Anxiety is understandable given the many unpredictable political and economic forces at work both here in the United States and around the world.
2026 is a bit like this illustration from the Economist newspaper’s annual review, The World Ahead 2026. The ball’s in play and anything could happen: war, peace, boom, bust, success, failure. It’s (almost) enough to drive you to drink something stronger than wine.
A year to celebrate?
Anxiety is easy to understand. But what about the celebrations? Well, several important anniversaries will be celebrated in 2026, some with more enthusiasm than others. Economists like me, for example, will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith’s book An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Smith’s Invisible Hand has inspired many to embrace the power of markets and provoked others to oppose them, but its influence is difficult to deny.
2026 is also the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, an act that gave birth to both the United States of America and to a set of ideas with global implications.
1776 was quite a year. Wealth of Nations and the Declaration of Independence fundamentally reframed how we saw the world. We are still feeling the aftershocks of those events today.
Reframing the narrative of American wine
2026 is the 50th anniversary of an event that sent shocks through the world of wine: the 1976 Judgment of Paris, which has been documented in George M. Taber’s famous 2005 book and popularized in a fictionalized 2008 film called Bottle Shock.
Click HERE to read the full article.