Are Robert Bigelow’s inflatable space modules the future in space?
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Former Director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, Dr. John Logsdon, recently offered a Space News Commentary (6/30/10) from his new book manuscropt, John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon (to appear early next year). He defends Obama’s policy, as does Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. in the Wall Street Journal (7/21/10), although Jenkins’ focus is more on space-related business.

Logsdon is an astute, long-term analyst of the space scene and is to be congratulated for integrating the last 50 years (almost one full long wave) in space, but unfortunately, it leads to some misconceptions. Without recognizing the full implications of the last 200 years of great human explorations and massive technology projects — back to Lewis and Clark — it’s possible to miss fundamental themes that permeate them all and point to a spectacular, near-term golden age of prosperity, exploration, and technology.

Is the Impact of Apollo a net negative?

According to Logsdon,

Sending 12 astronauts to the lunar surface was a great achievement and will forever be a proud part of American history. But in my judgment, while Apollo’s impacts on subsequent U.S. human spaceflight activities have been lasting, they have been on balance negative.

Actually Apollo was a brilliant, strategic response by JFK to long-term economic and geopolitical forces that reached a critical point in 1961. Three other 1960s-style critical points (i.e., “Maslow Windows”) are separated by 55 to 60 years back to Lewis and Clark. Many current indicators — including long-term GDP trends and the Panic of 2008 — point to a new Maslow Window opening by 2015.

Apollo was aimed at beating the Russians to the Moon; it was not propelled by a long-term vision of space exploration. To meet Kennedy’s “before this decade is out” goal, NASA chose a set of hardware systems and an architecture optimized for getting to the Moon as soon as possible; these choices had unfortunate consequences.

Logsdon is exactly right about Kennedy’s Cold War space goals; they were to win the space race, not to set the stage for large-scale space colonization. So it’s really “Monday-morning quarterbacking” to complain about their “unfortunate consequences.” Given the extraordinary historical context in which Kennedy’s program was conceived, it indeed — by any fair measure –was a success.

And Jenkins believes that “NASA’s tragedy is that it never recovered from the success of Apollo.”

What happened during the 40 years after Apollo?

I recently explained this in terms of the lack of wide-spread, affluence-induced ebullience driven by rhythmic, twice-per-century major economic booms (e.g., the 1960s Kennedy boom). But according to Logsdon,

One way of understanding the 40 years since Apollo is by viewing the space shuttle and the international space station as attempts to preserve and take advantage of that (Apollo) infrastructure, work force and industrial base. Pursuing an “Apollo on steroids” approach to the Constellation program was an understandable sequel to those programs, once again trying to employ the heritage left by Apollo. But this, like the hardware developed for Apollo and then abandoned, is ultimately a dead-end approach.

Logsdon supports his point by quoting Yale sociologist Gary Brewer (writing 20+ years ago) who observed that

NASA during the Apollo program came close to being “a perfect place” — the best organization that human beings could create to accomplish a particular goal. But, suggested Brewer, “perfect places do not last for long.” NASA was “no longer a perfect place.” The organization needed “new ways of thinking, new people, and new means.” He added “The innocent clarity of purpose, the relatively easy and economically painless public consent, and the technical confidence [of Apollo] … are gone and will probably never occur again.

Logsdon’s and Brewer’s positions regarding new Apollo-style programs as a “dead-end approach” that “will probably never occur again,” are simply not supported by history. In fact, great human explorations (e.g., Lewis and Clark), macro engineering projects (e.g., Panama Canal), and major wars (e.g., World War I) cluster together exclusively near rhythmic, twice-per-century major economic booms, over the last 200 years.

Without the crucial, but straightforward insight that space exploration is closely related to great human explorations of the past (at least back to Lewis and Clark), Logsdon and Brewer miss the point about the future. But Brewer’s description of Apollo as “a perfect place” is exactly what we would expect of a fractal Maslow Window during its critical state.

Is near-term commercial, habitation, and scientific development of Earth-Moon space still in the cards?

Jenkins (WSJ, 7/21/10) worries that

Many of the New Space companies have made it thus far by consuming the fortunes of celebrity entrepreneurs … (but) That can’t go on forever …

This is especially critical because

Gone is most of the money Mr. Obama earmarked to give private entrepreneurs … The customer they have their eye on (now) isn’t NASA but hotel magnate Robert Bigelow, who has two prototype modular space habitats already in orbit but lacks affordable transport.

Surprisingly, Logsdon sees the private sector taking on “a larger role in providing transprtation service for people traveling to low Earth orbit” as fundamentally “a side issue.” To him, the big enchilada is “developing capabilities for going beyond Earth orbit.”

Again historical precedent illuminates the future. Humans first went to the Moon in 1969 during the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window. And Apollo is analogous to Lewis and Clark opening up the Great Northwest during their Maslow Window ~200 years ago. But it took about 1 long wave until the transportation routes, the availability of land, and the California Gold Rush motivated many people to go there to prosper. Likewise, it took almost one long wave (~ 50 years) to develop the systems that will allow entrepreneurs to profit from sending people into space. And because going into space is even harder than California, it’s still being perfected. But the point is that Richard Branson and many others will soon profit from this new “Gold Rush” in space.

“A polarized debate unprecedented in my more than four decades of close observation of space policymaking…” according to Logsdon, who then complains several times in his short piece about how poorly the government has presented and defended the new Obama space policy, including:
1) “…an incoherent defense of the new strategy…”
2) “Obama confused the situation even further in his April 15 speech…”
3) “There is a coherent explanation of what is being proposed, but NASA has given it little emphasis…”
4) “The White House and NASA dug a rather deep hole is mismanaging the rollout of the new strategy…”

It’s been my experience that when politicians or their advocates complain about the way a key policy or strategy is officially miscommunicated, it’s usually because the policy itself is weak and/or unpopular.

What could be wrong with Obama’ s space policy? According to Logsdon,
the following didn’t help much:

announcing a quickly conceived resuscitation of Orion, blowing off the Moon as a valuable destination, and setting an ambiguous target for a heavy lift vehicle.

Couldn’t agree more and you can see more here.

Logsdon concludes that,

The greatest threat to U.S. space leadership would come from our political system insisting on staying with the Apollo-era approach to the future…

This comment misses the key historical lesson of the rhythmic pulses of great explorations and grandiose macro engineering projects (including Apollo) over the last 200 years.

In fact, it’s not “our political system” that fundamentally drove Apollo. It’s actually the laws of economics and human nature.

Over the last 2 centuries, whenever humans could indulge their raw exploration passions, they did. In the modern world, this occurs mainly during short-lived, but exceptionally ebullient Maslow Windows that are driven by unparalleled 1960s-style economic booms.

Each Maslow Window has a different focus but the 2015 Window is likely to feature new commercial activities in space, international Moon bases, space-based solar power technology developments, and possibly the first humans to Mars.

But better enjoy it while it’s here, because long wave timing indicates the following Maslow Window isn’t expected until 2071!

Viewed in this context, President Obama’s recent cancellation of Constellation — America’s program to return to the Moon by 2020 — is not a big surprise. It’s just a speed bump on the road to a near-term Moon base, including international commercial and scientific development of Earth-Moon space.

This glimpse of the future is not based on hope or optimism, but on long-term trends in the economy, technology, and geopolitics which point to a near-term re-ignition of President Kennedy’s nearly 50-year old vision of human exploration of the Moon and planets.

The 1960s Apollo Moon program was the greatest combined exploration and technology event in the history of the world, because it was off-world!
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If we could understand what fundamentally drove Apollo, we might glimpse our future in space. And yet, as we discovered again last July during celebrations of the Moon landing’s 40th anniversary, we still can’t agree on why Apollo moonwalking ended in 1972. For example, Right Stuff author Tom Wolfe believes “the answer is obvious. NASA had neglected to recruit a corps of philosophers,” such as Saturn V developer Wernher von Braun, to explain the real meaning of Apollo to the public. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Heavens and the Earth (1985), Walter McDougall explains that

the bold lunar goal … encouraged Congress and the nation to believe that Apollo was the space program … Once the space race was over and won, Americans could turn back to their selfish pursuits.

Formerly with CNN, Miles O’Brien dismisses the most obvious manned space challenge — cost.

If you don’t want to mention the cost of the wars, if you would rather not get into Wall Street or Detroit bailouts, or if you don’t want to tell them the money we spend on the space program is about the same as our annual expenditure on coffee — why not mention India?…Calcutta can afford it — and Cleveland can’t?

This is an important clue. Apollo cost about $ 150 B (in 2007 USD). Imagine the Apollo-level manned space programs we could have funded with only a fraction of Obama’s initial $ 800+ B stimulus package. But although the money magically appeared, Americans did not spontaneously demand Moonbases or manned Mars missions. So the availability of money, by itself, does not fundamentally drive big space programs.

Wolfe alludes to powerful. but short-lived forces permeating Apollo: “

Everybody, including Congress, was caught up in the adrenal rush of it all.

This included the quintessential media figure of the time, Walter Cronkite, who predicted that after Apollo 11, “everything else that has happened in our time is going to be an asterisk.”

And O’Brien concludes that.

Truth is, we have done nothing to equal (much less top) the accomplishments of Apollo. And even worse, we haven’t tried. We did someting truly great, but then walked away from it.

This emotional component — and its rapid demise in the late 1960s — explains why money is not enough. The people also have to feel good.

This is reminiscent of a Keynesian concept called “animal spirits,” used to explain why investors become either irrationally exhuberant or unnecessarily discouraged by business conditions during a boom or a bust. However, public support for Apollo was not primarily driven by the promise of profits from space, nor in the end, even by beating the Soviets to the Moon.

Instead the unprecedented, widespread affluence from the Kennedy boom momentarily catapulted many average citizens to elevated levels of Maslow’s hierarchy where their expanded worldviews made the Apollo program seem not only intriguing, but almost irresistible — as reflected in 1960s opinion polls.

Indeed, the strong connection between manned planetary exploration and Maslow-related values was emphasized in 1961 by the National Academy of Science’s Space Science Board, chaired by Lloyd Berkner, in their influential report to President Kennedy.

Man’s exploration of the Moon and planets (is) potentially the greatest inspirational venture of this century and one in which the whole world can share; inherent here are great and fundamental philosophical and spiritual values which find a response in man’s questing spirit and his intellectual self-realization.

But the Maslow effect was short-lived. As early as 1966, growing distress over Vietnam and budget issues began to erode affluence-induced “ebullience,” and this 1960s Apollo “Maslow Window” rapidly closed, as evidenced by Nixon’s cancellation of the last three Apollo Moon missions.

As recently as Memorial Day weekend in Chicago at the International Space Development Conference 2010, distinguished physicist and space scientist Freeman Dyson lamented that “we have been stuck in LEO for 40 years.” In the context of Apollo, this is consistent with the absence — since the 1960s — of a post-World War II-style long boom culminating in widespread, Camelot-style ebullience.

We almost got one started in 2007 when Fortune magazine (7/12/07) celebrated the “greatest economic boom ever.” But it was interrupted by the financial Panic of 2008 and our subsequent great recession. Will 2007′s great boom be revived? And how soon?

Intriguing parallels with Apollo go back at least 200 years to Lewis and Clark, but the last century is particularly revealing. For example, the financial Panic of 1893 and the great 1890s recession may have more parallels with our current circumstances than the Apollo-related decades from 1950-70. The 1890s featured a double-dip recession and unemployment above 10%, as well as a political realignment that led to a stunning 1960s-style economic boom after 1899. The resulting early 20th century Maslow Window featured extraordinary ebullience, including “Panama fever” as the new canal split the continent and transformed America into a global power, “pole mania” as heroic international teams risked death to be the first to the poles, the civilization-altering Wright brothers’ first flights, and perhaps the most ebullient U.S. president ever: Theodore Roosevelt.

The trajectory of future history is not confined to a choice between the 1890-1913 Panic/recession model or the 1950-1973 Apollo example. But significantly, they both point to a golden age of prosperity, exploration, and technology that’s just around the corner.

Based on the historical pattern of rhythmic, twice-per-century Maslow Windows — over the last 200 years — including the Panic/Great Recession pairs (like the Panic of 2008) that typically occur a few years before the Windows, we can expect the new international Space Age to start gaining momentum by 2015.

Does declining solar activity signal the “end of global warming”?
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This is important because climate politics (not to be confused with climate science!) currently has the potential to significantly lower economic growth which is the fundamental driver of the new international Space Age, as well as previous Apollo-style Maslow Windows over the last 200 years.

Despite what many media and political types continue to tell us, for some time the scientific data has pointed away from CO2 as the climate culprit; an excellent summary is here. And the Sun is receiving icreasing attention because of its odd behavior and interesting history, and new science about its connections to climate.

The Sun is Changing

As of yesterday, the official webpage of chief NASA Sun forecaster David Hathaway is still sticking to its story that the next solar sunspot cycle will be only about half as active (Max= 64.1 in mid-2013) as the last 3 cycles. (Sunspot cycles last about 11 years but their intensities are highly variable.) It was only a few years ago when Dr. Hathaway warned colleagues at the American Geophysical Union meeting (12/2006) that the next solar cycle is going to be a big one. It

looks like its going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago,

You can see an amusing animation of the declining trend of Dr. Hathaway’s solar cycle predictions HERE.

Are We on Course for a Dalton Minimum or a Grand Minimum?

Times of low solar activitiy are associated with cooler temperatures on Earth. And 2008 and 2009 were in the top 3 most spotless years in the last century;
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A good example is the severe European winter of 2009-10, although the correlation holds at least back to 1650.

Hathaway told the New York Times last year (7/20/2009) that while a Maunder Minimum — a time from 1645 to 1715 when sunspots were almost absent associated with the Little Ice Age — is unlikely, a Dalton Minimum “lies in the realm of the possible.”

From 1790 to 1830, the Dalton Minimum featured maximum sunspot numbers near 50 (only 15 below Hathaway’s current prediction for the next cycle) and cooler temperatures on Earth. For example, the Oberlacch Station in Germany experienced a 2.0 deg C drop for twenty years, and the “Year Without a Summer” occurred in 1816.

Although still uncertain, the mechanism amplifying small changes in solar activity (see the presentation by Kirkby.CERN.2009) to produce climate change on Earth is apparently associated with galactic cosmic rays (GCR); they trigger ion-induced cloud formation and cooling on Earth’s surface. During low solar activity, magnetic fields in the solar wind are weaker and block fewer GCRs; so increased ion-induced nucleation by GCRs triggers more cloud formation in the lower atmosphere — and cooling.

In the June, 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Cosmology (Vol. 8, 1983-1999) Duhau and de Jaeger propose that the Sun will enter a “Grand Minimum” of solar activity. Like the Maunder Minimum, it will feature very low solar activity and will last for at least one century. They forecast that the current cycle (#24) will occur in mid-2013 and will have a Dalton-like max sunspot number as low as 55. Their model indicates the Grand Minimum should arrive around 2020 to 2030.

The Sun and the New Space Age

Macroeconomic data and historical trends — including the Panic of 2008 and current great recession — over the last 200+ years point to the arrival of the new international Space Age near 2015. In several ways, the Sun will encourage humans to think beyond Earth for their future.

1. As science points convincingly away from CO2 and toward other climate change factors (including the Sun/GCR connection), the rationale for major climate legislation — that would limit rapid economic growth typical of Apollo-style space programs — is reduced.

2. Opinion polls show the American public does not regard CO2-related climate change as a major threat to their lives. They appear to be far ahead of many current political leaders. The profoundly negative vision of the future described by CO2 climate advocates is inconsistent with the societal ebullience that we expect near the opening of the 2015 Maslow Window.

3. Increasing scientific and public interest in the Sun as a fascinating astronomical body with important influences on climate change is expected to accelerate as we approach the new Space Age. Things associated with extraterrestrial life and habitable planets (e.g., Mars) — including the life-giving Sun — will take center stage as we continue human expansion into the cosmos and contemplate settlement of the solar system.

4. The Sun will play an increasingly central role in our global energy future through the development of large space-based solar power satellites. This is closely related to #3 above.

5. If the Sun were to descend into a Maunder Minimum-style “Grand Minimum” between 2020 and 2030, it would be a global disaster. Keep in mind that without long-term planning we can expect long-term economic forces to abruptly terminate the 2015 Maslow Window by 2025, if not before. Having a large, routine presence in space by 2020 — including more control of solar energy — will enable human civilization to prosper through both potential threats.

The future’s important because it’s where we’ll spend the rest of our lives. Click .

Here at 21stCenturyWaves.com, the idea has certainly not been to try to understand how everything works.

Instead, we have focused on the following questions: 1) Why do the great human explorations (e.g., Lewis and Clark), massive macroengineering projects (e.g., Panama Canal), and the major wars (e.g., World War I), cluster together — over the last 200+ years — exclusively in connection with rhythmic, twice-per-century major economic booms (e.g., the 1960s Apollo “Maslow Window”)? and 2) What does this tell us about the future of technology and space?

Because our approach provides a new framework to illuminate both the past and future — e.g., summarized in my recent look at the next decade — it’s always exciting to compare it to macro-historical thinking by a first-rate historian like Cambridge University Professor Nicholas Boyle.

Boyle’s book, 2014 – How to Survive the Next World Crisis, appeared this week and boldly uses multi-century historical patterns to project trends in the 21st century, including 2014 being a special year (which is no surprise to devotees of the 2015 Maslow Window!).

Multi-Century Patterns in History Provide Powerful Insights

Professor Boyle’s bold use of historical events over the last 500 years as the basis for his 21st century forecasts is impressive. He starts with Martin Luther’s theses of 1517 (triggering the Reformation) and surges all the way to 1914, the start of World War I. 21stCenturyWaves.com’s forecasts spring from macroeconomic data and historical patterns — especially with regard to great explorations, MEPs, and major wars — over the last 200 years.

Considered together these quite-different approaches feature surprising parallels and expanded insights into the past as well as the future.

There will be “a great event” in 2014
Boyle’s major insight is his forecast of a “great event” in 2014; this potential crisis is based on a generational rationale and the psychology of a new century. 2014 is near the projected opening of the 2015 Maslow Window — a 1960s-style golden age of prosperity, explorationm, and technology — based on the last 200+ years. So we like his timescale.

According to Boyle,

2007 started off colossal economic change which has still got a long way to go …

My thesis is that we have got another crisis to come, and you can already see that in the questions being raised over the debts of nations …

We agree because history shows he’s right.

Every Maslow Window of the last 200 years — with the exception of the 1960s Apollo Window — was preceded within a decade by a financial panic (liike that in 2008) and a great recession like the current one. A good analog for now is the Panic of 1893 and the 1890s great recession; it was a “double-dip” recession and lasted 6 years, suggesting our current recession should end by 2014 and could be consistent with Boyle’s expectation.

Interestingly, today CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf independently supported this estimate by stating that it will take another 4 years (not before 2014) for unemployment to decline to “normal levels” of about 5%.

However Boyle’s next “crisis” might be military. Over the last 200+ years, every Maslow Window has been plagued by an early- or pre-Window war or major conflict; the last was the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 that almost led to a major nuclear exchange. But the good news is that, so far, the world has managed to avoid major destruction by these early-/pre-Window threats. And in fact, most actually create momentum toward the Maslow Window itself.

In the 21st Century: Peace or war?
According to Boyle, a ‘Doomsday’ moment will take place in 2014 and “will determine whether the 21st century is full of violence and poverty or will be peaceful and prosperous.”

And history shows he’s right again — although both will probably occur.

The way the future really works is illustrated by the last 200 years. Transformative, decade-long Maslow Windows are fundamentally driven by affluence-induced ebullience that’s triggered by rhythmic, twice-per-century unparalleled economic booms.

For example, distinguished historian Eric Hobsbawm (b. 1917) describes “The Great Boom” which powered the mid-19th century Dr. Livingstone/Suez/Polk Maslow Window, as

the extraordinary economic transformation and expansion … (with) prolonged prosperity … Never did British exports grow more rapidly than in the euphoric years between 1853 and 1857…

However, the decades between Maslow WIndows feature devastating depressions and military strife as the long business cycle (the “long wave”) descends to a trough and begins its recovery over about 4+ decades. Speaking of the 20th century, Hobsbawn comments that

The decades from the outbreak of the First World War to the aftermath of the Second, was an Age of Catastrophe for this society …even intelligent conservatives would not take bets on its survival … a world economic crisis brought even the strongest capitalist economies to their knees …

In the languge of Self Organized Criticality, the international economic/geopolitical system continuously self-organizes toward a critical state (the “fractal” Maslow Window) where major changes — both good and bad — occur rapidly and often without obvious triggers. Examples include the Apollo Moon program in the 1960s and World War I during the early 20th century Maslow Window.

Between Maslow Windows, the international economic/geopolitical system elements (countries, corporations, individuals) interact weakly and typically require several decades to self-organize back into another critical state. (The next one should begin by 2015.)

The devastating “Aspirin Age” decades between Maslow Windows are not inevitable. When we learn to include the long wave in our strategic thinking and macro-planning, their extreme effects should subside.

Does the BP oil spill threaten the new international Space Age as well as the environment?
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(Image: U.S. Coast Guard)

In reality — as the last 200+ years have shown — extraordinary pulses of activity in exploration and engineering are enabled by reliable, long-term business cycles. And all indicators suggest we’re sneaking up on the edge of another Golden Age of Prosperity, Exploration, and Technology(GAPET).

Typically, during the twice-per-century upswings of the long economic wave and within a decade after a major financial panic (such as the Panic of 2008) and its major recession, we emerge into an ebullient, transformative decade known as a Maslow Window. Perhaps the most ebullient one followed the Panic of 1893 and was led by Theodore Roosevelt: the Peary/Panama Maslow Window from 1903 to 1913. But before that the mid-19th century Dr. Livingstone/Suez Maslow Window produced the “technological jewel of the 19th century,” the Suez Canal, and the famous Lewis and Clark Maslow Window opened the Great Northwest to the world in 1805.

Our most recent Maslow Window — the stunning 1960s Apollo Moon decade — was unique in the last 200+ years in that it wasn’t immediately preceded by a financial panic or great recession. But the approaching Maslow Window, expected to open near 2015, resumed the much more “normal” sequence of the last 200+ years when the Panic of 2008 heralded its impending arrival.

But since last September, much has happened in the economy, in Washington, and in the world. And given the high likelihood of our next Maslow Window materializing near 2015, the key question remains: How will Obama create the exceptional prosperity that is the hallmark of such Camelot-like times?

As before, there are basically 2 options:

OPTION I: Obama becomes a 2-term President: He becomes the new John F. Kennedy without the Vietnam-style baggage of LBJ.
Historical/Economic Model: The 1960s Apollo Maslow Window.

Three ways Obama could trigger prosperity are:

a) The recession will end naturally and prosperity will follow.
Post-War recessions have averaged 11.3 months in length (with the longest 16 months) and the current one is 22 months old. Most economists think the economy hit bottom recently and is currently recovering.

UPDATE: Some indicate that recent gains in the stock market and modest economic growth suggest we are on the verge of a robust recovery. However other indicators continue to cast doubts, including U.S. unemployment hovering near 10% and the record $ 13+ T national debt.

Indeed, The Economist for May 29- June 4, 2010, leads with a front cover headline, “Fear Returns. How to Avoid a double-dip recession.” And inside they continue with, “Governments were the solution to the economic crisis. Now they are the problem.” And New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (5/23/10) argues that “There is no margin for error anymore.” He quotes experienced global investor Mohamed El-Erian who warns that, “The world is on a journey to an unstable destination, through unfamiliar territory, on an uneven road and, critically, having already used its spare tire.”

b) Obama will “reset” his presidency resulting in prosperity.
Ted Van Dyk, a long-time Democrat and formerly Vice President Hubert Humphery’s assistant in the LBJ Whitehouse, advises Obama to cut back his proposals and expectations (WSJ, 7/17/09):

“You made promises about jobs that would be ‘created and saved’ by the stimulus package. Those promises have not held up. You continue to engage in hyperbole by claiming that your health-care and energy plans will save tax dollars. Congressional Budget Office analysis indicates otherwise.”

UPDATE: For better or worse, this hasn’t happened. Obama passed his health care bill and recently revived discussion of climate legislation and new multi-B $ bailouts.

c) The Keynesians are right and major government spending and deficits result in prosperity.
For example, according to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the idea of slowing major stimulus spending would be an “error of historical proportions,” (WSJ, 9/22/09; B. Stephens).

UPDATE: The New York Times (5/23/10) reports Europe is “rethinking its safety net,”

Bottom Line for Option I:
The economic case for Obama eventually becoming the new JFK is weaker than it was last September.

However, if he can overcome current challenges, Obama can still become the new JFK. He would continue the brilliant, transformative lagacy of Theodore Roosevelt and the Panama Canal, that began with Thomas Jefferson and the Lewis and Clark expedition.

OPTION II: Obama becomes a 1-term president: He becomes the new Grover Cleveland (and possibly LBJ), and leads to a pro-prosperity Republican presidency.
Historical/Economic Model: The Peary/Panama Maslow Window (1903-13).

The New York Times (9/6/09; Richard Stevenson) observed that,

Nearly eight months after the inauguration, the economy … has stabilized sufficiently that the nation is no longer gripped by the sense of urgency that allowed Mr. Obama, almost without challenge, to carry out an audacious act of industrial engineering: reshaping the automobile industry from the Oval Office in a matter of weeks … The most relevant political framework instead appears to be a more problematic one inherited from his predecesser: a general loss of faith in government.

On August 21, the Wall Street Journal (8/25/09; William McGurn) reported that,

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said his boss was “quite comforrtable” with the idea that sticking to his agenda may well mean “he only lives in this house” for one term.

Indeed, if unemployment remains high into 2012, reelection will be a challenge for Obama.

Three things that could hinder Obama’s reelection are:

a) The Stimulus has not worked.
The Wall Street Journal (9/17/09; Cogan,Taylor,Wieland) reports that,

The data show government transfers and rebates have not increased consumption at all … and that the resilience of the private sector following the fall 2008 panic — not the fiscal stimulus program — deserves the lion’s share of the credit for the impressive growth improvement from the first to the second quarter.

And as unempoyment heads toward 10%, Obama’s promise that rapid passage of the stimulus package would keep unemployment below 8% has not been realized.

UPDATE: Little has improved here. In late February, Harvard’s Robert Barro (Wall Street Journal, 5/23/10) concluded that “The fiscal stimulus package of 2009 was a mistake.” Based on his long-term empirical model of past U.S. fiscal actions, he estimates a spending multiplier of 0.4 (in the same year) and 0.6 (over 2 years). Increased government spending reduces other portions of GDP like “personal consumer expendature, private domestic investment, and net exports.” According to Barro,

b) Obama’s economic policy may be fundamentally flawed.

Published economic research by the current head of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors — Christina Romer — raises doubts about Obama’s policy of major government spending to end the recession. The Wall Street Journal (8/21/09; Alan Reynolds) considers Professor Romer’s 1999 study (J. Econ. Perspect.) and concludes that, based on economic history since 1887, “bigger government appears to produce only bigger and longer recessions.”

If this is true, Obama’s large stimulus/bailout packages and large federal budgets will not stimulate the economy in his first term.

According to William Gale of Brookings,

The budget outlook at every horizon is troubling: the fiscal-year 2009 budget is enormous; the ten-year projection is clearly unsustainable; and the long-term outlook is dire and increasingly urgent.

UPDATE: Little improvement here. According to Robert Reich (WSJ, 4/12/10), President Clinton’s Secretary of Labor, “Many outsourced jobs will never return, and median income will likely continue to fall…”

Former Reagan advisor Arthur Laffer (WSJ, 6/7/10) sees an “economic collapse” for the U.S. in 2011 unless the Bush taX cuts are extended. “The result will be a crash in tax receipts … If you thought deficits and unemployment have been bad lately, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

c) Afghanistan turns into Vietnam.

The New York Times (8/23/09; Peter Baker) has focused on the dangers a protracted conflict in Afghanistan could have on Obama, “The LBJ model — a president who aspired to reshape America at home while fighting a losing war abroad — is one that haunts Mr. Obama’s White House as it seeks to salvage Afghanistan while enacting an expansive domestic program.”

UPDATE: Afghanistan continues to be a controversial “roller coaster.” Although Obama has tripled the number of U.S. soldiers there, “The conduct of a counterinsurgency operation is a roller coaster experience. There are setbacks as well as areas of progress or successes,” according to Gen. David Petraeus.

Also strategically controversial is Obama’s order to begin reducing American forces by July, 2011. According the the Los Angeles Times, (6/13/10; J. Barnes), “Petraeus did not elaborate on his own reservations and left the hearing moments later after becoming ill. But Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he was worried that the timeline had undercut Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s support for the U.S.-led war effort.”

d) Something New — Widespread questions about Obama’s leadership capability arise.

UPDATE: This has centered on his administration’s slow response to the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico BP oil spill, and goes to the core of his ability to function as a visionary president.

For example, the New York Times (6/13/10) had several complaints.

It certainly should not have taken days for Mr. Obama to get publicly involved in the oil spill … It took too long for Mr. Obama to say that the Coast Guard and not BP was in charge … These are matters of competence and leadership. It;s time for Mr. Obama to decisively show both.

Response from Obama’s supporters to his first Oval Office television address was likewise unfavorable. For example, Chris Matthews (MSNBC) said, “I don’t sense executive command.” Maureen Dowd (NYT) commented that, “instead of the fairy dust of hopefulness there’s the bitter draught of helplessness.” And Time’s Mark Halperin described his own, “fierce, unforeseen disappointment.” With friends like that you can imagine the shots from the Right.

Broadening the critique to all areas of presidential leadership, Dorothy Rabinowitz (WSJ, 6/9/10) crafted the eye-catching headline, “The Alien in the White House;” not referring, of course, to his native-born status, but to “the distance between the president and the people.” And Peggy Noonan (WSJ, 6/19/10) thinks Obama is “snakebit,” in that he’s “starting to look unlucky, like Jimmy Carter.”

As before, an interesting bottomline emerges:

Re: Prospects for the New Space Age Near 2015:
Based on patterns in macroeconomic data and historical trends over the last 200 years, all realistic roads still lead to a 2015 Maslow Window featuring a Golden Age of Prosperity, Exploration, and Technology, although wildcards are possible.

Re: Mr. Obama’s Prospects:
Despite the fact that Mr. Obama is currently setting the stage for a robust, transformative new Space Age within the next 3-5 years, his presidential prospects remain uncertain and have become even more so since last September.

Obama’s long wave timing and election circumstances (i.e., panic/recession) have more parallels with the 1893-1913 Peary/Panama Maslow Window — in which a 1-term Democrat (Grover Cleveland) was replaced by a pro-prosperity Republican — than with the 1949-1969 Apollo Maslow Window of John F. Kennedy. And Obama’s continuing challenges with high unemployment, record deficits, huge budgets, Afghanistan, and now the oil spill, pose real dangers for him.

As the New York Times noted and as evidenced by Obama’s descending poll numbers, many Americans are expressing skepticism about big government and the economy. Obama will have to create prosperity — the cornerstone of the 2015 Maslow Window — and given Obama’s abilities and resources, he’s remains quite capable of doing it.

But he will have to reverse some of the above trends and perceptions.

According to Arthur Laffer, real quarterly GDP growth from 1981 to 1984 shows the economy took off when the Reagan tax cuts kicked in (WSJ, 6/7/10).
Click

Recently Christopher Wood of CLSA Ltd. in Hong Kong warned that a “double dip recession” was in the cards (Wall Street Journal, 5/24/10). According to Wood, the hazards include: 1) the European debt crisis ($ 2.8 T at end of last year), 2) “slower growth in China,” and 3) in the U.S., a “decline in bank lending and the velocity of money in circulation.”

Wood believes that “sooner or later … the Obama administration (will) give up on their hopes of a normal recovery.” Indeed on May 1 WSJ characterized our current status as a “respectable cyclical recovery, though one that is so far less robust than we’d expect after an especially deep recession … about half as strong as it was after the last deep downturn.” And the May, 2010 employment data continued to suggest caution because 95% of the new jobs were for temporary government census workers.

Economist Arthur Laffer (co-author of Return to Prosperity…; 2010) recalls that in response to the Reagan tax cuts of January, 1983, “the economy took off like a rocket with average real growth reaching 7.5 % in 1983 and 5.5 % in 1984.” Laffer worries that the expiration of the Bush tax cuts in January, 2011 — plus tax increases at the federal, state, and local levels — will have the opposite effect (WSJ, 6/7/10).

When we pass the tax boundary of January 1, 2011, my best guess is that the train goes off the tracks and we get our worst nightmare of a severe “double dip” recession.

To avoid this fate, Martin Feldstein of Harvard recommends extending the Bush tax cuts for 2 years (WSJ, 5/12/10) — something that seems politically unlikely.

It’s interesting that — consistent with the current major debt crisis in Europe — prominent Keynesian economists George Akerloff and Robert Shiller (authors of Animal Spirits, 2009) do not attribute the end of the 1930s Great Depression to FDR’s big government spending policies, but instead to the onset of World War II.

The drop of confidence during the Great Depression was so fundamental that it continued for a decade. Confidence — and the economy itself — was not restored until World War II completely changed the dominant story of people’s lives, transforming the economy.

Historian Burton Folsom (author of New Deal or Raw Deal, 2008) concurs that FDR didn’t end the Great Depression, but contends that WW II didn’t either. In fact, a Democratic Congress rejected President Truman’s recommendation of a “New Deal revival” and instead cut taxes across the board. According to Folsom, “The economy took off after the postwar Congress cut taxes,” and unemployment dropped (from double digits in the 1930s) to only 3.9 % in 1946.

Akerloff and Shiller (2009) see parallels between the financial Panic of 1893 and the 1890s great recession, and the Panic of 2008 and our current great recession. Indeed, the severe financial crisis of the 1890s led directly to a golden age of prosperity, exploration, and technology that featured “Panama fever” and the construction of the Panama Canal, “pole mania” and the first international expeditions to both the north and south poles, the civilization-altering Wright brothers first flights, and the Great White Fleet’s show tour around the world. Called the Peary/Panama/T. Roosevelt Maslow Window (1901-13), it was perhaps the most ebullient decade in U.S. history, led by perhaps the most ebullient president in U.S. history: Theodore Roosevelt.

The most recent golden age was the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window initiated by President John F. Kennedy and featuring the first manned Moon landing in 1969. Based on 200+ years of macroeconomic data and historical trends, our next Maslow Window is expected to begin near 2015.

The question is: Will our current great recession threaten the 2015 Maslow Window?

The 1890s great recession is especially revealing in this regard, because it was a double dip. According to David Whitten, professor emeritus in the College of Business at Auburn,

The financial crises of 1893 accelerated the recession that was evident early in the year into a major contraction that spread throughout the economy. Investment, commerce, prices, employment, and wages remained depressed for several years … Meanwhile, restricted investment, income, and profits spelled low consumption, widespread suffering, and occasionally explosive labor and political struggles. An extensive but incomplete revival occurred in 1895. The Democratic nomination of William Jennings Bryan for the presidency on a free silver platform the following year amid an upsurge of silverite support contributed to a second downturn peculiar to the United States. Europe, just beginning to emerge from depression, was unaffected. Only in mid-1897 did recovery begin in this country; full prosperity returned gradually over the ensuing year and more.

In 1893, the year of the Panic, unemployment is estimated at 8.1 % but increased to 12.3 in 1894. In 1895, the year of the “incomplete revival,” it dropped to 11.1, but the “second downturn” resulted in 12.0 and 12.7 in 1896 and 1897, respectively. The first year since 1894 with sub-10 unemployment was in 1899 with 8.7 %. By 1900 it was 5.0 and the Maslow Window was already taking off.

Although only sketched here, the 1893 – 1913 great recession/Panama Maslow Window decades have more key economic and political parallels with our current situation than does the 1950 – 1970 post-War/Apollo Maslow Window interval. Because the 1890s great recession lasted about 6 years, this model suggests that even in a worst-case scenario — i.e., assuming a double dip recession — we should easily recover before 2015. And our recovery should be accelerated by proper leverage of the last 100 years of economic history since the 1890s great recession.

This is consistent with the historical observation that over the last 200 years, no Maslow Window has ever been delayed or diminished in any observable way by a panic/great recession in the decade preceding the Window.

Freeman Dyson at ISDC 2010 in Chicago on “American and Russian Space Cultures.”
Click .

So much wisdom, it’s hard to know where to begin. However, I’ll sketch his major themes and expand on them in future posts.

A Public Highway to Space
Dyson reminded us that the U.S. space program is at a turning point, considering the plans of Obama versus Bush and with the Augustine report as guidance. Although Obama does not include a PHS it does feature private firms developing manned launch systems to ISS. Dyson personally favors development of laser propulsion using water as fuel, although he recognizes that other systems might also perform efficiently.

In response to a question from the floor, Dyson said a cheap launch system should be the primary strategic goal of pro-space activist groups like the National Space Society, the organizer of ISDC 2010.

What About Terraforming?
As you might expect from a superb physicist, Dyson asserted that the primary problem one faces in human settlement of the solar system and beyond is “biological not technological”. Many space scientists approach planetary colonization with the assumption that it’s desirable to make planetary surface environments more Earth-like before large-scale space colonization can begin.

Dyson’s brief but compelling counterpoint is that it makes more sense to customize humans to their particular planetary environment rather than to attempt large-scale terraforming. He even views it as an attractive future option — eventually witnessing the emergence of several varieties of humans in response to their particular worlds.

Dyson wonders what would have happened in space “if John F. Kennedy had thought more like a Russian?” Click .

Short- Versus Long-Term Thinking About Space
Dyson’s main thrust was to contrast America’s space culture with Russia’s. He began by noting that the U.S. space program is composed of two parts: manned and unmanned. Scientists who lead unmanned space projects point to a long string of successes that literally span the solar system over the last 5-6 decades, and they develop new generations of space technologies on a decade timescale. However, regarding manned space, even “40 years after Apollo we’re still stuck in LEO!”

In Russia it’s different. “When a space launch occurs the whole town celebrates with a parade.” The Russian “trinity” of Tsiolkovsky, Korolov, and Gargarin is displayed everywhere, and the atmosphere is more like a “religious sacrament.” Dyson notes that in Russia space is regarded as a key part of “human destiny”, not just science; and the Russians see ISS as an expanded Mir (de-orbited in 2001) in which they take great national pride.

Dyson suggested that in the early 1960s if President Kennedy had thought more long-term like a Russian — instead of focusing on a short decade-long Moon program — we might now have a substantial Moon base that utilizes space resources. And it might even be self-sufficient.

The basic problem according to Dyson is that “American space culture thinks in decades.” But Russia takes a more intangible, human spirit approach that embraces “centuries” as its space timescale.

Our concept of the “fractal Maslow Window” speaks to the issues of American manned versus unmanned timescales for success. For example, technology development associated with unmanned programs is usually relatively unknown to the general public partly because of low cost (e.g., Goddard’s liquid fueled rocket, 1926; Frank Low’s low-T IR detectors, 1961; multiple gravity assists and Cassini, 1997). Thus many technology developments in a variety of programs — space and otherwise –occur continuously and can produce new generations on a decade timescale. However, manned space programs are highly visible, risky, state-of-the-art endeavors with large price tags and significant geopolitical implications. And as a result they become very political.

History shows that Apollo-style programs emerge only during brief, ebullient intervals called Maslow Windows, that — over the last 200 years — occur every 55 to 60 years. They appear to be fundamentally driven by long-term business cycles (e.g., the long wave) and are exclusively associated with major economic booms. Another way to think of Maslow Windows is in a fractal context, in which the international technology/economic/geopolitical system becomes highly interactive and reaches a critical state every 5-6 decades. This appears to be both a necessary and sufficient condition for culturally transformative programs like Apollo to occur.

This explains why no human has been to the Moon is almost 40 years. But more importantly, Dyson’s experiences suggest the Russians may be more advanced than the U.S. in their approach to planning manned space programs that can transcend Maslow Windows.

What do technology, sex, and the future have in common? (Ans: Collective Intelligence) Click

Ridley’s theme – “collective intelligence” – intriguingly illuminates the way humans surge forward technologically, economically, and culturally even today during epochal, twice-per-century Maslow Windows (e.g., the 1960s… ).

Apparently Neanderthals suffered because they were not gregarious enough! According to Ridley, the key to a “big bang in human consciousness” is not genetic as much as it is collaborative, “what determines the inventiveness and rate of cultural change of a population is the amount of interaction between individuals.” In his book, The Nature of Technology (2009), W. Brian Arthur concurs that today “innovation is a collective enterprise that relies on exchange.”

Ridley comments that,

We tend to forget that trade and urbanization are the grand stimuli to invention, far more important than governments, money or individual genius. It’s no coincidence that trade-obsessed cities … are the places where invention and discovery happened.

After all, even Einstein initially worked at a patent office — by definition a stimulating attractor of new ideas.

“So here is the answer to the puzzle of the human takeoff. It was caused by the invention of a collective brain itself made possible by the invention of exchange.”

Although today, humans connect more often than ever before because of global networking and transportation, even by the late 18th century, humans had apparently accidentally invented a highly collaborative and effective arrangement for societal quantum leaps — the Maslow Window.

Over the last 200 years, great human explorations (e.g., Lewis and Clark), macro-engineering projects (e.g., Panama Canal), and even major wars (e.g., WW I) cluster together exclusively every 55 to 60 years. The most recent example of these spectacular decades is the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window. According to the editors of the Sixties journal, “No recent decade has been so powerfully transformative in much of the world as have the Sixties.” The Sixties decade “has become plainly iconic.” It continues to “not only define us but remains urgently with us.”

Because of the “punctuated equilibria” nature of Maslow Windows — brief pulses of unprecedented activity separated by 55 to 60 years — and the fact they obey Bak’s law, Maslow Windows are most likely self organized criticality (SOC) phenomena characteristic of complex adaptive systems. In the weak SOC environment outside a Maslow Window, elements of the complex system — e.g., companies, people, agencies — do not interact strongly and so the system evolves in a fairly stable fashion. However, as a Maslow Window is approached the system becomes fractal — i.e., system elements become strongly interactive systemwide — and large changes (both good and bad) can be triggered by small stimuli without much warning.

On a global level, the fractal Maslow Window is a modern, intense example of Ridley’s concept of “collective intelligence”; i.e., a brief, transformative interval of focused collaboration and exchange when we are most likely to experience the best (e.g., Apollo Moon program; Peace Corps) and the worst (e.g., Cuban Missile Crisis; Vietnam War) of modern society.

Ridley reminds us that,

The story of the human race has been a gradual spread of specialization and exchange ever since: Prosperity consists of getting more and more narrow in what you make and more and more diverse in what you buy. Self-sufficiency — subsistence — is poverty.

Pulsed progress — technologically, economically, culturally — provided by a succession of fractal Maslow Windows over the last 200 years has had a stunningly expansive effect on human specialization and exchange. All we have to do is compare Lewis and Clark’s canoes with the Saturn V rocket of Apollo!

And this progression will continue. The anticipated arrival of the next Maslow Window by 2015 suggests another golden age of prosperity, exploration, and technology is not far away. Ridley concurs that, “the human race will prosper mightily in the years ahead — because ideas are having sex with each other as never before.”

He means, of course, that bright ideas are being intensely exchanged in formats like 21st century Maslow Windows.

Did positive Keynesian Animal Spirits drive both the Panama Canal in 1914…
Click
… and the Apollo program in 1969? Click .

The Times’ piece is of interest to us at 21stCenturyWaves.com because John Maynard Keynes — the first prominent behavorial economist — invented the concept of “animal spirits” to explain the crucial role of confidence (both optimism and pessimism) in the economy. Conceptually, animal spirits appears related to “ebullience” which — through the psychologically expansive effects of Maslow’s hierarchy — triggers public support for great explorations and MEPs.

In fact, animal spirits and ebullience may be two sides of the same coin. For example, positive animal spirits stimulate actors in the economy to produce a boom. While ebullience, although typically affluence-induced, operates in the elevated Maslow (self-actualizing) mode and makes great expectations and MEPs seem almost irresistible. Negative animal spirits rapidly terminate the boom, erode ebullience, collapse society’s elevated Maslow state, and “close” the Maslow Window.

But the Times explains that not everyone is happy with Sunstein’s vision.

Conservatives see a Big Brother strain in Sunstein’s philosophy (Glenn Beck called him “the most dangerous guy out there”), while some liberals worry that behavorial economics is too immature to handle the weight of guiding policy.

This is partly because of two Sunstein beliefs:
1) the idea that the human quality of irrationality can be predicted,
and, according to the Times,
2) “this is the controversial part — that if the social environment can be changed, people might be nudged into more rational behavior.”

Animal Spirits Exist
More interesting at this point — given the still-embryonic state of the science — is the recent discovery by a University of California, Irvine economist that animal spirits are actually important to business cycles (Investers Chronicle, 3/26/10; C. Dillow). Fabio Milani compared the expectations of individual economic forecasters (from the Survey of Economic Forecasters) with a learning model featuring a “rational expectations solution” to the system. According to Milani,

Private sector agents in some periods may be overly optimistic — by forecasting a higher future output or lower inflation rate, for example, than implied by their learning model — or overly pessimistic. These waves of over-optimism and over-pessimism, which are exogenous to the state of the economy, are defined as the expectation shocks in the model.

Milani’s “expectation shocks” can account for more than half of the variation in the U.S. GDP over the last 40 years. Not only did his expectation shocks fall before each of the last 7 recessions, they are near an all-time low now. Thus animal spirits, expectation shocks, and ebullience are apparently at work during business cycles.

The Market is a Complex Adaptive System
Herbert Gintis (3/31/2009) of the Santa Fe Institute modeled the market in 2007 as an agent-based complex adaptive system. In his review of Akerloff and Shiller’s book, Animal Spirits (2009), Gintis suggests that animal spirits are only part of the story:

The major thesis of the book is only partially correct in attributing macroeconomic instability to human foibles … Akerlof and Shiller do not have enough evidence to assert confidently that people are driven by irrational animal spirits to produce market volatility. People imitate the successful, both in my agent-based model and in real life. This is generally quite rational behavior, but it can produce “behavioral cascades” that are destabilizing

Part of the confusion apparently arises because of evolving conditions that affect the notion of “rational” versus “irrational.” Is it rational for investors and businesses to join the bandwagon when a strong upward economic trend has been established? Probably yes. On the other hand, is it irrational for investors and businesses to assume that the boom will continue forever? Yes, for sure.

Therefore, investors who were initially rational may become irrational as the boom peaks. This is especially true when the system becomes strongly fractal and increasingly unpredictable.

It appears that animal spirits have an empirical foundation and, together with ebullience, are able to explain the psychological rationale behind widespread public support for great explorations and MEPs during Maslow Windows. The fact that public support is short-lived and that Maslow Windows display punctuated equilibrium — e.g., are separated by 55 to 60 years — is consistent with the idea that we’re dealing with a complex adaptive system that requires 5 – 6 decades to repeatedly self-organize into a critical state (the Maslow Window).

Europe’s crisis suggests that big government policies being enacted in the U.S. may delay the return to prosperity here too.

Over the last 200 years, prosperity is the hallmark of every Maslow Window from Apollo all the way back to Lewis and Clark, and is expected to drive the approach to ebullience near 2015. It’s clear that prosperity enhances the financial feasibility of typical macro-engineering projects (e.g., Panama Canal; Apollo). What’s not so obvious is that their political feasibility is momentarily ensured by affluence-induced ebullience that elevates many in society to higher states of Maslow’s hierarchy. And the large international audiences typically riveted by great explorations — e.g., the still-famous, mid-19th century greeting of Henry Stanley in central Africa, “Dr. Livingstone I presume?” — are enabled largely by the same effect.

Prosperity Is a Technological Imperative
The connection between prosperity and superpower status was emphasized recently by Max Boot, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (WSJ, 3/25/10),

When Europeans after World War II chose to skimp on defense and spend lavishly on social welfare, they abdicated their claims to great power status. That worked out well for them because their security was subsidized by the U.S..

But what happens if the U.S. switches spending from defense to social welfare? Who will protect what used to be known as the “Free World”? … it will be increasingly hard to be globocop and nanny state at the same time.

Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman (2005) expands the point to explicitly include space, “A rising average income allows a country to project its national interest abroad, or send a man to the Moon.”

Political scientist and blogger Thomas Barnett likes to refer to the U.S. as the Leviathan. In 2009 we spent as much on defense ($ 660 B) as the rest of the world combined. But major entitlement programs currently cost 35% of GNP, about twice that of defense.

It takes exceptional mental prowess to remember when U.S. entitlement spending initially exceeded defense (in 1976). And Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid have expanded “dramatically” since then. ObamaCare will accelerate the trend.

Prosperity is a Moral Imperative
In his monumental book, The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth (2005), Harvard economics professor Benjamin Friedman presents the case for prosperity as a moral imperative.

Even in America, I believe, the quality of our democracy -– more fundamentally, the moral character of American society – is similarly at risk.

He shows that economic growth, rather than just the level of living standards is the key to political and social liberalization around the world as well as in the U.S.. Merely being rich is no protection against society’s retreat into rigidity and intolerance.

Periods of economic expansion in America and elsewhere, during which most citizens had reason to be optimistic, have also witnessed greater openness, tolerance, and democracy. To repeat: such advances occur for many reasons. But the effect of economic growth versus stagnation is an important and often central part of the story.

Friedman’s comments mirror the general trends of the long economic wave which peaked most recently in the late 1960s, declined into the 1990s, and should ignite another Kennedy-style long boom by 2015:

The central economic question for the United States at the outset of the twenty-first century is whether the nation in the generation ahead will again achieve increasing prosperity, as in the decades following World War II, or lapse back into the stagnation of living standards for the majority of our citizens that persisted from the early 1970s until the early 1990s … But even the prosperity … in the late 1990s bypassed large parts, in some important dimensions a clear majority, of the country’s citizens …

So for most people, it is persistent real growth in wages and low unemployment that trigger the twice-per-century Maslowian ebullience which momentarily creates broad public approval of great explorations and MEPs like Apollo in the 1960s — and the new international space age expected near 2015.

And in addition to its profound technological impact on society, prosperity is also a moral imperative that historically results in more openness, tolerance, and democracy thoughout the world.

Despite our current circumstances, there is every reason to believe that the 2015 Maslow Window will be the best of both worlds.