"We can still confidently predict what the next couple years will look like. Millions of smart, talented people won't be able to get the kind of work they're capable of doing. Lots of recent college graduates will spend years waiting tables or manning ski lifts or moping around at home trying to figure out what to do with their lives. Social challenges like welfare reform and improving public schools, which seemed to have been magically resolved in the late 1990s, will turn out to still be around and in need of drastic action. Worrying about the deficit and the national debt will come back into fashion. And don't be too surprised if concern about U.S. competitiveness (vs. Japan or Europe or China or India) stages a comeback as well. "