10 Old-Trends, New-Trends That Rule the World Today

What’s going on in the world today? It’s hard to keep up. Some facts are familiar to anyone who reads the news. Unemployment is high. Growth is slow. Shale gas is a big deal. But beyond the caps-lock headlines, subtler, but no less significant, shifts are changing the U.S. economy and reshaping the global financial order. Here are ten that have surprised—and might surprise.

1) Old Trend: Expensive solar, surviving only on subsidies.
New Trend: Cheap solar, disrupting old industries.

Since the 1970s, it has become a cliché that solar power is an expensive boondoggle, kept alive only by government subsidies. But every cliché is right until the day it’s suddenly wrong. And for solar, that day is today. Since Jimmy Carter was sworn in as president, the price of solar cells has fallen over 99 percent. No, that’s not a typo. And the exponential cost-drop shows no sign of slowing down, with dozens of new technologies in the pipeline. Installation and land costs are falling too. What this means is that in sunny states like Arizona, solar can already compete with fossil fuel electricity even with zero government subsidies. In fact, rooftop solar panels are becoming so popular that utility companies are trying to tax solar power in order to pay for grid maintenance! The technology that was a punch line for decades is about to launch an energy revolution, and most people aren’t even paying attention.

2. Old Trend: The Latinization of America.
New Trend: The Asiafication of America.

“The huge boom in Mexican immigration is over.” The improving Mexican economy, lower Mexican fertility, the U.S. construction bust, and increased enforcement have combined to bring net Mexican immigration to zero or negative since 2008. That bears repeating: On net, Mexicans are no longer moving to the United States at all. So who is? Lots of people, but Asians more than anyone. Asians are moving here at a rate of about half a million a year, and the Asian-American percentage of the population has already reached 6%. Most studies say immigration is good for the economy, so this is good news, especially because many of the new Asian arrivals are high-skilled, entrepreneurial types who will start businesses and hire the rest of us.

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3. Old Trend: The Chinese population bomb.
New Trend: The Chinese population bust.

In 2012, the working-age population of China fell by 3.45 million. In other words, last year China lost a number of workers approximately equal to the entire population of Lebanon. This year the drop will be bigger, and the drops will accelerate through the 2030s. That means that China’s inexhaustible supply of cheap labor is going to be exhausted a lot faster than most people expected. Nor will repealing the infamous one-child policy cause a Chinese baby boom – in some small areas where it was repealed, fertility rates remain below the national average. This population crunch won’t put that huge of a dent in China’s billion-strong workforce, but it will boost investment in a lot of other poor countries and will force China’s industries to move up the value chain very quickly or risk the “middle-income trap”.

4. Old Trend: Soaring U.S. CO2 emissions.
New Trend: Plummeting U.S. CO2 emissions.

Thanks a little bit to economic stagnation, but mostly to the boom in natural gas, the U.S. – the only large rich country not to sign the Kyoto Protocol – has seen its CO2 emissions tumble to levels not seen since the early 1990s. More drops are expected to follow. Global emissions (that's what really matters) continue to soar, but China is the main driver now. The U.S. is subtracting from total emissions growth now. Of course, that doesn’t count methane emissions, which are released when natural gas is fracked. But the United States is no longer the global carbon bad-boy it was in the '90s.

The Atlantic, Noah Smith, September 30, 2012

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