What will 2033 look like?

"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future." Niels Bohr

Do you ever feel yourself in the grasp of history, that is, do you get a sense of your own, dare I say insignificance, within the rich tapestry of human existence?

I know I do, and I love to step back and zoom way way out of our day to day lives and focus on the far bigger picture that presents itself to us.

So, I thought I'd do something a bit different. Let me try and forecast what will happen in the next ten years? Sounds like fun? I'll cover as much of planet Earth as I can. Let's start with the UK....

United Kingdom:

NHS: waiting times continue to grow; more and more extreme NHS headlines will make the news. The NHS faces a tsunami of frail patients with multiple health issues.

Crime: crime in the UK will continue to rise, this will be down to an overstretched police force, general economic decline, and the erosion of societal morality.

UK economy: UK debt will continue to rise, interest payments on the debt will devour the real economy. Standards of living will continue to slide; the working population continues to shrink. There is a housing crisis, with a huge shortage of properties. The Government imposes rent controls to cap monthly rents.

Ireland: Ireland inches closer and closer to unification, it is only a matter of time before it happens. Increased immigration to the island causes more and more societal friction.

United States:

Society becomes more and more polarised along racial and political lines.

The USA either directly or indirectly defaults on it's colossal debt. The country is almost at the edge of, if not already in civil war.

Living standards within the US continue to plummet, if the dollar loses it's status as world reserve currency, huge inflation will hit US society. Martial law is declared in certain parts of the country as crime spirals out of control.

The US begins to scale back it's huge global military footprint to deal with domestic unrest and also due to the inability to fund it's huge military.

Germany:

Due to a combination of an ageing population and lack of access to cheap Russian gas, Germany is well past it's economic zenith. It will never regain the dizzying economic heights it once enjoyed.

China:

China continues to rise while the West in general declines. It begins to flex it's military power more and more, putting it on a collision course with a declining USA. It is only a matter of time before the US and China clash in the South China Sea.

The Yuan or a BRICS gold backed currency poses a serious challenge to US dollar hegemony. While the West uses paper currency, China either alone or with her allies have moved to a gold backed currency, thereby increasing their financial heft several fold.

Russia:

Russia is also in decline due to poor demographics. It still retains a potent military, and vast resources, and has fully pivoted east, shunning the West after NATO expansion right up to the Ukraine border. The Ukraine/Russian war never ended but became frozen in time like North/South Korea. The line became a hard border much like the DMZ between North and South Korea.  

Japan:

Japan's abysmal demographics continues to take it's toll on the nation. More immigration soaks up some of the pressure, but also causes societal frictions as Japan struggles to adapt to foreign workers.

Aliens:

I firmly believe that within the next ten years, irrefutable evidence of extra terrestrial life will finally be made public, ending the long debate as to whether we are alone in the Universe.

Technology:

Artificial intelligence continues to become more and more powerful, displacing more and more workers. Quantum computers come of age, with the power to change human history forever by solving previously impossible mathematical problems.

Anyway, that's what I think will happen in the next decade. It will be interesting to have a look back in 2033 and see what I got right, what I got wrong?