After living in Washington for nearly three decades now, there’s a certain sameness to the nation’s capital no matter who is president. Call it one of Washington’s dirty little secrets.
That’s not the same as saying that life would be the same under a President Clinton or a President Trump. Let’s leave that discussion for another time.
There’s another dirty little secret that is probably underappreciated or understood. A number of large, challenging risks (and opportunities) will bedevil the President and Congress, no matter who prevails.
How elected leaders respond will help dictate how we all fare financially and otherwise as individuals, and collectively as a nation.
Here’s the short list of challenges and opportunities on my mind:
The acceleration of technological change will become even more pronounced.
The list of technologies transforming the economy and society seems to grow by the day. No list can be complete, but there are a few worth highlighting: Autonomous driving and ride sharing, artificial intelligence, continued growth in smartphones and other mobile computing, robotics, big data, alternative energies, fintech (short for financial technology), drones and 3D printing.
The great American middle class will remain challenged.
Whether looking at the political environment or economic data on incomes, we’ve witnessed a widening divide between upper and lower income earners (groups) and a diminution of the great American middle class.
It has been difficult to discern the voice of the middle amid the current cacophony. Some of this division appears to be exacerbated by the growing gap between those with “higher skills” involving more thinking and those who perform mechanical or physical labor.
This many years into the recovery, we continue to wait for more substantial wage gains.
Globalization will garner further scrutiny and even resistance.
The “Brexit” vote, where the UK decided to exit the European Union, was a shot heard around the world. But even before that event in June, it was clear the rise in the U.S. of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump was partly in response to discontent arising from free trade agreements.
Even if the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact, supported by President Obama, isn’t ratified in the U.S., existing agreements remain in force.
Of course, Trump has suggested he’ll renegotiate them but the odds of his election have taken a major hit in recent weeks. If nothing else, there’s growing awareness that the unintended negative consequences of seeking entry to world markets must be better managed and mitigated.
Any future solutions will need to have buy-in on the part of both business and government (at all levels).
Disruption of media and rise of social will further divide us.
The days when individuals, families and communities had one common media experience are long behind us.
Even well-educated people are less likely to have read similar news accounts, less likely to have viewed the same television/video programs or listened to the same music.
While we love the additional choices the explosion in media has provided us, they also allow for the “echo-chamber effect” where people seek out information from sources only with which they agree.
As changes in the economy have caused rifts, the explosion in media sources and opportunity to view multiple screens in a single household is also dividing us, even among members of the same family or household.
Because change is happening so quickly, we’ll struggle to understand and adapt to it. If you doubt for a moment that the pace of change is much more rapid than we appreciate, then tell me that you expected Uber to reveal the launch of driverless cars in Pittsburgh.
All of the drivers who’ve been relying on the car-sharing service for incomes just got a wake-up call. Innovation could sideline all of them. Yes, Uber’s experiment will have human “drivers” at the ready (presumably ready to take the wheel if needed).
Between changes in society, technology and even climate, a sense of unease will likely persist and perhaps even grow.
Even as the U.S. economy has clawed out from the depths of the financial crisis and great recession, a majority of Americans have said they feel the country is going in the “wrong direction.” The status quo is more complicated than what data points, like the unemployment rate, suggest.
Ultimately, the question is whether elected leaders would have the ability to cure this sense of unease. My sense is, absent a virtual sea change improvement in the domestic economy, it is unlikely.
Add to that, the next president could face a recession during the next term since this recovery is “long in the tooth.”
On the positive side, we’re still the most innovative nation in the world with a solid foundation of law.
Among the multitude of challenges facing our country, it is absolutely the case that we’ve faced significantly more daunting problems in the past.
Need some reminders? I’d suggest the American Civil War, the Great Depression (when the unemployment rate was substantially higher than it is now) and World War II.
National pride isn’t a panacea, but we probably need to remind ourselves that many of the greatest advances we’re seeing in technology are American-made.
Think of the most cutting-edge firms out there and many are in the U.S. As long as we remain united by the best ideals upon which our 240-year-old country was founded, we can expect further successes.
The founding fathers might have been the greatest innovators of all thanks to the tremendous framework outlining legal balance and civil rights.
One key for the future: We need government that’s more closely aligned with the needs of the people, not just commercial or limited special interests.
Mark Hamrick is Washington Bureau Chief and Senior Economic Analyst for Bankrate.com, operating out of the National Press Building in the shadow of the White House and U.S. Treasury. He is a national award-winning business and financial news journalist, who came to Bankrate after leading business news for Broadcast at the Associated Press in Washington for nearly 20 years. Mark is a former president of the National Press Club and an officer with the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Follow him on Twitter: @Hamrickisms
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A look ahead to America’s challenges — and opportunities – New York Daily News