeing the reconstruction of the Soviet bloc, starting with his takeover of Ukraine. As Nancy Pelosi observed, “All roads lead to Putin.”
Economy
Stock Market Defies Gravity
For the past ten years since the Great Crash, financial markets have rebounded with a vengeance, wiping out the losses and pushing the bull market to ever higher highs. No matter what headwinds appear, the markets continue to defy gravity. Can this go on forever? Have we entered the era of perpetual growth and solved the fundamental capitalist cycle of boom and bust? I wouldn’t bet your 401(k) on it, since many of the structural issues that led to the crash are still with us, including ballooning debt, risky investments and global conflicts. Propelling the markets this year was $480 billion in stock buybacks – corporations using the tax cut windfall to buy up their own shares to boost the price and profit large shareholders, including corporate executives whose compensation is tied to their stock’s price.
A more accurate look at our economy reveals slowing GDP over the past year, with forecasts of continued decline in 2020. Financial experts are divided about when the next recession will occur. It looked more likely last spring, but after three interest rate cuts and massive government support for financial markets, the year ended as a winner for stocks, with gains over 20 percent. This is attributed to FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out, a psychology that urges more people to pour more money into the market while more money can still be made. Experts also point out that excessive FOMO is often a harbinger of the end of a bull market. The real economy is slowing, so watch out for turbulence in 2020.
Trade War Winners and Losers
One big drag on the economy has been Trump’s trade war with China. When the two largest economies started slapping tit-for-tat tariffs on each other’s imported goods, the spillover effect was slowing growth and higher prices for everyone. The current trade war has cost the U.S. at least a percentage point of growth and it could get a lot worse unless a deal is struck soon. Both sides are hinting at a deal and continue to hype it to keep the markets humming, but unless they can actually resolve their differences, the trade war is likely to push the world into recession. With both sides dug deep into opposite positions, we’ll see how they manage to negotiate their differences, or not.
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
One notable highpoint of this economic recovery is the strong job market, as reflected in the unemployment rate, now down to 3.5%. Trump loves to talk about all the jobs he has created and certainly, the massive corporate tax cut of 2017 provided a temporary spike to keep hiring growing. But the other side of unemployment is the labor participation rate, the percentage of adults who are working. After reaching a high of 67% in 2000, it has dropped to 62% since the Great Recession. What accounts for this? Primarily, it’s the growing wave of Boomer retirements, which has now swelled to about 300,000 per month. Considering that job growth averaged 180,000 per month in 2019, we actually had about 120,000 fewer adults in the labor force every month. This will continue for another decade, leaving us with a severe labor shortage by 2030 if we continue to restrict immigration. Already, millions of jobs are unfilled due to a lack of qualified applicants.
Society and Culture
#OKBoomer
The largest generation in U.S. history continues its outsized influence on our society. To my chagrin, many of my generation have abandoned the ideals of our youth. Of course, I recognize that people tend to become more conservative with age. We have a greater stake in the status quo as we raise children and accumulate possessions, so naturally are more likely to defend it. Still, how in the world did Boomers go from the summer of peace and love to our winter of war and hate? I’m embarrassed to see people my age show up at Trump rallies in droves chanting hate and death to their sworn enemies. How do Boomer politicians, who currently run the world like corrupt dictators, reconcile their immorality with the ideals of our youth? I can’t really blame millennials who have had enough of our hypocrisy and call us on it with the dismissive #okboomer. Sure you had your day, but your days are numbered, the younger generations rightly insist. Boomers should either lead or get out of the way.
Climate Change Gets Real
A sixteen year old from Sweden, Greta Thunberg, emerged as the face of climate change activism in 2019, her photo gracing the cover of Time as Person of the Year and her appearance at the United Nations electrifying activists all over the globe. As storms become more intense, droughts more prolonged and coastal areas disappear under rising seas, it is now impossible to ignore climate change, despite desperate efforts of the fossil fuel industry and their Republican allies to confuse us with nonsense about weather being beyond human influence. In California, we saw the worst wildfires in the state’s history, thanks to tinder dry brush from an overly wet winter and the negligence of power companies whose equipment sparked most of the blazes. It will only get worse, at least until we act with much greater urgency than the current half-hearted measures at carbon control.
The real risk that scientists point to is that the climate will change so radically that few species will have time to adapt. We are already entering a mass extinction event, with a different species disappearing forever nearly every week. Over half the birds of North America are gone, bee populations have been decimated, large mammals cling to survival with assistance from concerned humans. We are at the top of the food chain, so our existence is ensured as long as the rest of the food chain does not collapse. But at the rate we are destroying the planet, a total collapse of the existing ecosystem is within the realm of possibility in a few hundred years, a mere nanosecond in geologic time.
Training and Talent Development Industry Holds Steady
Though a slowing economy will tap the breaks on human resources, especially hiring and training, 2019 showed the industry remains resilient and training remains in high demand, although both spending and time spent in training were roughly the same as 2018. This year, the average American employee received 34 hours of formal training at an average cost of $1300. The biggest change is in delivery method, with traditional classroom training now just 54% of the total. Instead, organizations are turning to self-paced e-learning (22%) and virtual webinars (11%) to deliver more training more efficiently. They have also increased on-the-job training (OJT) to close skill gaps.
Personal
Semi-retirement
I am now at the age where I have to face the question of how much longer to work. According to the Social Security Administration, I’m already retirement age, but I have continued to work full-time, both for the money and the satisfaction that my consulting work provides. This summer, I was let go by one of my long-term local clients due to financial pressures they were experiencing. Rather than rush out to fill that vacant time, I decided to cut back to my two remaining clients – ANSI and ATD. Both responded with more offers of work, so I haven’t really slowed down all that much. Still, I am no longer traversing our local freeways, instead spending more time at home, where I work on various projects and continue to write and publish. I’m simultaneously working on three books and have launched a podcast called “Learning to Learn: Becoming a Super Learner,” available on iTunes and Spotify.
Travels
This year, I was entirely domestic. Work took me to Nashville, Raleigh-Durham, DC, San Francisco, Dallas, San Diego, Richmond, Boise, Phoenix, Kansas City, and Chicago. All that flying earned me Gold status on American. I’ll be using that a lot in 2020, since I have at least three overseas trips and close to a dozen domestic trips already booked. So much for retirement, I guess.
Family
I am pleased to report that all of my family members are doing well. Tania has also semi-retired from caregiving and enjoys cooking, art and music. Vince quit his job in the video game industry and is starting his own game studio. Steven is selling Hondas for a local dealership and granddaughter Jade is a first-grader already reading and doing arithmetic above grade level. My mom Harriet turned 87 this year and returned to Rochester to live in a retirement home where she can get the full-time care and assistance she needs.
Goodbye to the Twenty-teens
It’s hard to believe we have completed the second decade of the 21st century already. As a kid, I remember thinking about what the world might be like in 2020. I imagined a futuristic society based on the Jetsons cartoon where we flew to work and had robotic maids doing our housework, a world of incredible innovation and leisure, where everyone enjoyed a dignified life without want. Boy, did I get the future wrong! Instead, we find ourselves living in a dystopia of mass extinction, endless war, income inequality, and violent crime.
We started this decade in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Although we managed to climb out of that crater, the recovery has benefited a tiny percentage of the wealthy at everyone else’s expense. Wealth and power are more concentrated than ever before. The top one percent now controls over half of all wealth in America. They use this wealth to buy politicians, bribe university officials, silence their critics and spread favorable propaganda. They are not satisfied to have half of everything; they want it all, every last cent that you and I still have in our pockets. Already, half of all Americans are living in perpetual debt, never earning enough to cover their expenses, let alone save for the future.
I think the most important event of the last decade was not the election of Obama or Trump, but the steady growth of inequality and the rising tide of nationalism and intolerance sweeping the world. As we turn inward and against each other, we imperil our collective existence on a planet that is warming at an unsustainable pace.
I lived in the People’s Republic of China in the 1980s, back at the moment when they began their modernization drive. Then, I questioned how a totalitarian state could possibly reconcile free market capitalism with their system of government control. Over the 40 years since, China has developed a new form of state capitalism that is neither free nor fair, but has generated enormous wealth, propelling China to the top of the global economy.
As we enter the third decade of this century, I am now increasingly concerned that American freedom and democracy may no longer be compatible with the monopoly crony capitalism that we currently practice. Instead of America remaking China in our image, as I hoped would happen back in the eighties, we are increasingly becoming more like China – less free and less fair in every aspect of our lives. There’s another name for totalitarian state capitalism – it used to be called fascism, as practiced by the Nazis and their allies 80 years ago. We should all beware less we end up reliving those disastrous times once again.
Priceless Moments
Here’s to the people and events that will linger in our memories long after 2019 is in the history books.
To Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney and unofficial Ambassador to Ukraine:
Once known as America’s mayor after 9/11, you have degenerated into America’s dirty trickster, globetrotting with indicted scoundrels who are willing to pay anything for access to the President, a quid pro quo you continue to freely admit to in your crazed Trump TV interviews and accidental butt-dialing for dollars. If #OKBoomer was made for anyone, it’s you.
To Tiger Woods, championship golfer again:
It took a decade and multiple surgeries, but Tiger Woods is finally back to his old dominant self. Winning the Masters again in April stunned the golfing world and finishing the year off as Player-Captain of the winning US side in the President’s Cup was just the icing. All the naysayers have been forced to eat large helpings of crow.
To the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team, especially Player of the Year Meghan Rapinoe:
Congratulations on another fantastic World Cup title. Your courage and leadership on the field and in the battle for equal pay provide inspiration to millions of women and girls, including my 7 year old granddaughter, who decided to play her first season of AYSO with her dad and granddad as co-coaches. We had a blast teaching 6-7 year olds how to play the beautiful game.
To “They,” Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year:
I know you’re thinking that “they” has been in our lexicon for a thousand years, so what’s the big deal? Well, this year the keepers of our language finally decided to admit that, since we don’t have a gender neutral singular pronoun, we use “they” instead. “They” has also become the preferred pronoun for transgender and bi-sexuals. The fact that “they” does not agree with a singular verb is driving grammarians nuts, but they will get over it.
To Lil Nas X and Song of the Year “Old Town Road”:
In the midst of all the hate and division gripping the nation, you gave us a song that everyone could get behind, both ebony and ivory, and in the process, gave us hope that perhaps we are not really as divided as it sometimes appears.
