Candidates of the New Greatest Generation

[H. Ross Peron]

According to the sociologists William Strauss and Neil Howe there are generational cycles which constantly repeat. According to them the current generation-Generation Y (born circa 1982 to 2003) will be a new Greatest Generation. If this is true what will be the political trends of the the next fifty years? Will Obama be this generation's FDR or Hoover?

[retromike22]

I read their book and according to it, there has to be a Crisis which helps to define a "Great" Generation.  I don't think the Sept 11th 2001 attacks count nor does the 2008-09 financial crisis.  I think it will possibly be in the next decade.  The "greatest generation" was from 1900-1925, and their crisis started with the Great Depression in 1932 or the entry into World War II in 1941.  That is respectively 7 and 16 years after the last year in which a greatest generation member was born.  If we use 2003 as the last year of this greatest generation, then the current crisis could happen anywhere from 2010 to 2019.  I think that it will happen either in an Obama second term or the next president's first term. 

[H. Ross Peron]

I read their book and according to it, there has to be a Crisis which helps to define a "Great" Generation.  I don't think the Sept 11th 2001 attacks count nor does the 2008-09 financial crisis.  I think it will possibly be in the next decade.  The "greatest generation" was from 1900-1925, and their crisis started with the Great Depression in 1932 or the entry into World War II in 1941.  That is respectively 7 and 16 years after the last year in which a greatest generation member was born.  If we use 2003 as the last year of this greatest generation, then the current crisis could happen anywhere from 2010 to 2019.  I think that it will happen either in an Obama second term or the next president's first term. 

Hmm interesting, however the Great Depression started in 1929 and assuming the last of Generation Y was born in 2003, four years after would be 2007-about the start of the current financial crisis. Perhaps other crisis we can see are the following:

1. A nuclear Iran (Possible but Iran will be much less of a threat then the Nazis and Japan)
2. A very bad global warming (Unlikely especially in the near future)
3. The current recession becoming a true depression (Possible although already there are signs of recovery)
4. A new cold war against Russia or China. (Unlikely especially with Obama's dovish foreign policy)
5. World War 3 against the above. (Very unlikely. No President will be stupid enough to do so.

[pogo stick]

I read their book and according to it, there has to be a Crisis which helps to define a "Great" Generation.  I don't think the Sept 11th 2001 attacks count nor does the 2008-09 financial crisis.  I think it will possibly be in the next decade.  The "greatest generation" was from 1900-1925, and their crisis started with the Great Depression in 1932 or the entry into World War II in 1941.  That is respectively 7 and 16 years after the last year in which a greatest generation member was born.  If we use 2003 as the last year of this greatest generation, then the current crisis could happen anywhere from 2010 to 2019.  I think that it will happen either in an Obama second term or the next president's first term. 

Hmm interesting, however the Great Depression started in 1929 and assuming the last of Generation Y was born in 2003, four years after would be 2007-about the start of the current financial crisis. Perhaps other crisis we can see are the following:

1. A nuclear Iran (Possible but Iran will be much less of a threat then the Nazis and Japan)
2. A very bad global warming (Unlikely especially in the near future)
3. The current recession becoming a true depression (Possible although already there are signs of recovery)
4. A new cold war against Russia or China. (Unlikely especially with Obama's dovish foreign policy)
5. World War 3 against the above. (Very unlikely. No President will be stupid enough to do so.

ohhh... that makes me stupid

[Antonio the Sixth]

I read their book and according to it, there has to be a Crisis which helps to define a "Great" Generation.  I don't think the Sept 11th 2001 attacks count nor does the 2008-09 financial crisis.  I think it will possibly be in the next decade.  The "greatest generation" was from 1900-1925, and their crisis started with the Great Depression in 1932 or the entry into World War II in 1941.  That is respectively 7 and 16 years after the last year in which a greatest generation member was born.  If we use 2003 as the last year of this greatest generation, then the current crisis could happen anywhere from 2010 to 2019.  I think that it will happen either in an Obama second term or the next president's first term. 

Hmm interesting, however the Great Depression started in 1929 and assuming the last of Generation Y was born in 2003, four years after would be 2007-about the start of the current financial crisis. Perhaps other crisis we can see are the following:

1. A nuclear Iran (Possible but Iran will be much less of a threat then the Nazis and Japan)
2. A very bad global warming (Unlikely especially in the near future)
3. The current recession becoming a true depression (Possible although already there are signs of recovery)
4. A new cold war against Russia or China. (Unlikely especially with Obama's dovish foreign policy)
5. World War 3 against the above. (Very unlikely. No President will be stupid enough to do so.

ohhh... that makes me stupid

A nth proof.

[Person Man]

Spreading the love, I see. I am sure that we will have our prophet soon. God is still speaking.

[12th Doctor]

A "Hero" generation has, thus far, been the only one to have been absent from the pattern before (in the early 19th century we went directly from a reactive to an artistic generation).  But the "crisis" need not be hugely Earth shattering.  Rather it need only be something that shatters the relative peace of (and basic assumptions being reworked during) the Unraveling (in which they were born) and that this crisis must happen while they are coming of age (hence why we missed one before, the generation between 1820-40 were born in an awakening, and came of age in a crisis, but took on many of the characteristics of the Nomads rather than the Heros)... I would say that we have undergone a prolonged "crisis" stage since 9/11, no one thing destroying the peace, but rather a series of things that have done so.

[12th Doctor]

Also, more recently, the break between "Y" and the current generation being born has been placed closer to the mid-90's.

[H. Ross Peron]

Also, more recently, the break between "Y" and the current generation being born has been placed closer to the mid-90's.

How come, why exactly?

[Psychic Octopus]

I dont get how 1982-2003 can be a "Greatest" Generation. We are nothing compared to our grandparents, the real Greatest Generation.

[Alexander Hamilton]

Also, more recently, the break between "Y" and the current generation being born has been placed closer to the mid-90's.

How come, why exactly?

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

























jk

[H. Ross Peron]

I dont get how 1982-2003 can be a "Greatest" Generation. We are nothing compared to our grandparents, the real Greatest Generation.

I guess we'll have to see as it hasn't happened yet. Who knows, maybe this crisis will make the Great Depression and World War 2 look like a cakewalk?

[Mechaman]

I dont get how 1982-2003 can be a "Greatest" Generation. We are nothing compared to our grandparents, the real Greatest Generation.

I guess we'll have to see as it hasn't happened yet. Who knows, maybe this crisis will make the Great Depression and World War 2 look like a cakewalk?

Wait till Obama fixes the Oncoming Uber Great Depression, finds a cure for AIDs, cancer, and ebola, and saves Earth from the Romulan invasion from the future.

[Person Man]

I dont get how 1982-2003 can be a "Greatest" Generation. We are nothing compared to our grandparents, the real Greatest Generation.

I guess we'll have to see as it hasn't happened yet. Who knows, maybe this crisis will make the Great Depression and World War 2 look like a cakewalk?

Wait till Obama fixes the Oncoming Uber Great Depression, finds a cure for AIDs, cancer, and ebola, and saves Earth from the Romulan invasion from the future.

Lol. We might just turn the American/Earth Flag into an Obama-sun.


...or perhaps this cow has the answer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk5uJaR9weI

[pbrower2a]

What matters is not so much a severe and destructive Crisis or that it turns out reasonably well. This Crisis could be muted, and such an event as the subprime/mortgage meltdown could be defined as a Crisis. The timing is about right; the peak of the Stock Market booms of 1929 and 2007 were about 80 years apart. Nothing says that this Crisis will be a near-replay of the 1929-1945 Crisis; if anything, events of the last Crisis still scare the Hell out of people born long after the Crisis. Nobody dares repeat the Holocaust.     

Even so, eighty years after the go-go Roaring Twenties, a slum of a decade if there ever was one, Americans forgot the lessons of the 1930s -- that banking was best done with an eye to collecting loan payments and recycling them into new loans than getting cheap money from the Fed and charging people who couldn't afford to meat the loans (think of Sinclair Lewis' fictional George Babbitt selling people houses that they couldn't afford -- in the 1920s). Economic inequality intensified as Big Business became all-powerful and labor unions became impotent; the Gini coefficient (a measure of economic inequality  for 2006 reached 47.0 in the United States  -- the highest-measurement of that index in American history. That was higher than the estimate for 1929.

(Need a good explanation? "0" is absolute equality of income, and "100" is absolute inequality of income. In the first everyone would be earning the same pay; in the second, one person would command all of the income and others would be at that person's complete mercy. Denmark has a very low Gini coefficient, and Brazil has one of the highest for a country recognized as an economic power. The Gini coefficient for the US is about the same as for Mexico, a country long infamous for economic inequality).

It's possible to see George W. Bush as a composite of three bad Missionary Presidents (Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover) except with a nasty war thrown in and an economic disaster seven years after the accession of a very poor President instead of eight.

The Millennial Generation, as Howe and Strauss call it (born from 1982 to about 2000) has grown up or is growing up in a political climate of severe and intensifying inequality, with glass ceilings and piked pits in business bureaucracies as manufacturing jobs vanish. It sees  severe poverty just as elites enrich themselves. Its mass culture has known such stock villains as the grasshoppers in A Bug's Life characters who demand much, offer little in return, and then ask for sheepish consent from creatures stripped of choices.  It has been taught to play by the rules and expect good results as rewards. Seeing economic inequality and insecurity intensify despite their efforts, they are not likely to blame themselves for economic distress as did Generation X, which relied upon personal athleticism on the job to make things go right for the boss with the hope of good results.

Boomers and Generation X have shaped the Millennial Generation. Boomers set the expectations; Generation X complained about the raw deal that they got.

I doubt that the Millennial Generation will long tolerate the economic norms of recent years -- one in which the common man is to be squeezed as harshly as ever while being asked to count his blessings. Much like the GI generation it will be remarkably liberal in its political leanings, and it will expect fair returns for its toils. Today liberalism implies the Democratic Party, the Republican Party representing the sorts of people who take the goodies (much like the grasshoppers of A Bug's Life.

Add to this -- it is the best-educated generation in American history at every level. It has more faith in science and engineering than it does in religious authorities. Unlike Boomers in the Religious Right, it does not heed the instructions of preachers who tell them to vote (for right-wing politicians) because the direction of their souls depends upon doing so. In every State of the Union it votes much more liberal than any other generation -- both in the areas that have voted Democratic in every Presidential election after 1988 and in places in which the Republicans still prevail.

Within ten years many of them will be entering elective office -- with liberalism intact. Sure, they have yet to have successful businesses in which they are more concerned about labor costs and taxes than about revenue -- and few have yet begun to rake in the dough from successful practices in the professions, and practically none have yet entered the executive suites. But the political attitudes of most are already set -- thanks to rapacious plutocrats and executives,  ruthless and arrogant right-wing politicians, and religious hucksters who have become parodies of themselves. Add to this that the President that they best knew going into the 2008 election, a man who showed the diametric opposite of the virtues that Millennial kids and young adults learned, demonstrated through his failure the necessity of those virtues. 

[Хahar 🤔]

I read their book and according to it, there has to be a Crisis which helps to define a "Great" Generation.  I don't think the Sept 11th 2001 attacks count nor does the 2008-09 financial crisis.  I think it will possibly be in the next decade.  The "greatest generation" was from 1900-1925, and their crisis started with the Great Depression in 1932 or the entry into World War II in 1941.  That is respectively 7 and 16 years after the last year in which a greatest generation member was born.  If we use 2003 as the last year of this greatest generation, then the current crisis could happen anywhere from 2010 to 2019.  I think that it will happen either in an Obama second term or the next president's first term. 

Hmm interesting, however the Great Depression started in 1929 and assuming the last of Generation Y was born in 2003, four years after would be 2007-about the start of the current financial crisis. Perhaps other crisis we can see are the following:

1. A nuclear Iran (Possible but Iran will be much less of a threat then the Nazis and Japan)
2. A very bad global warming (Unlikely especially in the near future)
3. The current recession becoming a true depression (Possible although already there are signs of recovery)
4. A new cold war against Russia or China. (Unlikely especially with Obama's dovish foreign policy)
5. World War 3 against the above. (Very unlikely. No President will be stupid enough to do so.

ohhh... that makes me stupid

No ѕhit. You're an idiot. You don't deserve to participate in political discussion. Leave.

[Psychic Octopus]

Maybe this is the (far-fetched) crisis. It seems crazy enough to almost be plausible. A second coming of Europe. That Lyndon LaRouche, always the crazy conspiracy theorist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhvfCFCfdNk

[H. Ross Peron]

What matters is not so much a severe and destructive Crisis or that it turns out reasonably well. This Crisis could be muted, and such an event as the subprime/mortgage meltdown could be defined as a Crisis. The timing is about right; the peak of the Stock Market booms of 1929 and 2007 were about 80 years apart. Nothing says that this Crisis will be a near-replay of the 1929-1945 Crisis; if anything, events of the last Crisis still scare the Hell out of people born long after the Crisis. Nobody dares repeat the Holocaust.     

Even so, eighty years after the go-go Roaring Twenties, a slum of a decade if there ever was one, Americans forgot the lessons of the 1930s -- that banking was best done with an eye to collecting loan payments and recycling them into new loans than getting cheap money from the Fed and charging people who couldn't afford to meat the loans (think of Sinclair Lewis' fictional George Babbitt selling people houses that they couldn't afford -- in the 1920s). Economic inequality intensified as Big Business became all-powerful and labor unions became impotent; the Gini coefficient (a measure of economic inequality  for 2006 reached 47.0 in the United States  -- the highest-measurement of that index in American history. That was higher than the estimate for 1929.

(Need a good explanation? "0" is absolute equality of income, and "100" is absolute inequality of income. In the first everyone would be earning the same pay; in the second, one person would command all of the income and others would be at that person's complete mercy. Denmark has a very low Gini coefficient, and Brazil has one of the highest for a country recognized as an economic power. The Gini coefficient for the US is about the same as for Mexico, a country long infamous for economic inequality).

It's possible to see George W. Bush as a composite of three bad Missionary Presidents (Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover) except with a nasty war thrown in and an economic disaster seven years after the accession of a very poor President instead of eight.

The Millennial Generation, as Howe and Strauss call it (born from 1982 to about 2000) has grown up or is growing up in a political climate of severe and intensifying inequality, with glass ceilings and piked pits in business bureaucracies as manufacturing jobs vanish. It sees  severe poverty just as elites enrich themselves. Its mass culture has known such stock villains as the grasshoppers in A Bug's Life characters who demand much, offer little in return, and then ask for sheepish consent from creatures stripped of choices.  It has been taught to play by the rules and expect good results as rewards. Seeing economic inequality and insecurity intensify despite their efforts, they are not likely to blame themselves for economic distress as did Generation X, which relied upon personal athleticism on the job to make things go right for the boss with the hope of good results.

Boomers and Generation X have shaped the Millennial Generation. Boomers set the expectations; Generation X complained about the raw deal that they got.

I doubt that the Millennial Generation will long tolerate the economic norms of recent years -- one in which the common man is to be squeezed as harshly as ever while being asked to count his blessings. Much like the GI generation it will be remarkably liberal in its political leanings, and it will expect fair returns for its toils. Today liberalism implies the Democratic Party, the Republican Party representing the sorts of people who take the goodies (much like the grasshoppers of A Bug's Life.

Add to this -- it is the best-educated generation in American history at every level. It has more faith in science and engineering than it does in religious authorities. Unlike Boomers in the Religious Right, it does not heed the instructions of preachers who tell them to vote (for right-wing politicians) because the direction of their souls depends upon doing so. In every State of the Union it votes much more liberal than any other generation -- both in the areas that have voted Democratic in every Presidential election after 1988 and in places in which the Republicans still prevail.

Within ten years many of them will be entering elective office -- with liberalism intact. Sure, they have yet to have successful businesses in which they are more concerned about labor costs and taxes than about revenue -- and few have yet begun to rake in the dough from successful practices in the professions, and practically none have yet entered the executive suites. But the political attitudes of most are already set -- thanks to rapacious plutocrats and executives,  ruthless and arrogant right-wing politicians, and religious hucksters who have become parodies of themselves. Add to this that the President that they best knew going into the 2008 election, a man who showed the diametric opposite of the virtues that Millennial kids and young adults learned, demonstrated through his failure the necessity of those virtues. 

Your analysis is brilliant however didn't Messrs. Strauss and Howe say while the Millenials will be economically liberal (like the Greatest Generation) it would be socially conservative (again like the Greatest Generation)? I do think it will avoid the extremes of the Baby Boomers who were much either hedonistic hippies or Bible thumping Baptists.

[War on Want]

What matters is not so much a severe and destructive Crisis or that it turns out reasonably well. This Crisis could be muted, and such an event as the subprime/mortgage meltdown could be defined as a Crisis. The timing is about right; the peak of the Stock Market booms of 1929 and 2007 were about 80 years apart. Nothing says that this Crisis will be a near-replay of the 1929-1945 Crisis; if anything, events of the last Crisis still scare the Hell out of people born long after the Crisis. Nobody dares repeat the Holocaust.     

Even so, eighty years after the go-go Roaring Twenties, a slum of a decade if there ever was one, Americans forgot the lessons of the 1930s -- that banking was best done with an eye to collecting loan payments and recycling them into new loans than getting cheap money from the Fed and charging people who couldn't afford to meat the loans (think of Sinclair Lewis' fictional George Babbitt selling people houses that they couldn't afford -- in the 1920s). Economic inequality intensified as Big Business became all-powerful and labor unions became impotent; the Gini coefficient (a measure of economic inequality  for 2006 reached 47.0 in the United States  -- the highest-measurement of that index in American history. That was higher than the estimate for 1929.

(Need a good explanation? "0" is absolute equality of income, and "100" is absolute inequality of income. In the first everyone would be earning the same pay; in the second, one person would command all of the income and others would be at that person's complete mercy. Denmark has a very low Gini coefficient, and Brazil has one of the highest for a country recognized as an economic power. The Gini coefficient for the US is about the same as for Mexico, a country long infamous for economic inequality).

It's possible to see George W. Bush as a composite of three bad Missionary Presidents (Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover) except with a nasty war thrown in and an economic disaster seven years after the accession of a very poor President instead of eight.

The Millennial Generation, as Howe and Strauss call it (born from 1982 to about 2000) has grown up or is growing up in a political climate of severe and intensifying inequality, with glass ceilings and piked pits in business bureaucracies as manufacturing jobs vanish. It sees  severe poverty just as elites enrich themselves. Its mass culture has known such stock villains as the grasshoppers in A Bug's Life characters who demand much, offer little in return, and then ask for sheepish consent from creatures stripped of choices.  It has been taught to play by the rules and expect good results as rewards. Seeing economic inequality and insecurity intensify despite their efforts, they are not likely to blame themselves for economic distress as did Generation X, which relied upon personal athleticism on the job to make things go right for the boss with the hope of good results.

Boomers and Generation X have shaped the Millennial Generation. Boomers set the expectations; Generation X complained about the raw deal that they got.

I doubt that the Millennial Generation will long tolerate the economic norms of recent years -- one in which the common man is to be squeezed as harshly as ever while being asked to count his blessings. Much like the GI generation it will be remarkably liberal in its political leanings, and it will expect fair returns for its toils. Today liberalism implies the Democratic Party, the Republican Party representing the sorts of people who take the goodies (much like the grasshoppers of A Bug's Life.

Add to this -- it is the best-educated generation in American history at every level. It has more faith in science and engineering than it does in religious authorities. Unlike Boomers in the Religious Right, it does not heed the instructions of preachers who tell them to vote (for right-wing politicians) because the direction of their souls depends upon doing so. In every State of the Union it votes much more liberal than any other generation -- both in the areas that have voted Democratic in every Presidential election after 1988 and in places in which the Republicans still prevail.

Within ten years many of them will be entering elective office -- with liberalism intact. Sure, they have yet to have successful businesses in which they are more concerned about labor costs and taxes than about revenue -- and few have yet begun to rake in the dough from successful practices in the professions, and practically none have yet entered the executive suites. But the political attitudes of most are already set -- thanks to rapacious plutocrats and executives,  ruthless and arrogant right-wing politicians, and religious hucksters who have become parodies of themselves. Add to this that the President that they best knew going into the 2008 election, a man who showed the diametric opposite of the virtues that Millennial kids and young adults learned, demonstrated through his failure the necessity of those virtues. 

Your analysis is brilliant however didn't Messrs. Strauss and Howe say while the Millenials will be economically liberal (like the Greatest Generation) it would be socially conservative (again like the Greatest Generation)? I do think it will avoid the extremes of the Baby Boomers who were much either hedonistic hippies or Bible thumping Baptists.

There's nothing socially conservative about my generation...

[Psychic Octopus]

Depends what we define as 'social conservatism"

being socially conservative in let's say, 2040, may be different then it is today.

[H. Ross Peron]

Depends what we define as 'social conservatism"

being socially conservative in let's say, 2040, may be different then it is today.

Quite true. For instance legalizing polygamy might be the big issue in 2040.

[Sewer]

Depends what we define as 'social conservatism"

being socially conservative in let's say, 2040, may be different then it is today.

Quite true. For instance legalizing polygamy might be the big issue in 2040.

lol no.