05-03-2019, 10:43 AM
(05-03-2019, 10:25 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:(05-01-2019, 04:29 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote:(05-01-2019, 12:41 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(05-01-2019, 11:22 AM)michael_k Wrote:(04-29-2019, 07:44 PM)Mikebert Wrote: For example, I compiled a composite of people observations of generational change to give these approximate dates for cultural/experiential generations.
1946-1962 Boom (Prophet)
1963-1980 GenX (Nomad)
1981-1994 Millennial (Rogue)
1995-XXXX GenZ (Civic?)
If we were to go back in time eighty or so years to the 1930s, when the Interbellum Generation/Early G.I.s (born between 1901-13) were equivalent in age to the Millennials of our current decade, is it possible that they would have seemed like a 'rogue' generation back then? I've heard there were comments in the day about the youth of the Roaring Twenties and how pathetic they were that seemed similar to the stuff said about Millennials during the 2010s.
It was the Lost Generation that seemingly had the mindless fun of the 1920s. Early-wave GIs apparently did little of the 'roar' in the Roaring twenties. I asked my late grandfather (1912-1999) what he thought of the Roaring Twenties. Sure, he was a farm kid -- but he seemed to have completely missed even knowledge that there was a 'roar'. He could tell me what the bootlegger highways were.
The first wave of the GI generation was too young to have lost much in the 1929 Crash as did the Lost, and harsh as the Depression was, it created some good habits that would pay off well in the postwar boom. First-wave GI adults were often in leadership positions at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, and if they got to the war and survived it, they could make rank quickly.
The first wave of GI were prepared for an entirely different world that vanished before their eyes. Imagine being born in 1907 and graduating from college in 1929. They were prepared for adulthood then the crash came on them and made all their preparation meaningless. People born before that were at least entrenched somewhere and people born after that had time to prepare for a depression mindset.
First of all, even graduating from high school was something of an elite achievement in 1929. Completion of high school became much more commonplace in the 1930s, when the government started to encourage teenagers to stay in school rather than join the workforce -- in part to reduce the downward pressure on wages that marginal workers (teenagers and the elderly in the workforce) brought about. A college education was a rarity in the late 1920s, and it in itself generally indicated elite status. As late as the 1920s, lower-middle-class men were proud of their 'solid eighth-grade educations'.
The divide between the Lost and the GI generations took shape during the Great Depression. The Lost had more of a stake in the world before the Depression, and the first wave of GI adults of the time had far less to lose because they had not been able to save the capital for investing in the stock bubble or in real estate, both of which imploded. The fun of the Roaring Twenties came to an abrupt end as "Wall Street Lays an Egg", as said a famous headline in Variety Magazine. First-wage GI adults were more likely to offer solutions out of the box that violated the Social-Darwinist strictures of America that had not been challenged since the Gilded Age.
Let us also remember that most of the Great Depression was a recovery -- a slow and painful one, but a recovery nonetheless. Living standards generally rose from the middle to late 1930s, and by 1939 most measures of economic conditions (including per capita possession of cars, appliances, and radios, and real wages) were higher than in the supposed good year of 1928. If the Lost no longer had any traces of youth and could not easily start over despite needing to start over, the GI Generation was in better position for doing so. The mindless hedonism of the Roaring Twenties would never revive while the Lost were around.
Practically all of us remember the GI Generation after World War II -- but not during or before World War II. A GI childhood was typically hardscrabble in contrast to life after WWII. But -- the GI Generation made much of the world that we now know -- suburbia, television, electronic gadgets, the modern welfare state, college education as a normal expectation for capable youth, and the rise of ethnic minorities from destitution. (Howe and Strauss understate the role of the GI generation in the Civil Rights struggle, but GI blacks had big parts to play and with few exceptions played those parts well).
As the GI generation has almost entirely faded into memory, the world that they created erodes to an extent. America is a much nastier place than it was when GI influence was strong in economic and political life. Economic inequality has intensified as Corporate America finds the economic machine that GI adults largely built a tool for sweating workers and enriching shareholders and executives at the expense of everyone else. Although institutional racism has effectively died, social inequality in America is now as severe as in the pre-Depression era of the 1920s. That happens when economic elites see their rapacious greed and corruption as virtues and tolerate no challenges to such. Donald Trump exemplifies that, but he is more a symptom than a cause. The American political system now consists of a Democratic Party that still has some decency, but seems to get 49% of the representation in a winner-take-all system, Republican pols who try to look gracious and friendly as the face of plutocracy, and powerful front groups that hammer anyone who does not believe in a pure plutocracy in which most people are heavily in debt and compelled to rely upon monopolized economics for survival.
Yes, much of American life is odious, and except for the sophistication of our electronic gadgets and the quality of our entertainment, many of us would feel more comfortable with the economic norms of the 1950s. The oldest posters here may remember the 1950s or have seen relics of the ways of the time and related to them -- but we are closer to the more collegial and congenial ways of the next American High than to the last one. Much must go -- especially the pay-to-play reality of contemporary life, government by lobbyist, and a culture of narcissism. We may need to rebuild some aspects of economic life from scratch after a meltdown that lasts as long as that of 1929-1932, unlike the last one that simply looked as if it could go just as bad. Americans may have to give up on Big Business in favor of small business of lesser efficiency but more capacity to give us what we need and convince us that we like what we get.
But will I have time to start over? If you look at this realistically, by the time the 4T ends I'll be in my early 40s. That means half my life is already over with. In the Great Depression, there were tent cities and extremely high unemployment rates. Bread lines and lots of extreme poverty. The 1930s were hard times for people. How did the GI Generation keep themselves from having a nothing to lose attitude in the 1930s? Because this is what I think about a 4T, if the returns are the same no matter how hard I work I've got nothing to lose and can do whatever I want.