TEN YEARS ago Peter Turchin, a scientist at the University of Connecticut, made a startling prediction in Nature. “The next decade is likely to be a period of g

TEN YEARS ago Peter Turchin, a scientist at the University of Connecticut, made a startling prediction in Nature. “The next decade is likely to be a period of growing instability in the United States and western Europe,” On the contrary, I'd claim relative instability was predicted by a fairly large group. The decline of the US has been described and predicted across the political spectrum. Gridlock was a pretty visible thing ten or thirty years ago. pointing in part to the “overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees” This is an ...uh, bizarre definition of "elites". The elites are broadly rulers, the owners specialized, etc - those consuming and managing a significant portion of a society's resources. As far back as ancient Rome and imperial China, Mr Turchin shows, societies have veered from periods of political stability to instability, often at intervals of about 50 years. Things go up and things go down. A remarkably prescient view /s. This article reads like "collapse of complex societies"[1] for idiots. Where lots of young people with PhDs figure in these speculations is hard to say (I mean, this is small of any elite overreach). It's sad how many poor quality articles like this one have been popping up here lately. I suggest the original Tainter as well as Jared Diamond's Collapse, at the least. Edit: I should also note The Economist may well be misstating Mr Turchin's on elites but this is the linked article. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter