Global Trends: Paradox of Progress PDF Download

Author: National Intelligence Council and Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Publisher: Government Printing Office
ISBN: 9780160936142
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This edition of Global Trends revolves around a core argument about how the changing nature of power is increasing stress both within countries and between countries, and bearing on vexing transnational issues. The main section lays out the key trends, explores their implications, and offers up three scenarios to help readers imagine how different choices and developments could play out in very different ways over the next several decades. Two annexes lay out more detail. The first lays out five-year forecasts for each region of the world. The second provides more context on the key global trends in train. This report involves extensive research and consultations with people inside the US government and around the world. Their team made extensive use of analytic simulations to explore future trajectories and developed multiple scenarios to describe how key uncertainties and emerging trends might combine to produce alternative futures. Foreign policy analysts, lawmakers, and students participating in global studies, politics of peace and conflict undergraduate level courses and statistics may be interested in this work. Related products: Political and Socio-Economic Change: Revolutions and Their Implications for the U.S. Military is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-000-01124-9 Short of General War: Perspectives on the Use of Military Power in the 21st Century is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-000-01074-9 Strategic Retrenchment and Renewal in the American Experience can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-000-01115-0

Author: National Intelligence Council and Office
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781543054705
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description
This edition of Global Trends revolves around a core argument about how the changing nature of power is increasing stress both within countries and between countries, and bearing on vexing transnational issues. The main section lays out the key trends, explores their implications, and offers up three scenarios to help readers imagine how different choices and developments could play out in very different ways over the next several decades. Two annexes lay out more detail. The first lays out five-year forecasts for each region of the world. The second provides more context on the key global trends in train.

Author: U. S. National Intelligence Council
Publisher: Cosimo Reports
ISBN: 9781945934087
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
The 2017 report, Global Trends-Paradox of Progress, is the sixth in the Global Trends series released by the U.S. National Intelligence Council. The inspiration for this report is the "prosperity presumption," the assumption among many that with increased prosperity other good things will follow: happiness, democracy, and peace. But the paradox of progress is that with the 2008 global financial crisis, the Arab Spring, and the rise of populist movements, the world is also becoming a more dangerous place. This report explores three scenarios or pathways for the next twenty years: - "Islands"-scenario investigates a restructuring of the global economy, with slow or no growth, a popular pushback against globalization, technology transforming work, and increased political instability. - "Orbits"-scenario explores a future of tensions created by competing major powers seeking their own spheres of influence while attempting to maintain stability at home. This scenario includes the trend of rising nationalism and the use of a nuclear weapon. - "Communities"-scenario describes how the diminishing capacity of governments open space for local governments and private actors. It will become harder for governments to control their societies. Although these three scenarios seem gloomy, the same trends that create near-term risks could also create long-term opportunities. This report asserts that those states and societies that will be using the full potential of all individuals will be the most successful. The main report is followed by extensive annexes with five-year forecasts for each region in the world, including the Arctic and space, and key global trends on how people live, create, prosper, think, govern, and fight. Students of trends, forward-looking entrepreneurs, academics, policymakers, journalists, and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades will find this essential reading.

Author: National Intelligence Council
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781544779034
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Thinking about the future is vital but hard. Crises keep intruding, making it all but impossible to look beyond daily headlines to what lies over the horizon. In those circumstances, thinking "outside the box," to use the clich�, too often loses out to keeping up with the inbox. That is why every four years the National Intelligence Council (NIC) undertakes a major assessment of the forces and choices shaping the world before us over the next two decades.This version, the sixth in the series, is titled, "Global Trends: The Paradox of Progress," and we are proud of it. It may look like a report, but it is really an invitation, an invitation to discuss, debate and inquire further about how the future could unfold. Certainly, we do not pretend to have the definitive "answer."This edition of Global Trends revolves around a core argument about how the changing nature of power is increasing stress both within countries and between countries, and bearing on vexing transnational issues. The main section lays out the key trends, explores their implications, and offers up three scenarios to help readers imagine how different choices and developments could play out in very different ways over the next several decades. Two annexes lay out more detail. The first lays out five-year forecasts for each region of the world. The second provides more context on the key global trends in train.The fact that the National Intelligence Council regularly publishes an unclassified assessment of the world surprises some people, but our intent is to encourage open and informed discussions about future risks and opportunities. Moreover, Global Trends is unclassified because those screens of secrets that dominate our daily work are not of much help in peering out beyond a year or two. What is a help is reaching out not just to experts and government officials but also to students, women's groups, entrepreneurs, transparency advocates, and beyond.

Author: National Intelligence Council (NIC)
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781521092668
Category : Globalization
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
This edition of Global Trends - issued in early 2017 - revolves around a core argument about how the changing nature of power is increasing stress both within countries and between countries, and bearing on vexing transnational issues. The main section lays out the key trends, explores their implications, and offers up three scenarios to help readers imagine how different choices and developments could play out in very different ways over the next several decades. Two annexes lay out more detail. The first lays out five-year forecasts for each region of the world. The second provides more context on the key global trends in train. Contents: 1. The Future Summarized * 2. The Map of the Future * 3. Trends Transforming the Global Landscape * 4. Near Future: Tensions Are Rising * 5. Three Scenarios for the Distant Future: Islands, Orbits, Communities * 6. What the Scenarios Teach Us: Fostering Opportunities Through Resilience * 7. Annex: The Next Five Years by Region * 8. Annex: Key Global Trends Thinking about the future is vital but hard. Crises keep intruding, making it all but impossible to look beyond daily headlines to what lies over the horizon. In those circumstances, thinking "outside the box," to use the cliche, too often loses out to keeping up with the inbox. That is why every four years the National Intelligence Council (NIC) undertakes a major assessment of the forces and choices shaping the world before us over the next two decades. This version, the sixth in the series, is titled, "Global Trends: The Paradox of Progress," and we are proud of it. It may look like a report, but it is really an invitation, an invitation to discuss, debate and inquire further about how the future could unfold. Certainly, we do not pretend to have the definitive "answer." Long-term thinking is critical to framing strategy. The Global Trends series pushes us to reexamine key assumptions, expectations, and uncertainties about the future. In a very messy and interconnected world, a longer perspective requires us to ask hard questions about which issues and choices will be most consequential in the decades ahead-even if they don't necessarily generate the biggest headlines. A longer view also is essential because issues like terrorism, cyberattacks, biotechnology, and climate change invoke high stakes and will require sustained collaboration to address. Peering into the future can be scary and surely is humbling. Events unfold in complex ways for which our brains are not naturally wired. Economic, political, social, technological, and cultural forces collide in dizzying ways, so we can be led to confuse recent, dramatic events with the more important ones. It is tempting, and usually fair, to assume people act "rationally," but leaders, groups, mobs, and masses can behave very differently-and unexpectedly-under similar circumstances. For instance, we had known for decades how brittle most regimes in the Middle East were, yet some erupted in the Arab Spring in 2011 and others did not. Experience teaches us how much history unfolds through cycles and shifts, and still human nature commonly expects tomorrow to be pretty much like today-which is usually the safest bet on the future until it is not. I always remind myself that between Mr. Reagan's "evil empire" speech and the demise of that empire, the Soviet Union, was only a scant decade, a relatively short time even in a human life.

Author: Office of the Director of National Intelligence (U.S.)
Publisher: Government Printing Office
ISBN: 0160920639
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
"Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World" is the fourth unclassified report prepared by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in recent years that takes a long-term view of the future. It offers a fresh look at how key global trends might develop over the next 15 years to influence world events. Our report is not meant to be an exercise in prediction or crystal ball-gazing. Mindful that there are many possible "futures," we offer a range of possibilities and potential discontinuities, as a way of opening our minds to developments we might otherwise miss. (From the NIC website)

Author: National Intelligence Council
Publisher: Cosimo Reports
ISBN: 9781646794973
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

Author: Gregg Easterbrook
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812973038
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
In The Progress Paradox, Gregg Easterbrook draws upon three decades of wide-ranging research and thinking to make the persuasive assertion that almost all aspects of Western life have vastly improved in the past century–and yet today, most men and women feel less happy than in previous generations. Detailing the emerging science of “positive psychology,” which seeks to understand what causes a person’s sense of well-being, Easterbrook offers an alternative to our culture of crisis and complaint. He makes a compelling case that optimism, gratitude, and acts of forgiveness not only make modern life more fulfilling but are actually in our self-interest. An affirming and constructive way of seeing life anew, The Progress Paradox will change the way you think about your place in the world–and about our collective ability to make it better.

Author: Thomas J. Bollyky
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262537966
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Why the news about the global decline of infectious diseases is not all good. Plagues and parasites have played a central role in world affairs, shaping the evolution of the modern state, the growth of cities, and the disparate fortunes of national economies. This book tells that story, but it is not about the resurgence of pestilence. It is the story of its decline. For the first time in recorded history, virus, bacteria, and other infectious diseases are not the leading cause of death or disability in any region of the world. People are living longer, and fewer mothers are giving birth to many children in the hopes that some might survive. And yet, the news is not all good. Recent reductions in infectious disease have not been accompanied by the same improvements in income, job opportunities, and governance that occurred with these changes in wealthier countries decades ago. There have also been unintended consequences. In this book, Thomas Bollyky explores the paradox in our fight against infectious disease: the world is getting healthier in ways that should make us worry. Bollyky interweaves a grand historical narrative about the rise and fall of plagues in human societies with contemporary case studies of the consequences. Bollyky visits Dhaka—one of the most densely populated places on the planet—to show how low-cost health tools helped enable the phenomenon of poor world megacities. He visits China and Kenya to illustrate how dramatic declines in plagues have affected national economies. Bollyky traces the role of infectious disease in the migrations from Ireland before the potato famine and to Europe from Africa and elsewhere today. Historic health achievements are remaking a world that is both worrisome and full of opportunities. Whether the peril or promise of that progress prevails, Bollyky explains, depends on what we do next. A Council on Foreign Relations Book

Author: Jan Eeckhout
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691224293
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
A pioneering account of the surging global tide of market power—and how it stifles workers around the world In an era of technological progress and easy communication, it might seem reasonable to assume that the world’s working people have never had it so good. But wages are stagnant and prices are rising, so that everything from a bottle of beer to a prosthetic hip costs more. Economist Jan Eeckhout shows how this is due to a small number of companies exploiting an unbridled rise in market power—the ability to set prices higher than they could in a properly functioning competitive marketplace. Drawing on his own groundbreaking research and telling the stories of common workers throughout, he demonstrates how market power has suffocated the world of work, and how, without better mechanisms to ensure competition, it could lead to disastrous market corrections and political turmoil. The Profit Paradox describes how, over the past forty years, a handful of companies have reaped most of the rewards of technological advancements—acquiring rivals, securing huge profits, and creating brutally unequal outcomes for workers. Instead of passing on the benefits of better technologies to consumers through lower prices, these “superstar” companies leverage new technologies to charge even higher prices. The consequences are already immense, from unnecessarily high prices for virtually everything, to fewer startups that can compete, to rising inequality and stagnating wages for most workers, to severely limited social mobility. A provocative investigation into how market power hurts average working people, The Profit Paradox also offers concrete solutions for fixing the problem and restoring a healthy economy.