Five Trends to Watch in 2013

Everyone else does this during the last week of the year, so I'm taking the plunge to briefly mention a quintet of news trends for the coming year. Hell, it's cheaper than a lottery ticket and possibly more useful than one. After all, your odds of losing the lottery profoundly work against a system that's gamed against lottery players, i.e., "contributors to state education funds." Yet people play, and someone hits. Why not us?

Cartoon credit: timescontent.com

1.  Food inflation -- I went to the supermarket today and purchased an ordinary red onion. Cost? Two dollars per pound. The next time the Fed comes out with its "no inflation now" report, think about how much it costs to buy ordinary groceries. If you believe you're paying much more than last year, you're on the right track. Keep in mind this past summer's drought will impact food prices in the US and its principal export markets. According to a story in the British newspaper The Telegraph, food prices have risen in the UK by 33% since 2007. This reality hammers poor and working class families very hard.

2.  China expands its muscle in Pacific Asia -- Beijing has a new ruling regime, ambitions to exert more "influence" in the Pacific region, and the financial and military clout to make its wishes known. This is a formula for conflict. An article in today's Financial Times raises this issue in the context of China's relatively new emphasis on "patriotic education" and former outrages at the hands of foreign powers. (Japan is at the top of this list.)

The United States will have its hands full managing this situation, especially if the People's Republic of China decides to squeeze Taiwan, which Beijing considers a "renegade" Chinese province.

3.  Voting rights in the United States -- The 2012 presidential election demonstrated just how potent the exercise of the right to vote impacts political calculus. Expect a GOP move through friendly state legislatures and judiciary venues to erode "easy" voter registration and voting. This return to the very bad old Jim Crow days should be a source of shame to conservatives, and a signal that their movement is approaching moral bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the claims of the right-wing's "voter fraud" campaign have never, ever been sustained by fact.

4.  The importance of Big Data -- I'll blog on this topic another day. Just quickly: Big Data connects to commercial developments in social media, location marketing, and behavioral marketing. Right now, Big Data is the early 21st Century's equivalent of a Texas or Saudi-size oil pool. Similar to petroleum, Big Data is also a commodity, which implies tremendous advantages for those enterprises with sufficient scale and capital to leverage the situation.

Myanmar temple site
(photo: National Geographic)

5.  The "opening" of Myanmar. It's already happening, particularly with upscale tourism. I understand that the trip to get there is excruciatingly long. However, tour operators savvy with Thailand vacation packages will quickly figure out a Myanmar extension or stand-alone deal. And yes, now is the time to go. Myanmar is a nation much of whose population, culture, and everyday life, has more in common with a lost epoch than with current events. This rare phenomenon -- a nation just emerging from a time capsule -- should be experienced now.