For thirty years we've been incorporating low-skill Chinese labour into the global economy. That has depressed inflation for most manufactured things despite prolonged low interest rates. When slowing Chinese productivity growth is finally felt either inflation will normalize and the recession will hit. High debt rates, bad demographics in the west, and asset bubbles are going to make the next major recession especially hard. Especially if knowledge workers are able to emigrate out of their tax bases (either out of state or out of country).