Futurology as Further Ideology: Reflections on Pryor's Millennium Survey of Economists

PATRICK MCGUIRE [*] ABSTRACT. This comment is in response to Frederic L. Pryor (2000). "The Millennium Survey: How Economists View the U.S. Economy in the 21st Century." The American Journal of Economics and Sociology. 59 (January), pp. 3-33. Frederick Pryor's survey of U.S. economists regarding expected changes in the U.S. economy during the next 50 years is a careful study. He confined his queries to categories or subject parameters easily understood by his respondents and about which they could comfortably opine. He found that they believe per capita GDP, financial volatility, and globalization will increase relative to current trends, and that more than half felt that globalization and increased financial volatility would necessitate changes in the economic system during the next 50 years. Most economists saw all current trends continuing at current or a slightly more rapid pace, and the more variance a response from the statistical average on any topic, the more likely they were to see that factor having an impact on the structure of the economic system. Finishing the article, I am left wondering: Where is the news? Mirroring "professional futurologists," economists foresee the future based on 20/20 hindsight--as a further unfolding of recent trends obvious to the well read (see Naisbitt and Aburdene 1990). If this is so, they will be accurate in some areas and amusingly wrong in others. [1] But what does this study really tell us? Pryor's work begs the question: Does this study tell us more about contemporary economists and their ideology than about expected changes in economic life in the next 50 years? There is an old adage in survey work--the questions you ask determine the answers you get. Asking economists about mainstream economic factors can lead to stock answers in the same way that multiple choice questions both shape and elicit "correct answer" responses from students. This tendency may be especially pronounced when queries occur after the longest period of economic growth in the last 50 years. Both the content and context of Pryor's questions legitimate the status quo--a condition that may explain why only 10% to 33% of respondents foresee a slowing of, or retreat from, any current trend. A belief in economic forecasting, the abilities of practicing economists to nurture trends (a la Robert Rubins and Alan Greenspan), and the continued dynamics of current markets and economies is implied by such a historical responses. Even when common sense would suggest otherwise, unbridled optimism reigns. For example, respondents expect a 25-year continuation of current price trends for (generally non-renewable) raw materials and fuel, and less than half the respondents see price trends increasing during the subsequent 25 years. Pryor notes that significant factors such as wars and calamities would alter trends and impacts. However, as with post-World War II era sociologists confident in their methods and their influence on policy, [2] Pryor's respondents ignore the distorting effects of "good times" on their perceptions, glossing over structural contradictions, and downplaying public resistance to erstwhile "beneficial innovations" that do not directly benefit the majority. In contrast, responding to subsequent insights and reflection, contemporary sociologists have focused on structural contradictions (Glasberg and Skidmore, 1999) and carefully and systematically integrated our understandings of personal behaviors, social life, and n etworked interactions in our explanations of economic action and changing social structures (Granovetter and Swedberg 1992;6). Wisely, given the mercurial nature of futurology, Pryor keeps his statistics basic and his explanations closely tied to the quantitative data on expected economic changes and impacts. Yet how different would the data be if instead of asking questions (framed in narrative of mainstream economics) about trends and then impacts, respondents were asked questions that focused on conditions that could affect economic structures and then asked to comment on current trends. …