How Will America Be Doing In 5 Or 10 Years

What will America be like in 5-10 years?

There are a whole lot of answers to this question: after all, the US is a big country! And one also has to think about the fact that things have changed so much over the past dozen or so years: it almost feels like we're riding the crest of a parabolic curve, but where will be end up? Will we all be riding the SpaceX shuttle to Mars, or will we have overshot the limits of sustainable growth? This is a tricky question.The only prediction I believe I can confidently make is this: employees within industries that once seemed immune to automation will find themselves going the way of the telephone switchboard operator. Take wealth management, for instance: instead of hiring an investment adviser, companies like Future Adviser and Betterment have made it possible for the average person (like me, since I use one of these) to skillfully manage their own money. This saves me money, and makes it for me, too (since I don't have enough money to hire an investment adviser, and my outcomes are just as good!). But I have to wonder: if an algorithm-driven service performs as well as a human-driven firm, why would I ever need them? Why would anyone, if they can get the same results? I can't see this industry surviving, in its present form, five years from now.

How will education change in the next 10 years (2017–2026)?

Mastery LearningFirst, mastery-learning will become much more mainstream. It is an old idea that you shouldn’t have to learn a more advanced topic until you have proficiency in a more basic one. As intuitive as that may seem, when mass public education was introduced about 200 years ago, it was not practical to allow every student to progress in a personalized way. Instead, students got pushed ahead even when gaps were identified in their learning. (“Got a “C” on that basic exponents exam, too bad. We now have to learn negative exponents.”) That process caused students to accumulate gaps until it was debilitating in an upper-level class.Now we have the technology to meet every student where they are and provide teachers with real-time data so that it is practical to do mastery learning in a normal sized classroom.Competency Based CredentialsToday’s high school and college diplomas are based more on how much time you spend in class rather than what you are actually capable of. This is why colleges and employers see so little information in traditional diplomas/transcripts and, instead, turn to things like standardized exams, peer assessment and portfolios of creative work.I think that in 10 years, you will have globally recognized credentials that are independent of any individual academic institution. In order to achieve them, you need to prove skill competency, have great peer reviews, and have an impressive portfolio (I believe that you should have a portfolio regardless of what you want to do in life).Alternative and Clearer Paths to CareerToday, graduates from even top universities are finding themselves underemployed. On the other side, employers in 21st century industries are complaining that they can’t find enough talent. This is because of the disconnects between what colleges teach, what students actually learn and whether employers care (that assumes they have a reasonable read on what students have learned through traditional credentials).In 10 years, this will be more more streamlined. A learner of any age should be able to direct their learning to specific career or education goals and the system should customize the learning and credentialing experience to optimize their outcomes. Employers would play a key role here as well. Here is video for a grant application where Khan Academy hopes to do this:

Why do Americans file and pay taxes every year instead of every 5 or 10 years?

Original Question: Why do Americans pay taxes every year instead of every 5 or 10 years?Answer: For all my working live, I’ve paid taxes every pay period (sometimes monthly, sometimes bi-weekly.) That’s what withholding taxes are all about. My employer deducts a portion of my wages every pay period (and it’s beyond my knowledge how it gets to the Federal and State governments involved.)Once a year, I am required to fill out a bunch of forms to describe my income and expenses (as appropriate for deductions.) I might get a refund of excess taxes paid, or I might have to pay more in taxes. With luck, the amount involved is small.People who are self employed, or have only investment or rental income are required to pay estimated taxes quarterly or so. Even people who have taxes withheld by an employer will have to pay estimated taxes if their income not covered by withholding would result in a very large tax payment when final taxes are due at filing. (Such people can work with their employed to adjust their “withholding allowances” to avoid the need for the additional estimated payments.)The yearly cycle seems common. The tax year is aligned with the calendar year, but businesses financial years aren’t necessarily so - where I work, the fiscal year is from July 1 to June 30, not Jan 1 to Dec 31. The federal government has a fiscal year too - October 1 to September 30. The State of Michigan has the same fiscal year.As I’m used to this kind of system, I’m amazed that there’s anywhere in the world where taxes might be levied every 5 or 10 years.

How will higher education in America change over the next 5 or 10 years?

Higher ed is already experiencing the results of reducing full-time faculty in favor of adjuncts, whose salaries are paltry, where turnover can prevent solid pedagogy over time. Having been both an adjunct and a full time tenured professor, until I retired four years ago, I worked both sides of this. Now, online courses are taking over from the live class settings that both I and my students much preferred, where you get to interact with both the professor and each other. My university hired me back after just nine months of retirement. They were so short staffed, could not replace faculty positions due to state budgetary issues and had problems finding enough adjuncts to assure that all courses that students in the major needed to graduate would be available. In effect, instead of graduating in four years, due to courses being uncovered, students have to extend beyond four years. I do not denigrate adjuncts; I've been one and worked with many of these fine people. But, adjuncts do not have the time for substantive research commitments, or publication contributions to the fields in which they are engaged. Hence, students are not getting taught by people who had achieved scholarly ranks.

What is the American Equivalent of the Australian Year 10?

I completed 5th Grade in America (May), and came back to finish the second half of Year 5 in Australia (until December). The academic years in the US and Australia are not directly comparable because of the seasonal differences between the northern and southern hemispheres. The Australia summer break lasts from Christmas to Australia Day (26 January), after which a new school year commences. The American summer break is typically from May or June to August or September, after which a new school year commences. Each Grade or Year will always overlap with two in the other system.Anyway, adding 5 years to my actual experience, I would have completed 10th grade in America and only been half way through year 10 in Australia. So by the end of the Australian Year 10, I would have been part way through 11th Grade in America (California).So I conclude that Australian Year 10 (New South Wales) for me would have corresponded to the end of 10th Grade (January to May) and the start of 11th Grade (August to December) in California.

How will our lives change in the next 5-10 years?

Probably not very much. We'll see incremental improvements in technology, a number of fads will come and go, but in terms of huge social, economic or technological changes, there just aren't that many big things poised for widespread adoption in the next 5-10 years. We have a lot of interesting breakthroughs like the ones that you've mentioned, but the full impact is likely to take 10+ years to really be felt.We'll continue to see more focus on knowledge management and data curation/analysis. Companies' true assets are becoming more knowledge-based with every passing year and the successful organizations are continually finding new ways to leverage that information. However, they need the smart people with the skills to make that possible.We're likely to see some pretty significant geopolitical restructuring. Alliances and trade agreements are likely to change significantly as radicalization of political candidates and parties continues around the world. The US didn't start it and it's not going to stop here either. The digital infrastructure makes it easy for anyone to have a voice and to legitimize virtually any viewpoint by finding and mobilizing like-minded individuals. Ideas that would get them laughed off of a street corner soapbox suddenly seem reasonable when enough people are listening and repeating them. It's an interesting trend and it's changing the face of politics in a lot of the western world. It's also changing the role of media as they struggle to figure out whether it's their role to simply report or to assess the legitimacy of the dialog. The impact to the individual is that we're probably going to see some form of personal trust networks emerge to assess what we need to pay attention to and what we need to ignore. Our current social network structures are very immature at this point and we're still seeing people competing for "likes" and "friends" without any regard for the quality or compatibility of the connections. That will likely evolve in the next 5-10 years.