ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that long-term forecasting is quite a different exercise, with a different purpose. The value of economic forecasting as a prototype must not be exaggerated. Economic forecasts, even if well reasoned within their own field, can prove quite wrong owing to the intervention of a political event: thus American forecasts for 1950 because of the Korean War; likewise French forecasts for 1950-51. But simple projections suffice to raise great problems of social forecasting. The Report of the Commission was concerned in its projections not only with prospective demand but also with availability of supplies. The Buchanan Report affords an example of a long-term forecast starting from a particular phenomenon whose growth is postulated. There seems to be only one way of making the problem manageable: that is, to start from a heavy tendency, as in the Buchanan Report, except the tendency must be much more general, and to assume that future decisions will be adapted to this tendency.
