What of the Future?

We now have a fairly clear picture of the structure of the United States economy since 1929, even if the brushstrokes are broad and important details are missing. We certainly have a much more accurate and detailed picture than we have for the 60 years before 1929. The question arises therefore of whether this picture of the United States economy gives any insights into its possible future. We have no experience of the future. Our images of it can only be derived from our images of the past, but it is on images of the future that all our decisions depend. We cannot make decisions about the past, although we can improve our images of it. It is the decisions that we make now that are going to affect the future, and if these are unrealistic they are likely to make the future worse than it otherwise might have been. Our images of the future are more likely to be realistic if our images of the past are accurate and if we become skilled in the art of deducing our images of the future from our images of the past. Images of the past will be the more accurate the more accurate and well sampled the records, and also the better we are able to interpret and understand these records in terms of perceived patterns, relationships, necessary connections and structures that are likely to go forward into the future.