The Real Factor that Shapes the World (Part 1)

This blog is a continuation of the blog first appearing in the late 1990's,  published by myself and the late Professor Lawrence Jorgenson of Los Angeles Valley College. The blog is dedicated to Professor Jorgensen.

 

The Real Factor that Shapes the World

 

The beginning of this story starts with the book Generations by William Strauss and Neil Howe. The

particular generations we are concerned with began as follows;

                                               Name of Generation      Years of Birth        Age Now

                                                Lost                                   1883-1900           deceased

                                                 G.I                                    1901-1924           almost  all deceased

                                                 Silent                               1925-1942            79-96

                                                 Boomers                          1943-1960            61-78

                                                 Xers                                 1961-1981            40-60   

                                                 Millennial                        1982-2001?          19-39

The birth years denoted are Strauss and Howes and may vary a year or two year in reality . 

   

    Our story begins with the Lost generation who came of age during World War I and

the Roaring Twenties. The generation included Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.

This generation, also, experienced the brunt of the Great Depression of the 1930s.  

    It is very important to note that very generation has three distinct stages of life - childhood & youth,  

( 1-20yrs.) young adulthood (21-40 yrs.),  and mature adulthood( 41- 65 yrs). Having, thus, suffered 

through the Great Depression in their young adulthood the Lost were later the mature adults during

World War II and the Post War period. The years immediately after the war were marked by a fiscal

conservatism that came out of the Lost difficult experiences during the Great Depression. 

   The Lost's were a generative cohort group that maintained a very high marginal tax rate of  90%,

 in order to pay off the War debt, so as to not burden the younger G.Is.  But they themselves  

 did not spend much money on themselves, in fact Eisenhower chided them for not spending enough,

 helping to cause recessions in 1958 and 1960.

   Then in 1960 the world underwent a monumental change with the rise  of John F. Kennedy to the 

Presidency, the first of the G.I. Presidents.

    The G.I. generation, lead by Kennedy , who followed the Lost, produced very different times. 

Both the Losts and the G.I.s were  deeply effected by the Depression, but the two were impacted at 

very different stages of life.  The Lost were young adults and than later mature adults in the 1930s  

and the G.Is. were effected in childhood and youth and their young adulthood by the Depression.      

These facts produced very different worlds..  

   The generations that followed the Lost and the G.I. were the Silents and the Boomers. Until Joe Biden

was elected President no member of the Silent generation was ever elected President. Other then

Joe Biden, the closet a member of the Silent generation ever came to the Presidency was Robert 

Kennedy in 1968. This generational skip produced a very significant change, indeed, in the historical

America pattern.                                                                                                          

    The Lost, the G.I.s, the Silents, and the Boomers, all four generations taken together

comprise the past, the next two generations, the Xers and the Millennials represent the future. 

Once the baby Boomers were born, a new generational configuration came into being. The Lost became

the quintessential grandparents, the G.I.s the quintessential generation of parents, the Silents the   

younger brothers and sisters of a new generational set and the Boomers the new children. This new 

generational configuration began in the 1940's and continued until the 1960s. It is important to note 

that the tranquility of this period of time came directly from the formation of this new generational      

structure. The change that happened as the G.I.s replaced the Losts as the dominating mature adults

represented the difference between the calm of the Fifties and the socially explosive Sixties.         

   

 

Continued in The Real Factor that Shapes the World (Part 1)