Global Trumpism Lecture explaining the Turnings

[Snowflake1996]

Brown University Political Economist Mark Blyth shortly after the 2016 US Presidential Election released a lecture explaining macroeconomic regimes from the New Deal to Supply Side Economics to today's Populist uprisings and how they are all interrelated. I believe that his theory ties heavily into both the 4th/1st Turnings of the 1930s-50s along with the Great Awakening and Unraveling leading to today's Fourth Turning.

Here is a link to his lecture. I encourage everyone to watch it in its entirety if they can spare an hour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY


His thesis statement is this: The New Deal and post-Great Depression era coupled with the emerging threat of Communism led to our institutions focusing on Full Employment first and foremost to provide higher wages and strong unions. Eventually, the hyper-focus on this sole macroeconomic variable caused rifts in our economy that led to the high inflation of the late 1970s which crippled creditors. As a result, we switched course starting in the late 1970s and accelerating in the 1980s with folks like Reagan and Thatcher by targeting inflation. By targeting solely inflation for about the same time period we targeted full employment, we have now created a new set of problems in our society and that that led to the system blowing up in 2008. Since the system wasn't properly reformed we have spurred both right and left wing populists revolts throughout the first world (And possibly in developing economies looking at Brazil, Turkey, the Philippines, etc). 

As a result of the 4th and 1st Turning Civic GI's flexing their collectivist teamwork agenda onto society due to their upbringing in the Great Depression, our economy eventually looked like this in the late 1970s:

1. Targeting full employment at all costs
2. Labor share of national income at an all-time high
3. Corporate profits at an all-time low
4. Strong Unions
5. Low inequality
6. National Markets
7. Finance and Central banks are both weak
8. Legislative bodies are strong
9. Great economy for debtors
10. An economy focused on the collective

Then, as a result of the 2nd and 3rd Turning Prophet Boomers rebelled against collectivist society and with the 1970's stagflation began exerting their individualist agenda which focused on itemizing society, After about 30-40 years we now have this:

1. Targeting inflation at all costs
2. Labor share of national income at an all-time low
3. Corporate profits at an all-time high
4. Weak Unions
5. High inequality
6. Global Markets
7. Finance and Central banks are both powerful
8. Legislative bodies are weak
9. Great economy for creditors
10. An economy focused on the individual


While the global financial crisis is generally considered to be the start of the Fourth Turning, there wasn't a system reset. Look at all 10 bullet points above and you'll see that our current economic system in 2019 is almost identical to the one in 2007. Populist movements of the Left and Right have sprung up across the western world as a rebellion against the current system.

It's worth noting that according to Howe we aren't even halfway through this turning. It's also worth noting that if the current conomic expansion reaches to summer 2019, it'll officially be the longest documented economic expansion in American history. Could that spell another major bubble and crash? We'll see how everything falls between now and 2030.

[pbrower2a]

It could be that during the Cold War, capitalists really feared Communism and believed that the best way to protect America was to make the capitalist system work for people not capitalists. Not everyone can be a capitalist, but with consumerism one can have a stake in a competitive economy. Of course, fear of Communism in other countries led to full-blown, anti-human fascism that turned workers into serfs, as in Nazi Germany at the most extreme. America may have been reasonably liberal because it began to see Nazi Germany as much a menace as the Soviet Union. If the Marxist appeal "Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!" applies to toilers whose lot has improved little from the norm of a serf on a huge estate who now find themselves in grimy. disease-ridden firetraps in return for twelve hours of toil each day for bare survival while a capitalist elite lives in flamboyant, opulent splendor, then a proletarian revolution offers freedom and equity. If workers have spacious flats, cars, appliances, and comfortable furniture and can be certain that their children attend school, then they have something to lose in the wake of a proletarian revolution.

The American economy has lost most of its competitive qualities for the elites as Big Business has increasingly tended to monopolize and vertically-integrate in part because the tax laws much favor giant enterprise over cottage industries. Note well that America became a great economic power when most business was cottage industries, and not bloated monopolies. Note also that the managerial elites have often become a Soviet-style nomenklatura  that needs not own the assets to exploit workers. American executives used to still be largely middle-class in cultural identity and lifestyle, which was necessary when the American economy was more strictly competitive. The executives that I remember in the 1960s were people who typically had had their first job in their current organization on a sales route in an unattractive part of the country, the mail room, or even the shop floor. Now they are practically an aristocracy. They were men, as a rule (women are as competent, but that was not so well recognized), but they had become executives after they had paid off their home mortgages and were too old to know what to do with a sports car. They were connected to the community. The Soviet nomenklatura developed aristocratic traits out of the natural desire of successful people that their children never endure hardship. American politicians have gone from being honest brokers to their subordinates through the influence of unelected lobbyists loyal only to their paymasters.

Trump or not, we have had government by lobbyist for a long time, and that is a novel form of irresponsible government because the lobbyists have no responsibility except to those plutocrats and executives who control the government. That sort of political reality weakens an honest, competent, principled, and innovative President such as Obama.

But some competition remains in America. Sure -- the common people competing to see who will suffer the most for the least on behalf ot the owners and bosses whose ethical values are little better than those of slave-owning planters. Ultimately people are obliged to go heavily into debt to prepare for a job and to get the means of commuting in the service of their bosses and the owners of their worksites.

Is there a time in American life in which life is so odious as it is now? Even in the Gilded Age, technological progress led to real improvements in people's lives. Today most of us are obliged to suffer with a smile and support reactionary politicians who give rights to the rich and responsibilities to the poor.

We may need an economic meltdown on the scale of 1929-1932 to weaken the power of our current elites. We need an economy in which one must do good to do well; anything else is a nightmare. We need to be more self-reliant so that we not become debt-bonded serfs. We need to be able again to improve ourselves with sweat equity. It was the economic meltdown of 1929-1932 that fostered the building of small business instead of companies best described as bloated, monopolistic, bureaucratized behemoths.

[Snowflake1996]

(04-10-2019, 03:23 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Is there a time in American life in which life is so odious as it is now? Even in the Gilded Age, technological progress led to real improvements in people's lives. Today most of us are obliged to suffer with a smile and support reactionary politicians who give rights to the rich and responsibilities to the poor.

We may need an economic meltdown on the scale of  1929-1932 to weaken the power of our current elites. We need an economy in which one must do good to do well; anything else is a nightmare. We need to be more self-reliant so that we not become debt-bonded serfs. We need to be able again to improve ourselves with sweat equity. It was the economic meltdown of 1929-1932 that fostered the building of small business instead of companies best described as bloated, monopolistic, bureaucratized behemoths.

I think there’s two differences between the gilded age and today. One good and one bad. The good is that we have something resembling a social safety net today that was virtually non-existent in the gilded age. Medicaid, Obamacare, Medicare, labor laws on children and minimum wages, foodstamps, section 8 housing, public school grants, disability and worker’s compensation, unemployment insurance, etc. However unlike the technological advances of the gilded age which improved life, our technological advances have done very little to do that. And most importantly: the current social safety net hasn’t improved much and is only there to mitigate the most severe of damages. 

I think this ties into what the really bad difference is today: the lack of hope from people. Noam Chomsky remembers the 1930’s well and he noted going into the 2012 election that people today just don’t have hope like they use to in his time. He even believed that the crazed right wing would takeover the levies of power in the next election cycle (He was off by 4 years: 2012 vs 2016). Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indepen...html%3famp

[pbrower2a]

(04-10-2019, 04:09 PM)Snowflake1996 Wrote:

(04-10-2019, 03:23 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Is there a time in American life in which life is so odious as it is now? Even in the Gilded Age, technological progress led to real improvements in people's lives. Today most of us are obliged to suffer with a smile and support reactionary politicians who give rights to the rich and responsibilities to the poor.

We may need an economic meltdown on the scale of  1929-1932 to weaken the power of our current elites. We need an economy in which one must do good to do well; anything else is a nightmare. We need to be more self-reliant so that we not become debt-bonded serfs. We need to be able again to improve ourselves with sweat equity. It was the economic meltdown of 1929-1932 that fostered the building of small business instead of companies best described as bloated, monopolistic, bureaucratized behemoths.

I think there’s two differences between the gilded age and today. One good and one bad. The good is that we have something resembling a social safety net today that was virtually non-existent in the gilded age. Medicaid, Obamacare, Medicare, labor laws on children and minimum wages, foodstamps, section 8 housing, public school grants, disability and worker’s compensation, unemployment insurance, etc. However unlike the technological advances of the gilded age which improved life, our technological advances have done very little to do that. And most importantly: the current social safety net hasn’t improved much and is only there to mitigate the most severe of damages.

It is the increased prosperity that has allowed a social safety net. The technological advances that we have, except in medicine and some computer uses, do not clearly improve our lives. People could dance just as well to a 45 single in a jukebox in the 1940s as to a boom-box today. The music of the 1940s was better anyway!

I have told people who thought that it would be terrible to live in the 1920s because the devices of entertainment were far less refined in their technological sophistication that that would have been the least of their problems. If one was not a WASP one lived under a severe handicap. Your boss could demand unpaid overtime at will. Women were very much under the thumb of men.  If your father was disabled and you were in high school, then your career in factory work was about to begin and your high-school education was at a permanent and irrevocable end.

I can excuse the plutocrats of the Gilded Age because capitalist economics first creates wealth before it creates human equity.

Quote:I think this ties into what the really bad difference is today: the lack of hope from people. Noam Chomsky remembers the 1930’s well and he noted going into the 2012 election that people today just don’t have hope like they use to in his time. He even believed that the crazed right wing would takeover the levies of power in the next election cycle (He was off by 4 years: 2012 vs 2016). Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indepen...html%3famp

We are under the rule of people who believe themselves entitled to everything that they can grab and that anything that the rest of us have is a privilege to be seized whenever the 'need' arises. Medical care, property rent, and college education have never been more expensive. If someone ever tells me how great Donald Trump is -- then I must ask why I so often think of suicide. I may be stranded for the rest of my miserable life in a job that I hate in a community that I despise. And I am to be thankful to the sadistic, rapacious monsters who dominate American life?

At times I wish that I had taken up chain smoking as a youth so that I might be dead of lung cancer now.

[sbarrera]

That's a great lecture. Blyth thinks in Sept. 2016 that Trump (but not Trumpism) might be a flash in the pan. I wonder what he says now.

[Eric the Green]

(04-10-2019, 12:30 AM)Snowflake1996 Wrote: Brown University Political Economist Mark Blyth shortly after the 2016 US Presidential Election released a lecture explaining macroeconomic regimes from the New Deal to Supply Side Economics to today's Populist uprisings and how they are all interrelated. I believe that his theory ties heavily into both the 4th/1st Turnings of the 1930s-50s along with the Great Awakening and Unraveling leading to today's Fourth Turning.

Here is a link to his lecture. I encourage everyone to watch it in its entirety if they can spare an hour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY


His thesis statement is this: The New Deal and post-Great Depression era coupled with the emerging threat of Communism led to our institutions focusing on Full Employment first and foremost to provide higher wages and strong unions. Eventually, the hyper-focus on this sole macroeconomic variable caused rifts in our economy that led to the high inflation of the late 1970s which crippled creditors. As a result, we switched course starting in the late 1970s and accelerating in the 1980s with folks like Reagan and Thatcher by targeting inflation. By targeting solely inflation for about the same time period we targeted full employment, we have now created a new set of problems in our society and that that led to the system blowing up in 2008. Since the system wasn't properly reformed we have spurred both right and left wing populists revolts throughout the first world (And possibly in developing economies looking at Brazil, Turkey, the Philippines, etc). 

As a result of the 4th and 1st Turning Civic GI's flexing their collectivist teamwork agenda onto society due to their upbringing in the Great Depression, our economy eventually looked like this in the late 1970s:

1. Targeting full employment at all costs
2. Labor share of national income at an all-time high
3. Corporate profits at an all-time low
4. Strong Unions
5. Low inequality
6. National Markets
7. Finance and Central banks are both weak
8. Legislative bodies are strong
9. Great economy for debtors
10. An economy focused on the collective

Then, as a result of the 2nd and 3rd Turning Prophet Boomers rebelled against collectivist society and with the 1970's stagflation began exerting their individualist agenda which focused on itemizing society, After about 30-40 years we now have this:

1. Targeting inflation at all costs
2. Labor share of national income at an all-time low
3. Corporate profits at an all-time high
4. Weak Unions
5. High inequality
6. Global Markets
7. Finance and Central banks are both powerful
8. Legislative bodies are weak
9. Great economy for creditors
10. An economy focused on the individual


While the global financial crisis is generally considered to be the start of the Fourth Turning, there wasn't a system reset. Look at all 10 bullet points above and you'll see that our current economic system in 2019 is almost identical to the one in 2007. Populist movements of the Left and Right have sprung up across the western world as a rebellion against the current system.

It's worth noting that according to Howe we aren't even halfway through this turning. It's also worth noting that if the current conomic expansion reaches to summer 2019, it'll officially be the longest documented economic expansion in American history. Could that spell another major bubble and crash? We'll see how everything falls between now and 2030.

This outline in my opinion skips over the most important trends. And focusing on one economic policy, plus attributing the shift to one generation, the boomers, leaves out most of what happened.

The Boomers did not rebel against a collectivist society that provided equality and full employment. Boomers in youth rebelled against the negative aspects of this society, and what it produced that was not as glowing as the author claims. This society was, first of all, spirit dead, as the T4T authors put it. The culture was conformist and crass. Workers were cogs in machines, and women were mere baby-makers. Minorities were suppressed, and the environment was polluted beyond belief. This wonderful economic machine was creating wars in which Boomers were drafted to die in, which served no purpose whatsoever except to provide income to the munitions makers. To gloss over all of this is not valid.

What's usually called the "neo-liberal" libertarian-economics, free-market-fundamentalist ideology that took over in 1980 was not the result of boomer individualism. It was a reaction by corporate powers to the threats posed by reformists, many of whom were Boomers and Silents. 2T movements such as consumerism and environmentalism threatened their power. The counter-culture of boomer youth threatened the moralistic religious establishment. So, they hired a charming actor to deceive the people, and he succeeded in instituting Reaganomics. Fake news about a non-existent economic boom in the 1980s was then used to convince the people that government is the problem, that taxes are theft, and that regulation hurts business and dries up the trickle-down effect. 

None of this had anything to do with individualism or the boomers, who were less likely to vote for Reaganomics than other generations back then. Today though, slightly-more than half of all the people in today's older generations have been hoodwinked into supporting this hoax. Millennials alone see through much of the deception, in majority numbers at least, mostly because they are more ethnically-diverse. But they tend to lump all the older generations that created this hoax together, and call them all "Boomers." In fact, in youth, the boomers would have been their allies, as are those boomers today who remain awakened.

And this had little to do with the difference between the goal of full employment versus the goal of curbing inflation. Inflation was caused by government deficit spending on wars, and by the energy crisis. When these abated, thanks to government and corporate collusion with oil oligarchs abroad, inflation eased. Reaganomics curbed union power and reduced wages, and this also reduced inflation. But the main effect of Reaganomics was to create inequality by reducing taxes on the rich, keeping wages low, and allowing business deregulation. The latter was the chief reason for the crash of 2008, as well as the climate crisis. 

And the only "individuals" who benefit from neo-liberal policy are the wealthy few who own corporations and big businesses and who speculate in the finance market, and these are hardly "individualists." Far from it; they are the worst sort of conformists. Real individualists do not say "greed, for lack of a better word, is good." These are as far removed from the hippies of Haight Ashbury as you can find.

So what happened after 1980 was the opposite of what the Boomer youth wanted in the 2T. Boomers supported government programs to help the poor, and supported McGovern who wanted more of them. Neo-liberalism, by contrast, is mainly a GI-gen and Silent-gen creation. Reagan was always the arch-enemy of Boomer individualism, going back to his days of suppressing it as governor of California.

As for right-wing "populism," that is just another fraud. Real populism is the people rising up to take back power from the tyrants. Populism does not mean the ignorant rabble rising up to take power. But that's what populism means if it is used to describe Trump and other right-wing movements today. There is little difference between Trumpism and all the other right-wing movements that have developed since the Awakening began in 1964. Neo-liberalism remains at the heart of it. Trump has just made its covert racism and nationalism overt. That's the only difference. Refugees and immigrants have stoked this difference, much as I predicted, due to the climate change and civil wars of today.

That is what is really happening. Today many people are easily confused by accepted ideology, and need to take a closer look.

[Snowflake1996]

You seem to have a very rosy view of the baby boomer generation. They’re objectively more conservative than Gen X according to pretty much every single Pew research questionnaire. The only issue Gen X is to “the right” of them on is regarding the optimism of whether or not social security will be there when they retire (although I’m not sure this even counts as a politically conservative; it’s moreso just cynicism). I don’t think race and ethnicity explains this 100% either since even when Pew adjusted for race, white millenials and white Xers were still more left wing than white boomers.

The baby boomers were the most supportive of the Vietnam war: 




Also looking at how groups voted in 1976-1988 according to Roper: boomers were barely to the left of their GI/Silent parents in the 1970’s. By 1980 the divide vanishes with every boomer cohort except those aged 18-21. By 1984 the divide is gone among all groups even among the teenagers. Did it really only take Reagan’s initial election for boomers to completely embrace Reaganomics?

EVen in 1992 Bill Clinton’s best group were those aged 65+. He did worse with middle aged boomers despite himself being a baby boomer. He did better with GI’s despite running against a GI WWII veteran.


Boomers were never the hippie left wing caricature the media portrayed them as. They are and have always been a mixed bag in youth and quite conservative leaning after age 35.

[Eric the Green]

(04-15-2019, 12:16 PM)Snowflake1996 Wrote: You seem to have a very rosy view of the baby boomer generation. They’re objectively more conservative than Gen X according to pretty much every single Pew research questionnaire. The only issue Gen X is to “the right” of them on is regarding the optimism of whether or not social security will be there when they retire (although I’m not sure this even counts as a politically conservative; it’s more so just cynicism). I don’t think race and ethnicity explains this 100% either since even when Pew adjusted for race, white millenials and white Xers were still more left wing than white boomers.

The baby boomers were the most supportive of the Vietnam war: 




Also looking at how groups voted in 1976-1988 according to Roper: boomers were barely to the left of their GI/Silent parents in the 1970’s. By 1980 the divide vanishes with every boomer cohort except those aged 18-21. By 1984 the divide is gone among all groups even among the teenagers. Did it really only take Reagan’s initial election for boomers to completely embrace Reaganomics?

EVen in 1992 Bill Clinton’s best group were those aged 65+. He did worse with middle aged boomers despite himself being a baby boomer. He did better with GI’s despite running against a GI WWII veteran.


Boomers were never the hippie left wing caricature the media portrayed them as. They are and have always been a mixed bag in youth and quite conservative leaning after age 35.

Pretty much every survey I've seen and posted here in years past says the boomer generation was more liberal, especially in their voting record, in youth, than Generation X in youth. Today the two generations are about the same, and their voting record is only slightly conservative, not "quite conservative." I am not rosy about the current baby boomers, but I know that some of us have remained true to our awakening, while others have lost it.

White Millennials seem not so much further left than white Boomers, but I'm sure they are to a small degree. They are about 50-50, and so are Boomers as a whole, who are mostly white. I just remember the polls and voting exit polls I have seen and posted here before.

The Boomers led the opposition to the war and the McCarthy and McGovern candidacies (I know since I was involved). I doubt the numbers in your graph, but gallup seems to be the only poll on this. Without boomers there would have been no anti-war movement, and no ecology movement, which together spawned the largest demonstrations in history up until the Trump era. These are what the Boomers should be remembered for, not the Trump or Reagan eras.

The hippie and anti-war cultures were very huge and involved millions all over the country. It's true there were many who were not influenced by them, and it was a mixed bag, but the size of the sixties movements should not be discounted by folks who were born long after and didn't experience these movements at all. If the silent majority included boomers, they were not the ones who spoke up or took action or led any cultural movements. It's true that the Boomer Left was most powerful in places like California, where they gave McGovern his huge victory in the CA primary in 1972. Those who defended the war were mostly GIs, led by Bob Hope and Martha Raye.

Boomers never did anything like "fully embrace Reaganomics." It was always divided on this, as are white millennials and Xers today. Boomers didn't create Reaganomics, and the overall view that it only consists of concern for inflation is incorrect.

It's you guys who have embraced a media caricature of boomers as a lump term for all the mistakes of all the older generations.

[Eric the Green]

Partisan leanings in 2014, 2012, 1994 show some Boomers more liberal than Xers; Silents most conservative, Millennials most liberal.
https://www.people-press.org/2015/04/30/...tisanship/

This graph shows older Boomers are more liberal than younger Jones Boomers to core Xers. Remember in our S&H definition, 1961-64 cohorts are Xers, but for Pew they are younger boomers.

[Eric the Green]

How generations have changed:
https://www.people-press.org/2011/11/03/...e-changed/

Data on generational voting and views in the 1960s and 70s seems rare on the web, at least. Here is one source:
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1400854261

Interesting take on the boomers and the war here: it seems the same sectors of the population opposed the war as oppose Trump today: college students and college educated:
(excerpt of 1971 article from here: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/...d-protests )

(quote)
THE wave of student protest which emerged in the late 1960s has often been called a "youth revolt." Actually, however, the increasing opposition of American college students to the Vietnam war and the concomitant growth in radical-left sentiments among them have not involved the total young adult age group. The idealism of much of non-college youth at that time was in fact reflected in a show of highly patriotic feeling, support for the war and even in a disproportionate backing for George Wallace's 1968 presidential candidacy. Furthermore, opinion polls dealing with the relationship of age to views on the Vietnam war have consistently shown that persons over 50 have been more numerous and more consistent in their opposition to the war than have all other groups. As a 1970 report from the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan put it, "this 'generation gap' that one would have expected, wherein the young oppose the war and the old support it, simply failed to appear."

However, a "gap" does exist. But it is between persons on and off campus rather than between the younger and the older. Faculty members, for example, who are as a rule much more opposed than students to militant activism and campus politicization, are as a group fairly close to their students on substantive issues such as Vietnam, civil rights and domestic social policy. Both tend to espouse as their dominant political ideology what might be described as Kennedy-McCarthy liberalism and the program of the left-liberal antiwar wing of the Democratic Party. The non-college population, on the other hand, has over the last five years gradually moved in a conservative direction, until by 1970, 52 percent described themselves as conservative, as against 34 percent who thought of themselves as liberals.
(unquote)

Of course, after 1971, demonstrations increasingly featured Vietnam Veterans Against the War, of which John Kerry was the leader.

Several times I posted other Pew graphs showing voting by age cohort here, but it's been a while and they seem not to be available on the web now. But they did show core Boomers voted Democratic more often than Xers and Jones Boomers.

[Snowflake1996]

Pew data showing Xers consistently to the left of boomers:

https://ibb.co/6ZtzsQ1
https://ibb.co/qkmhnx9
https://ibb.co/1JbdQbY
https://ibb.co/TkVGbkg
https://ibb.co/zSsY9yr
https://ibb.co/KhWthBG
https://ibb.co/K681N3c
https://ibb.co/c8ms6D6
https://ibb.co/WpDJJmB
https://ibb.co/zr15kNw


Race-adjusted numbers showing the same thing:

https://ibb.co/7SxrJz2
https://ibb.co/MNcgkvC


White millenials are especially to the left of white boomers. 

Also why would you just toss out the Gallup polling data showing that boomers supported the Vietnam war more than Silents and GIs? Is there actual data that suggests otherwise? 

If you’re gonna claim that boomers are liberal because some of them contributed to the anti-war movement despite the bulk of the generation being more supportive than their elders of the war, I can just as easily argue that millenials are a bunch of right wingers because of the alt right online movement which happens to be popular among some millenials. That doesn’t make it true though.

Also if you’re gonna move the entire 1961-1964 cohort to Xers to prove they’re more conservative, you have to also move the very conservative 1943-1945 cohort to the boomers. This maintains consistency with S-H.

[Snowflake1996]

Furthermore, The oldest boomer according to S-H was 37 in 1980. The oldest millennial in 2018 was 36.

Millenials were FAR more liberal in the 2016 and 2018 elections than boomers were in 1980.

[Eric the Green]

(04-15-2019, 03:21 PM)Snowflake1996 Wrote: Pew data showing Xers consistently to the left of boomers:

https://ibb.co/6ZtzsQ1
https://ibb.co/qkmhnx9
https://ibb.co/1JbdQbY
https://ibb.co/TkVGbkg
https://ibb.co/zSsY9yr
https://ibb.co/KhWthBG
https://ibb.co/K681N3c
https://ibb.co/c8ms6D6
https://ibb.co/WpDJJmB
https://ibb.co/zr15kNw


Race-adjusted numbers showing the same thing:

https://ibb.co/7SxrJz2
https://ibb.co/MNcgkvC


White millenials are especially to the left of white boomers. 

Also why would you just toss out the Gallup polling data showing that boomers supported the Vietnam war more than Silents and GIs? Is there actual data that suggests otherwise? 

If you’re gonna claim that boomers are liberal because some of them contributed to the anti-war movement despite the bulk of the generation being more supportive than their elders of the war, I can just as easily argue that millenials are a bunch of right wingers because of the alt right online movement which happens to be popular among some millenials. That doesn’t make it true though.

Also if you’re gonna move the entire 1961-1964 cohort to Xers to prove they’re more conservative, you have to also move the very conservative 1943-1945 cohort to the boomers. This maintains consistency with S-H.

The anti-war movement was more popular among boomers than the alt-right among "some" millennials.

You showed some Pew data to support your view, but the Pew images I posted show differently. Most of your graphs show the more-conservative trend of boomers recently, but that's not what I disagree with. Your claim is that Boomers created the neo-liberal regime 40 years ago that resulted in the 40-year trends you mentioned on your list, specifically because boomers are individualists. This I disagree with.

1961 to 1964 cohorts are Xers, and they have a more conservative record, especially in youth. I would agree that the 1943-45 boomer cohort is more conservative as well. They did spawn along with the late Silents the leaders of the sixties generation left and counter-culture movements. But the gap appears to center around the same source of the gap today, as the article I posted above states: between college educated and non-college educated.

You have a point that the non-college educated boomers were not generally liberal, but what I am saying is that the boomers were the ones who sparked the sixties left movements.

The book I quoted showed the boomers were more liberal on almost all issues than their parents, but it didn't cover the war issue.

It's not my fault if the data showing core Boomer voting patterns were more Democratic than Xers until recently have been removed from the web (at least that accessible to google), and I can't find them here. Those Pew graphs were more specific about birthdates, and didn't lump the conservative Jones demographic Boomers in with those who experienced the Awakening.

Your argument (or the author's that you quoted) is that Boomers and their "individualism" created the change from the unemployment-concern era to the inflation-concern era, with all the resulting traits of the two eras listed. I don't agree. Boomers didn't create the Reagan-Bush era. Some Boomers and Silents created the powerful and effective sixties and seventies movements to which corporate neo-liberalism reacted, and which the liberal congress of the mid 1970s was enacting. And it's true the conservative boomers supported this reactionary neo-liberalism too, especially after the hoax about the 1980s boom got going, but so did the conservatives of other generations. 

The traits on your quoted list are the result of the influence of Reaganomics and neo-liberalism, not "Boomers." And it's not just about unemployment vs. inflation. Inflation was created by specific historic events in the late 1960s and mid to late 1970s. And neo-liberalism does not benefit "individuals" or "individualism." It is conformity and greed on the part of the wealthy, and they alone are the beneficiaries. "Individualism" or "freedom" in neo-liberalism was merely a slogan used to deceive the people, and nothing more; and it worked, especially among Silents.

Reaganism arose specifically to stop the reform movements on the 1970s, which were spearheaded by Boomers and Silents like Ralph Nader, and these reactionary movements arose in order to ensure corporate dominance. It was not the creation of a generation, although Generations fans might suppose so. No, it was the creation of a specific economic class.

[Snowflake1996]

I actually agree with most of your points. College attainment along with race/ethnicity are the likely lurking variables here as to why the generational shifts are where they are. I recall reading an article once showing that white millenials with no college degree were more partisan republican than their boomer white non college educated elders.

I guess this suggests that generational voting patterns can and do change with age. Xers definitely voted to the left of boomers in both 2016 and 2018. So if Xers were more conservative than boomers in their youth, this would mean Xers have gotten more liberal with age as boomers have gotten more conservative.

For the record I was the one who tried to connect Mark Blyth’s theory with S-H. Blyth himself doesn't believe in history repeating itself and is a very pragmatic quintessential Xer. I don’t think he’d disagree with your analysis on inflation either since he argues that the high interest rates of the 1970’s was a historical aberration.

[Eric the Green]

(04-15-2019, 04:23 PM)Snowflake1996 Wrote: I actually agree with most of your points. College attainment along with race/ethnicity are the likely lurking variables here as to why the generational shifts are where they are. I recall reading an article once showing that white millenials with no college degree were more partisan republican than their boomer white non college educated elders.

I guess this suggests that generational voting patterns can and do change with age. Xers definitely voted to the left of boomers in both 2016 and 2018. So if Xers were more conservative than boomers in their youth, this would mean Xers have gotten more liberal with age as boomers have gotten more conservative.

For the record I was the one who tried to connect Mark Blyth’s theory with S-H. Blyth himself doesn't believe in history repeating itself and is a very pragmatic quintessential Xer. I don’t think he’d disagree with your analysis on inflation either since he argues that the high interest rates of the 1970’s was a historical aberration.

Yes, good.

As far as my observation and reading of the graphs and articles goes, I don't think Xers as a whole have become more liberal per se as they aged; but that Boomers have gotten more conservative at a faster rate. One of your graphs and other reports may show this could be reversing among boomers now under Trump; I hope so, and I hope my generation comes to its senses and produces some gray champions during the rest of the 4T.

I do think some Jones/early Xers moderated their initial conservative views; the voting patterns I saw on those old graphs showed this.

[Eric the Green]

Wow, I certainly don't identify with these guys. To me they seem even older than my parents were a few years ago, or at least 20 years older than me, and I'm gettin' up there. And they are supposedly "baby boomers?" Where are their surf boards, long hair and peace signs? Boomers will always be the "younger generation" to me, no matter how old I get! But I guess we can assume Florida may go Trump in 2020, despite more felons and young millennial Gen Zers voting. But these guys moving down here may leave more Democrats up north.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/...018-218758

[Eric the Green]

(04-15-2019, 04:42 PM)Snowflake1996 Wrote: The most likely gray champions from the boomer generation would probably be either Sanders/Warren in 2020 or Sherrod Brown in 2024. Brown needs a Democrat to win Ohio Gov in 2022 to run for President.

Bernie is a cusper but Warren and Brown are solid boomers.

I'm looking at Terry McAuliffe and Mitch Landrieu, as well as Brown, as candidates who have the skills to win, but they haven't gotten into the 2020 race yet. They could still be active in 2024 though too.

Right now, I don't see Warren as someone who can appeal to the voters who will decide the 2020 election. Only Sanders so far has any chance among the announced Democrats in the 2020 race. He can already be considered a gray champion, and he may be the great white-haired hope if he can both stay young and energetic, and shake or survive the socialist label that Trump will assault him with.

But it's true in a larger sense Elizabeth Warren is a gray champion today.

[sbarrera]

No wonder Trump's HQ is in Florida. It is his country.

[pbrower2a]

(04-15-2019, 06:37 PM)sbarrera Wrote: No wonder Trump's HQ is in Florida. It is his country.

I've never even been in Florida, so I wouldn't know.