"This is what I did in... Ages of Discord, I looked at more than 200 years of American history... an aggregated measure of well being... the blue curve has gone through two cycles, and the red curve is a measure of instability..."
Peter Valentinovich Turchin is a Russian-American scientist who specializes in an area of study he and his colleagues developed called cliodynamics—mathematical modeling and statistical analysis of the dynamics of historical societies.
"The theory represents complex human societies as systems with three main compartments (the general population, the elites, and the state) interacting with each other and with socio-political instability via a web of nonlinear feedbacks."
"Using these trends as inputs, the model calculated and projected... the Political Stress Indicator, which in the past was strongly correlated with socio-political instability."
"Ortmans et al. Turchin P. 2010 conducted a similar structural-demographic study for the United Kingdom."
"Quantitative historical analysis reveals that complex human societies are affected by recurrent—and predictable—waves of political instability..."
"All these cycles look set to peak in the years around 2020."
"How resilient are our societies to internal and external shocks?"