What Will Come of This 4T?

[David Horn]

(04-15-2020, 05:10 PM)namentstone Wrote:

(04-15-2020, 01:19 PM)David Horn Wrote: So building something new will be possible, since reestablishing the old will be just as hard and much less beneficial to the majority.
One caveat: if the plutocrats are able to seize the initiative too early, a return to Gilded Age 2.0 is very possible. That they will seize the day at some point is inevitable. Let's hope it doesn't happen too soon.

This is a very insightful point, I think, and backed up by the apparent desperation of big business to restart the economy sooner than public health authorities consider wise. At the moment, public opinion is strongly in favor of social distancing and both parties are willing to back direct cash transfers to prevent utter calamity. How long will that last, and if the recession is as severe as many now expect, how will the welfare state look different at the end of the decade?

Let's agree that this is not just indeterminant but fully unknowable at this point.  The largest unknown factor is the human one.  4Ts create their own momentum, and Millennials will determine that.  I'm a fossil.  I'll be ready to help, but will certainly never again set the agenda.  Xers are a wild card. They've been mostly unhelpful up to this point, preferring wagon-circling to communal sharing.  And the next, as yet unnamed generation (temporarily called Homelanders for our purposes), may be a reactive conservative counterweight that will slow or outright inhibit change.  That stew will become the new normal.

So over to you guys.  Do well. Do good.