Generation L and its fearful future (gen Lucky's luck running out)

FT ^ | 01/12/09 | Gideon Rachman

[TigerLikesRooster]

Generation L and its fearful future

By Gideon Rachman

Published: January 12 2009 19:11 | Last updated: January 12 2009 19:11

Pop sociologists like to divide people born since 1945 into different groups. There are the baby boomers, there is Generation X, we may even be on to Generation Y by now. But, as far as I am concerned, we are all members of Generation L – that is, L as in lucky.

Those of us born in western Europe or the US have never really experienced hard times. Our parents and grandparents lived through world wars and the Great Depression. We have had decades of peace and prosperity.

Could that change? Perhaps Generation L has just had the luxury of an extended “holiday from history”, which is now coming to an end.

There is no doubt that people are panicking. The flow of dire corporate news is so relentless that Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, has complained that: “Spending an hour with the FT is like being trapped in a room with assorted members of a millennialist suicide cult.” A CNN poll found that almost 60 per cent of Americans expect the current recession to turn into a depression.

[TigerLikesRooster]

The generation of Weather Underground, Baader-Meinhof, and Red Brigade is about to get their due.

They hope their useful puppet Obama can fix this problem. However, the 40th anniversary of Woodstock this year would be a scene of gloom and non-stop bitching session on GW Bush by now homeless liberal Boomers.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Ping!

[unkus]

ping

[eyedigress]

Hard times come from within. I had a couple of episodes during the “good times”.

[qam1]

Xer Ping

Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.

Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.  

[JerseyHighlander]

Hello TigerLikesRooster,

I have to say that Gideon has been getting melodramatic in the last two weeks. Good copy, but it's been speculative in nature and not his best journalism. "But the return of mass unemployment is not impossible. Last year, the US experienced its biggest annual job losses since 1945. " Yes, in total numbers, but not in percentage of the workforce. Further Rachman has taken to comparing the current state of affairs to the Great Depression and not the panic of the 1880's, he is throwing out obtuse infromation points to try to string along a forced narrative far from the current situation. "In the past, periods of economic dislocation have reliably led to the rise of new radical political and social movements. The only important democracy to have held an election since the collapse of Lehman Brothers last September is the US, and it voted for Barack Obama, a liberal internationalist. But in recent months there have been riots in Russia’s far east, in southern China and in Greece." Why does Rachman and Pritchard keep seeing the riots in Greece as some sort of forewarning? There is very little evidence to this narrative they keep trying to force on their readership.

Another perspective from the Marginal Revolution blog and the The Minneapolis Fed :

 

Comparing Recessions

It you look at job losses in this recession compared to previous recessions this recession looks very bad but the labor force is much bigger today than in previous recessions.  Thus, if you look at the percentage change in employment you get a different story.  The Minneapolis Fed crunches the numbers:
 
and

Of course, this recession is not yet over but this is useful information.  We might not like it but recessions are normal.

Posted by Alex Tabarrok on January 12, 2009 at 07:05 AM in Data Source, Economics | Permalink

Comments

 

[gnarledmaw]

As a self admitted parasite, Gideon would not know but many of you do. To those who understand:

"Meek" is neither cowardly nor weak it is contextually more correct to state "poor" and "bound to the land".

The earth's magnetic field impacts climate: Danish study

Peas and beets my friends...

[ffusco]

Born in 1969. Count me out of “Generation L” Coming up behing the baby boomers is a lot like sitting down at a restaraunt before the table has been cleaned and the dirty plates bussed. The US is falling apart, thanks to them. My generation hasn’t ever been in charge of anything. Their latest pathetic excuse is PEBO.

[Travis McGee]

The writing is on the wall, for those who can see.

[decimon]

Coming up behing the baby boomers is a lot like sitting down at a restaraunt before the table has been cleaned and the dirty plates bussed. The US is falling apart, thanks to them.

You obviously don't know it but you are living better than people have ever lived.

[ffusco]

Bull. This country peaked about 25 years ago. At 40 I can’t afford the house my parents bought in 1970 when they were 25. My parents, divorced of couse, are both millionaires on paper- neither has any college. We have no manufacturing base left, we are completely dependent on foreign oil, immigration has turned this country into the next Brazil, and all signs point to a prolonged recession.

[ansel12]

“The generation of Weather Underground, Baader-Meinhof, and Red Brigade is about to get their due.”

---

Those are all organizations from John McCain’s generation, they were not created by the boomers.

[Redgirl]

Enterprising Americans can turn these challenges into opportunities. It’s definitely a buyer’s market for home buyers right now.

I think Gen X is at a disadvantage from all the opportunities we’ve been handed. We’ve never learned how to “do without” and sacrifice. My parents were children during WWII and they never wanted me to go without like they did.

[the OlLine Rebel]

We ARE lucky.

We ARE spoiled - very much so.

The problem is most since the “Silent” Generation don’t know it - they are spoiled ROTTEN.

I am very spoiled - both by citizenship and within my family. But I know it. I love it. Too many are spoiled all around but don’t have the common sense to realize it; they are rotten and they show nothing but contempt for the very place that made things so easy for them.

[the OlLine Rebel]

It was the Boomers who bought into it, buttressed it, and spread it. Some earlier generation may have created it (invented) but they were few. Too many of the early Boom bought it and spread it like wildfire - they “innovated” it and that is more important than invention.

[ffusco]

Not true. My family did without. As children from a broken home we lived in a 50’s suburban neighborhood on Long Island and had no car til I was 12 y.o. We carried groceries home from the grocery store which was about a mile away.

[ansel12]

Then blame the boomers for the Army, the republican party, the NRA and any other organization that gains new members as the years go by.

If you want to know what destroyed America look at the legislation and court decisions before the 1980s, and organizations like the ACLU, NOW, NEA, the Communist party, congressional black caucas, etc.

[the OlLine Rebel]

The point is, like it or not, the socialist mantra was picked up and carried - knowingly, I will add - by the “Hippie” generation. And despite the fact that yes, millions supported the traditional US value system and went to Vietnam (willingly), a good portion, more than any before, was made up of hippies who hated the US and all it stood for, and they were VOCAL.

I blame Dr. Spock, as the popular catalyst for all this. Never mind he himself being a socialist.

[EDINVA]

You may have had to do without, but you were able to buy groceries. During the Great Depression many (if not most) families didn’t have grocery money and during WWII, everything was rationed. Anyone who had a plot of land grew their own food, i.e. “Victory Gardens.”

[ansel12]

The boomers brought a close to the worst of the gains by the leftists of the previous generations.

The media has created a myth that the teenagers of the 60s and 70s somehow ushered in this new enlightened America. The reality is that they helped bring in Nixon and Reagan, and they largely ended or slowed the suicidal rush to communism that took place from the 1930s to the 1970s here in America.

The fatal blow to America was the 1965 immigration act that the greatest and the silent generations wrote and passed, but almost all of the deadliest legislation was passed by them before the boomers could start getting a foot hold in voting and leadership.

In 1972 the 18 to 29 year old vote which included many boomers went for Nixon by 52%, how has that age group voted recently?

People need to quit thinking of children and teenagers as having done anything of substance at any time, including the late sixties and the seventies, look at what the grownups were doing, they were shaping the nation that they ran, the kids were not.

In 1970 the boomers ranged in ages of age 24 down to age six, they weren’t running the local filling stations, much less the world.