Reports in the media now suggest that “the age of austerity” will be with us till 2020, thereby influencing the next two elections. Track records of government’s forecasts suggest that further slippage is likely. So we will have lived through a period of 20 years when there will have been no growth in family incomes in the UK.

This is rather a dreary outlook and not one that is likely to excite animal spirits or do much for confidence. Yet history tells us that recessions and depressions do end. In the famous words from Proverbs “Where there is no vision, the people perish”. So where does hope lie?

A useful technique for people interested in futures thinking and scenarios is the three horizon model. In essence the first horizon is the current dominant model, the second horizon is the challenger to the existing norms, “the new kid on the block”, and the third is the radical wave which will transform today’s norms.

Given the long-term view of the Pamphleteers, I’d like to look at a possible future, where the seeds are already apparent, but the social and economic impacts are yet to be felt at scale.

The economist Carlota Perez wrote a fascinating book, “Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital” back in 2002, just after the dotcom bubble burst. It’s worth reading now because the historical evidence for why financial bubbles are different to other asset bubbles make a useful grounding on where we might head next.

She describes five surges since 1770 that have created new wealth, new industries and institutions, starting with the industrial revolution, up to the ICT revolution. What fascinates me is that there does appear to be a similar structure in each of the revolutions she describes. For instance, it is not the invention of a technology that dates the surge, but the point at which the costs drop to enable mass usage. So, the model T Ford ushered in the era of the automobile, the Intel chip, the computing era.

So, my candidate for the sixth surge is the age of biology. It took 10 years and millions of dollars to decode the human genome. Now it can be done in the thousands quickly. Some forecasters are suggesting that it will not be long before an individual will be able to get their genome for £100s. Along with stem cell research and nano sciences, and with environmental sciences, we seem to be shifting from a “machine metaphor” to a “biological systems and ecosystems metaphor”. For me, this is a long wave that may still be impacting on the economy and society in 100 years. So will someone be writing about the “bio-bubble” in 2025 or thereabouts?

Meanwhile, Perez distinguishes two periods in each surge, installation and deployment. The first period ends with a financial bubble and an interruption be it a recession or depression. What comes next is a golden age in which new institutional arrangements and a switch from financial capital to production capital create new industries and growth.

There has been much talk of new institutional arrangements for the 21st century, notably in the international tax architecture and governance of finance.

Perez makes a good case that at the end of the installation period we see a widening of income disparity, but in the deployment period we see the benefits being more widely spread.

I don’t think that decline is a given, nor increasing poverty.

Frankly I’m fed up with “more austere than thou” as a dominant discourse. Where can we find the leadership to the next golden age? It’s closer I suspect than the mood music of our times would admit. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”. Wise words indeed.