We'll have a transitional year slower but still with good growth. Stock market gains will be more historically typical, in an 8 to 10 percent range instead of the 20 to 30 percent we've been experiencing lately. And actually, if you excerpt the tech stocks from the major market, the returns have already halved, to a 9 percent range. Technical skills bring good wages at one end, and blue-collar wages are low at the other. I see that as a problem here in San Diego.
Wages are lower, housing is higher, and it puts pressure on people.
In the Midwest, the South and Arizona, it's not as stressful. Harry Dent, in his book The Roaring 2000s, predicts a massive population shift during the next 30 years out of the cities and suburbs and into what he calls the exurbs smaller towns where computer-literate workers can live and work without being near job centers. Crime is not going to stop moving into the suburbs, pollution is not going to disappear, most schools won't turn the corner for a long time, and traffic will certainly get worse. Dent predicts the baby boomers will move to rural communities where they feel in control. That means as many as 70 million people in North America will be on the move in the next 30 years.