17-Feb-14 World View -- Egypt's terrorism escalates

[John]

> Then Millennials are from 1981 to 2003? What is the generation
> called after the Millennials, and when would it begin and
> end?

Haven't seen you in a long time. Welcome back!

The Millennials birth dates run roughly from 1980 to 2000. The
boundary is more fuzzy than hard and fast.

I've heard the phrase "Homeland Generation" applied to the next
generation, but it probably won't stick. The "Depression Babies"
generation wasn't renamed to the "Silent Generation" until
Time Magazine gave it that name in the 1950s.

John

[CrosstimbersOkie]

As this article and the X'ers actions reflect: under this criminal administration no one is safe. When so surrounded by corruption, the corruption becomes pervasive, and permeates all facets of life. There is no law, there is no protection, there is only a hollow empty rotting shell; there is only the means - funded at the public expense - to pursue "enemies."

Excellent points. But there is protection for those who are very nimble enough to fly under the radar and through the loopholes. Which is something many X-Ers who were children in the late '60s and early '70s learned to do very well. It's all about survival skills. The future belongs only to those who survive...

[CrosstimbersOkie]

http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ ... 140217.htm

This is the standard Nomad archetype/Generation-X nihilistic paradigm: Destroy everything so that you can start over with a blank slate, also sometimes stated as "You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet." The Gen-Xer-in-chief believes that if enough of the medical insurance industry is destroyed, then Obamacare will survive, and his name will go down in history for government medical insurance. (See "The nihilism and self-destructiveness of Generation X" from 2008.)

All of these are examples of massive criminality that's been going on in the past decade, which would have been completely unthinkable a decade earlier, when the people of the Silent generation were in charge.

John, it almost sounds like the Boomers have become the forgotten generation and never were really in charge of anything. Which is appropriate, because they never really grew up anyway.

He suggests another explanation: That Generation-X has a new social mood, an enduring "New Frugality," of spending less, working less, and buying cheaper. According to Howe:

"Xers also prefer to do things for themselves. They don’t trust others to get the job done right and consider paying others for services they could perform themselves inefficient. Why buy something new when you could employ crafty DIY tactics for half the price? Why pay nannies to look after your kids while you work to be able to afford their services? And why work law firm hours at today’s high marginal tax rates, when you’ll just have to give more of your money back?"

This ethos may be new to some, but it's old to Generation-X. It comes from a childhood and young adulthood marked by deprivation. Gen-X never had anything but the leftovers others didn't want. It learned to make-do. It had to. But this mood fits the times just as it did between 1930 and 1943. This is a time when DYI will reign supreme because older generations are consuming the seed corn and an ethos of frugality is the only antidote.

[John]

> John, it almost sounds like the Boomers have become the forgotten
> generation and never were really in charge of anything. Which is
> appropriate, because they never really grew up anyway.

Haha. I agree. I used to write about this all the time. Boomers
have never learned to manage things and make decisions. In the 60s,
they did as their GI/Silent parents told them, but they protested
against it. When their parents died, they let the Gen-Xers tell them
what to do. As for "they never really grew up," Gen-Xers are very
contemptuous of Boomers, but they react by adopting criminal behavior
(such as causing the financial crisis).

> This ethos may be new to some, but it's old to Generation-X. It
> comes from a childhood and young adulthood marked by
> deprivation. Gen-X never had anything but the leftovers others
> didn't want. It learned to make-do. It had to. But this mood fits
> the times just as it did between 1930 and 1943. This is a time
> when DYI will reign supreme because older generations are
> consuming the seed corn and an ethos of frugality is the only
> antidote.

I agree. The most important thing that Gen-Xers were deprived of were
fathers, having instead a string of men in their mothers' beds. In
addition to the psychological damage this causes, they were deprived
of a lot of material things because mother-only families are much
poorer than intact families, where there's a father in the home
earning a salary.

John