Predictions

First off, as California native Steve Sailer guessed, preliminary analysis suggests my prediction regarding California's NAEP performance is probably a losing bet...but more on that anon.

But trends can confound even the most obvious expectations. Thirty years ago, one very safe prediction I would have made would have been that bank branches would be very rare if not totally disappear. Already, by then, ATM's were springing up everywhere and growing exponentially. Even then you could deposit money in them. Clearly, the hand-writing was on the wall - the bank-branch's days were numbered.

Yes what has happened? Here in my neck of the woods, there are more bank branches, not less. When you walk into the bank, it seems there are just as many tellers as there were in 1983. The only difference is there aren't long lines of customers at each window - but the tellers are still there.

So what happened? I asked an accountant friend of mine and gave me some explanation about bringing in customers and blah-blah, but I still don't get it. Sure, my wife is down at the bank at least once a week, but she has her own small business and is lucky she can log onto Gmail. But in the 70's, everyone had to go to the bank once a week - now, very few ever need to visit in person. And yet, there's still all these bank branches everywhere.

Son one prediction I'm inclined to make now is that in 10 years most fast-food operations will be automated. I expect one or two employees to manage customers and check on operations - but surely all these other simple-minded operations can be automated.

But why should I have any faith in that prediction, when the no-brainer prediction of disappearing bank branches was so far off the mark?