Age of Disorder

[pbrower2a]

(09-09-2020, 11:48 AM)TeacherinExile Wrote: I couldn’t resist posting this new thread based on related articles published today. They have some relevance to Fourth Turning theory, in general, and to intergenerational conflict, in particular:

Millennials to redistribute wealth from older generations to the young in new ‘age of disorder,' warns Deutsche strategist - MarketWatch

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-wo...1599589831

The Age of Disorder - the new era for economics, politics and our way of life - Deutsche Bank

https://www.dbresearch.com/servlet/reweb...0000511857

Here is an excerpt (opening paragraphs) from the MarketWatch article:

It probably won’t take a great deal of persuasion to convince investors that there’s an “age of disorder.”

That’s the title of a new Deutsche Bank research note, which says the world is entering its sixth distinct era of modern times. 

So say goodbye to the “era of globalization” and brace yourself for the “age of disorder” where millennials, firmly established as the generation of ‘have nots’,take their revenge and redistribute wealth from the old to young. Millennials are usually defined as those between the ages of 22 and 38 years old in 2019, according to Nielsen Media Research. 

What I find interesting here is the counter-narrative to the argument posed by Strauss and Howe in their book.  They maintained that any fiscal crisis that arises in the fourth turning would be addressed by a willing sacrifice on the part of Boomers for the sake of younger generations.  The Deutsche Bank analysis argues quite the opposite, that Millennials will vote for redistributive reductions in Boomer wealth (and entitlements?) in order to make up for the intergenerational inequities.  In other words, rather than the heroic financial sacrifice on the part of older generations for the benefit of the young, as predicted by S&H, Boomers will be sacrificed—unwillingly—at the ballot box.  Revanchism, not altruism, as a way to balance the scales.

Should America fall off some kind of fiscal cliff, that’s actually how I see things playing out, the way that Deutsche Bank has predicted.  You can already see glimmers of that in the stark contrast between the old and the young with respect to COVID-19. The attitudes and behaviors, taken as a whole, could not be more different.  I fully expect that much steeper tax rates will be enacted on both income and wealth.  And local policies that tend to deny Millennials and Gen-Z opportunities to have affordable housing, such as restrictive zoning laws (NIMBY), will also go by the wayside. 

I find it interesting, too, that the Deutsche Bank report refers to the time period lasting from 1980 to 2020 as a bygone epoch. This epoch, of course, is the neoliberal era that becomes a “dead letter” now, in my opinion.  What comes next is anybody’s guess...

Those elites still have the wealth and thus economic power. They may not have the vote, but I expect them to open the spigots on campaign cash in 2022 to support anyone who concurs with them that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as it enriches, pampers, and maintains the power of those elites. Will 2022 be another year like 2010 or 2014? We have yet to see how the 2020 election has gone.

It would be great (if too late for me) to see the Neoliberal order pass into the dustbin of history. That was almost the entire span of my potential as a member of the workforce. I am a Boomer, but Boomer elites in economic and bureaucratic power have done me no good. I will not miss those elites. let alone the degradation that they have inflicted upon me. 

It may be that the Millennial and Homelander generations have learned the hard way that politics matter not only with the Presidency but also local politics. It is safe to assume that the influence of the Millennial Generation, which has gotten as a whole no good results from neoliberal economics and politics, will repudiate such with legislation. We will see far more Millennial pols achieving political office, whether by replacing those Silent, Boom, and early-wave X pols who retire or get discredited. 

Because Democrats were unable to gain much in the 2016 election which should have been the "reverse wave" of 2010, 2022 offers that opportunity. Democratic gains in the US Senate could be in unlikely places -- the equivalent of the thoroughly-awful Ron Johnson supplanting Russ Feingold in Wisconsin. (Senator Ron Johnson is one of the heavy promoters of right-wing conspiracy theories in public life). One seat that will be under contest will be the Senate seat from Wisconsin that Ron Johnson now holds.  

...If I want to see castles and palaces, then I want to see those in places like Austria in which those castles and palaces are recognizable as expressions of architecture of medieval times whose mass suffering in the service of their residents is long gone -- and not to gaudy monuments to contemporary greed and to power of economic elites who get very rich by treating Americans badly. (Austria would be close to the top of the list of countries to which I might seek refuge from a fascistic America, should it ever get down to that).