Positioning your community for the year 2000

Communities that act correctly in the next few years will be poised to take advantage of the opportunities that will arise in the future. The chances of such actions being on target are improved if the community leaders understand the characteristics of forecasts and cycles and if they are sensitive to the types of economies that have existed in the US in the past and will exist there in the future. Forecasts need to be broadly based. Making even a relatively near-term economic forecast requires looking as far back into history as possible. When this is done, 2 things become apparent. The first is the existence of cycles. Not only are there 4 to 7 year business cycles, but there are long-wave cycles of 50-60 years duration in the level of economic activity. The 2nd thing that history teaches is that economuc activity does not simply repeat in cycles. Rather, the very nature of the activity changes. A history of the US economy is presented, detailing changes in the economy from 1735 to the present.