The World 2050

[Bo]

China will be a parliamentary democracy as well as a global superpower on par with the United States (by then a clearly declining power in both relative and absolute terms).

Greenhouse gases emitted from anthropogenic sources (factories, vehicles, etc.) will be stabilized, and on their way down to 1990 levels.

The non-Hispanic white population (WASP) in the United States will have only a plurality of the total population.

We will still have a two-party system here in the United States, between Republicans and Democrats.

The U.S. Republican Party will have finally overcome its problems appealing to racial/ethnic minorities (with the exception of African Americans), with traditional (aka, socially/religious conservative) values being the glue tying the new coalition together.  

We will have established colonies on the Moon and Mars.

I am pretty much sticking with these predictions, although I would add India as one of the global superpowers; and that whoever colonizes the Moon and Mars (as well as beyond) will most definitely be either China or India -it certainly won't be the United States leading the effort.  We've shot our bolt by setting a man on the Moon in 1969 as well as building and completing the International Space Station.  We're done as a space-faring nation.

Also, we will have universal health care (much along the lines of the Senate plan).    

Also want to add that Iran and Iraq will be thriving democracies.

Palestine will exist as an internationally recognized state in the West Bank with East Jerusalem as its capital.  And after one last war, Gaza will no longer exist as a separate political entity, with its inhabitants having been trucked out by Israel and dumped into the far southern fringes of Israel.

I don't think anyone will colonize the Moon or Mars by 2050. It takes up too much resources, money, and energy. It takes two years just to get to Mars, not to mention we'll need to find your years' worth of spare oxygen for the voyage (2 years to get there, 2 years to get back). If anyone wanted to colonize the Moon, they'd have done it by now, but we hadn't been in the Moon since 1972.

[Bo]

China will be a parliamentary democracy as well as a global superpower on par with the United States (by then a clearly declining power in both relative and absolute terms).

Greenhouse gases emitted from anthropogenic sources (factories, vehicles, etc.) will be stabilized, and on their way down to 1990 levels.

The non-Hispanic white population (WASP) in the United States will have only a plurality of the total population.

We will still have a two-party system here in the United States, between Republicans and Democrats.

The U.S. Republican Party will have finally overcome its problems appealing to racial/ethnic minorities (with the exception of African Americans), with traditional (aka, socially/religious conservative) values being the glue tying the new coalition together.  

We will have established colonies on the Moon and Mars.

I am pretty much sticking with these predictions, although I would add India as one of the global superpowers; and that whoever colonizes the Moon and Mars (as well as beyond) will most definitely be either China or India -it certainly won't be the United States leading the effort.  We've shot our bolt by setting a man on the Moon in 1969 as well as building and completing the International Space Station.  We're done as a space-faring nation.

Also, we will have universal health care (much along the lines of the Senate plan).    

Also want to add that Iran and Iraq will be thriving democracies.

Palestine will exist as an internationally recognized state in the West Bank with East Jerusalem as its capital.  And after one last war, Gaza will no longer exist as a separate political entity, with its inhabitants having been trucked out by Israel and dumped into the far southern fringes of Israel.

I don't think anyone will colonize the Moon or Mars by 2050. It takes up too much resources, money, and energy. It takes two years just to get to Mars, not to mention we'll need to find your years' worth of spare oxygen for the voyage (2 years to get there, 2 years to get back). If anyone wanted to colonize the Moon, they'd have done it by now, but we hadn't been in the Moon since 1972.

I think you are speaking primarily from the American point-of-view, and underestimating the strength and power of nationalist passions in India and China.  In either of those two nations, I doubt it (taking up too much resources) would be much of an issue at all.  The race to put a human colony on either the Moon or Mars between these two rising Great Powers is primarily about status and symbolism, just as it was between the United States and the Soviet Union in the years between the launching of Sputnik and the landing of the first men on the Moon.  When your primary mission is to prevent your rival from a national achievement as momentous as setting a man on the Moon or to establish the first human colony on a world beyond the reach of Earth, money is no object -especially when it concerns space.   

I'd like to see anyone try to put a human on Mars. I'm not saying that it can't be done--I'm just saying I think it's a foolish idea and great entertainment to watch.

[Bo]

Towards the latter half of this century, there will be another huge immigration wave (this time coming from the Islamic world and sub-Saharan Africa) into the United States rivaling that of earlier waves.  It will be substantial enough that Islam will become the third largest religion in America, surpassed only by Catholicism and Protestantism.  

Charleston, South Carolina will join New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Washington, D.C. (among other cities) in becoming the major port-of-entry for these newly arriving immigrants who will settle the southern Atlantic coast (from DC and Baltimore southward) most heavily compared to other regions of the United States.  

I agree about this. I think that most immigration to the U.S. will come from Latin America and Asia until roughly 2050, and then most immigration will come from sub-Saharan Africa (with a smaller percentage from other Muslim countries, who will by that point be more developed on average than Sub-Saharan Africa). I think that this large immigration wave from Sub-Saharan Africa might last until the middle of the 22nd century. I also predict that the U.S. population will peak at about a billion people at around 2200, and then will begin slowly declining afterwards due to decreasing birth rates and a negative net migration.

[Bo]

SuperSoulty, do you ever think the U.S. will experience large scale immigration from Sub-Saharan Africa?