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Neil Howe: What To Expect From The Fourth Turning We're Now In
Submitted by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,
Neil Howe demographer and co-authour of the book The Fourth Turning returns to the podcast this week. In our prior interview with him, we explored his study of generational cycles ("turnings") in America which reveal predictable social trends that recur throughout history and warn of a coming crisis (a "fourth turning") based on this research.
Fourth turnings are characterized by a growing demand for social order, yet supply of it remains weak. The emergence of the surveillance state, a perpetual war machine, increased intervention in the markets by the central planners, greater government control of critical systems like health care and the Internet -- all of these are classic signs that we are well into a fourth turning now:
In the fourth turning, the supply of order is still absent that the demand for order grows. So we now have a demand for order and no supply. That creates the unusual dynamics of a fourth turning -- kind of like we had in the 1930’s. People suddenly feel that no one is in control and that enormous events are overtaking their society which no one of leadership age has any idea how to confront or how to manage. And it goes without saying today we look up to Gen Xers and Boomers and we see leaders who couldn’t organize their way out of a shoe box. I live in the Washington DC area and the government and Congress literally does nothing. All they do is argue and fight and nothing gets done in this city. It's amazing, and a great testament to the power of institutional inertia that things keep moving forward in some manner. There is this great unsettled feeling we have that there is a rudderless ship that we’re on where no one knows where it is going. We see dangers that we seem paralyzed and unable to respond to.
History’s fourth turnings are full of Hobson’s choices, full of grim choices. I think that the what the Fed got into -- back in 2000 as well 2009, 2010 and then with QE -- they got into that with a feeling of they had no choice; this is crisis intervention. And crisis intervention became a habit. And ultimately we got here not because anyone kind of wanted it to happen, we just ended up here. And this is the same way it was back in the 1930’s: the same thing was true about the New Deal. The New Deal was nothing but a thorough perversion of market choices. The New Deal was nothing if not for the picking of winners and losers throughout the economy. Throughout the world at that time, that was an era of competitive devaluation. Global trade shrank down to a fraction of what it was back in the 20’s. Each country was making a decision which felt to it like survival, and nations were taking enormous collectivist measures with their economies as we were here in our own economy. And that is where we are today. I guess what I am saying is I am not surprised we are at this point. I just think that the full consequences of it have not yet been fully perceived, and I think they will be when the financial markets ultimately reflect the damage that has been done to the economy as a whole. And I think that will happen probably over the next year and a half -- if it even takes that long.
Also, I should point out just as an empirical fact that the vast majority of the total wars that have been fought have been fought in fourth turnings. That's a sobering thought. Certainly in American history :the American revolution, the Civil War, World War II -- those are all fourth turning events. Fourth turnings tend to lead to crisis that calls forth a period or an episode of total cohesive organized collective public effort in response to a crisis. That may not involve war; it may simply be an organized response to an economic crisis. Or it may be war in a somewhat different form. When you look around the world today at the kind of global terror that we see in the world, we see forms of war which aren’t exactly the same as what we are used to in terms of earlier eras of war. It may be war, but war of a different nature, a different character. But what you can say is: the social feel will be very similar to what we have felt in previous periods of total war.
Click the play button below to listen to Chris' interview with Neil Howe (51m:26s)
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I predict the 5th Turning will come next... & some clown will try to make a _ _ _buck out of telling you the details about it...
Here... I'll be the one to tell you about it...
In the 5th Turning, Central Banking will finally crumble under it's own weight & will usher in a new era of freedom & renaissance... SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY will prevail to such a point that TIME TRAVEL will become a reality...
The first time traveler will go back and RE-ESTABLISH central banking & Woody Allen movies... Placing you & everyone else in an endless
Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquajooloophttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3rClb1uSb4
~Parliament
My stomach had a 4th turning after my 4th fully-stuffed chimichaga at dinner. My stomach and connected body parts can't take a 5th turning.
Watch out for those Harbaneros your ass could be on fire from a Sixth turning.
Great explanation of how we got here and where we might be going:
http://debtcrash.report/entry/history-and-introduction
The Crisis of 2020 draws nearer.
Noooo, anything but the Curse of the Jade Scorpion.
my roomate's step-mother makes $79 hourly on the laptop . She has been fired for 10 months but last month her pay was $18694 just working on the laptop for a few hours. see here... www.globe-report.com
That's not impressive. My roomate's mom makes $600 dollars hourly working on someone else's laptop.
My roomates' sisters' aunt's roomate's son makes over $9000 an hour on the photocopier, then jams the copies down his throat and shits them back out again onto the keyboard. We think he might have tourettes or something, we're looking into it.
Let's be honest Chili, she is giving BJs, HJs and ZJs to truckers at rest stops. Just like your mum. But, don't despair. Go to college and vote democrat til it hurts.
Everyone who visits this site should read this book.
It is one of the most important and valuable books you will read in your life.
Chris Martenson is the same guy that championed peak oil, quietly changing that to peak prosperity when peak oil wasn't gloomy enough and or never transpired... depending on how you look at it....
Sorry,
no.fifth.turning
Severe guttage followed by intense reamage which will, of course, lead to gangrene and the loss of your favorite body parts.
I don't see many Gen Xers in real leadership positions, and no matter how many times I see Boomers trying to smear the younger generations with their own failures it always comes across as a desperate dodge.
This demand for order, as Neil Howe terms it, is entirely a creation of Baby Boomer narcissism. Then again, maybe a lack of order isn't really the issue, and seeing the situation that way is yet another aspect of the social myopia that has led us to where we are.
Maybe what we need is less central control by Yalies like Neil Howe. Maybe the time for an American aristocracy has passed.
Obama is a Harvard Man of course.
Bill and Hillary are still Yale tho.
So is Kerry.
I went to school in the South...also where I received my military training.
War is not an extension of Politics by othet means down there. Having said that West Virginia and Virginia used to be one State "prior to" so I think they understand the whole Russia/Ukraine thing all too well.
That doesn't mean its worth fighting for of course.
They understand Texas down there too...
You're not, not, not, not, not, not trying to cause a big sensation....
Not sure everybody's gonna get that one... but it is funny.
Boomers with six kids who fed the system for 30 years and aren't going to see shit from Social Security and never be able to fucking retire will lead you out of this.
Raised on common sense and selflessness.
Howe talks as if government doing nothing is a bad thing...government doing nothing is the best thing possible! Screw your ORDER!
"And remember that I am always with you until the end of time." ... Matthew 28-20
4th Turning? Seems more like the Neverending Boning.
Infinite turning. Only we trapped in the rational world actually believe it will all crash and burn. There is and never has been anything "real" about an economy. Commerce and free trade are not an"economy" as we currently understand it. The "economy" is a "system", a contrivance created to benefit a few by selling it as a convenience and path to easy money for the rest of us.
20 Years a turn...like a slow motion train wreck but with an explosive ending.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2015/03/oregon_man_commits_no_crime_bu.html
I’m really tweaked after reading this. It’s unbelievable that a court would allow someone to be held in jail for 900 days without charging them of a crime. This is a material failure of the US legal system: it's a turning sign.
Unfortunately, if our society willing to tolerate 900 days in prison without being charged, we’re morally bankrupt. Where’s Alan Deshowitz? Why do we tolerate these fascist style government activities? History repeats itself and we’re like Rome in during its final hours.
I swear if part of DC burns down so they can build a new Presidential Palace that we can all finally agree that history doesn't rhyme but it does repeat itself.
If all you know as your living history is a bush clinton bush obama presidency you never knew the America that was before. Just like I never knew America prior to Ike so perspective is everything. I watched the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show and remember my dad having a shit fit over the way my sister reacted to "those beatniks"
Police were your friends, Soda pop was a dime at the fire house machine. Your mom actually limited your sugar intake for your own good, Barney Fife would remark on how he was "watcfhing his carbs" on The Andy Griffith Show, tv bedrooms scenes had to show the man having at least one foot on the floor and queers stayed in the closet and if the girl next door needed an abortion "she went to visit her aunt" (no...some guy did not perform it in a dark alley with a coat hanger as much as they like you to believe it.) loose girls and horney boys had what we called a "bad reputation" and were labeled hussies, tramps and the old man just threw the horney neighbor kid off the front porch and told him the next time he came back sniffing around he would beat his ass to into a bloody pulp and the neighborhood cop would watch.
History through a government funded and approved book is not history. Visit an old folks home if you want some perspective.
When you get older and remarkr how sex between a grown man and a 12 year old boy was illegal they will call you an grumpy old fart and you will think how things have changed for the worse and maybe you should have fought a little harder to keep things the same way.
I remember Kennedy being shot (the president) while living in Hawaii. Was all over the news within a day, footage came about three days later for the Hawaiian television. Had to actually ship the news.
Kennedy was not shot in Hawaii, he was shot in the head....
I'll be damned! And on web searches it says it actually happened in Texas!
My aunt was studying library science at Berkeley when it happened so she knew a thing or two about information dissemination. What she remembers even more than the national tragedy was how quickly the news media had very specific details about the shooter, including that infamous photo of him with the rifle. This was the time before internet or even the fax machine but somehow, every major newspaper or TV network had that photo within 24 hours. Almost like they'd been handed it beforehand...
That's what caught Mark Lane's attention. An hour after the shooting it was all over the news how Lee Harvey Oswald shot the President, acting alone.
Lane could see how they could have caught Oswald but how did they know he acted alone? As a lawyer and prosecutor in New York, he knew it would take 3 weeks of intense police work to track down and interview all his friends, relatives and associates before they knew if he acted alone or not.
This insight led to Rush To Judgement, his first book, and the first book exposing the assassination conspiracy.
It was the same playbook with 9/11. As I recall it, Osama Bin Laden was rolled out as the perpetrator before the end of the day. How could you have zero knowledge an event was going to happen, and then within less than 24 supposedly chaotic hours, a sewn up suspect?
we did not get dick cheney's full statement: "debt is not a problem"..what he said was..debt is not a problem as long as we can print fiat out of thin air" and what he thinks is: debt is as real as our money it can be discharged at any time and poof it's gone."
We are no longer allowed to make "value" judgements. Unless it is to call someone a racist or hater.
Correction: we can make all the value judgments we desire but are, in turn, the ones labeled 'haterz' and 'rayciss'.
Note that those terms are only ever used to label persons with more traditional standards and values.
Thus the value of tight, multi-generational families. In my opinion, the destruction of the family will be the ultimate cause of sovereign and cultural collapse. Knowledge, wisdom, traditions are no longer passed down through the generations. Instead, they are manipulated for the benefit of power and distributed on the media and through the schools. Not enough are left to call bullshit.
>>>>tv bedrooms scenes had to show the man having at least one foot on the floor
I read that the first time that TeeVee showed an adult male and female in a bedroom, their names were Fred and Wilma.
Yabba-Dabba-Dooo!!!
Chris is hard to understand because he's a global warming nut job. Sometimes he's smart, then he acts like a screaming, crying fool over GW. Really?
Follow the money Chris.
Green=tax=money.
Get off the peak oil crap too while yo're at it.
chris is not a "nut job" by any stretch of the imagination - he's one of the most cool, calm, and rational voices out there.
your comment about "Green=tax=money" is a common misconception by climate change skeptics: just because some people want to use climate change as an excuse to tax and control people, that has absolutlely no bearing on whether or not it's really happening.
there's been a lot of misinformation both by NWO-types that want to use climate change to push their own agenda, as well as climate change skeptics (funded by exxon mobil, koch brothers, and the like) who want to push their own agenda.
but, the facts are pretty clear that the polar ice caps are melting, and the sea level is rising.
i watched a very informative documentary last night, if you really are interested in the subject, check it out:
Our Rising Oceans: VICE on HBO Season 3 (Episode 1)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h92Ath_2XA
VICE is an NGO propaganda front tailored to "Millenials".
There are no "unbiased" sources. Money and power taint everything. We will always be crushed between special interests like bones to make their bread.
Acidification of Oceans. Unbiased. Or is it imagination?
Science doesn't 'care'.Its just a groovy planetwide experiment. There will still be sponges, jellyfish and cockroaches.
You want humans in the future? Better start caring and drop the tribalism.
How far does the ocean have to rise before NYC, DC, Boston, LA, and SFO are underwater? I could really support this global warming thing. May have to smoke some brisket this weekend to help contribute to a better world.
The ocean is a base - it's a basic fluid. It is not acidifyng. If anything, it would be becoming 'less basic'. A base is a base, just like an acid is an acid. It can become less acidic - but it is still an acid.
"VICE is an NGO propaganda front tailored to "Millenials"."
i don't know what millenials are, it's a made-up concept.
how about instead, you actually address the issue? what in their video is non-factual?
it's their first video i've seen, and i think it's quite good informative.
of please......and Iraq was about freedom and democracy and illegal aliens do the work Amerikans won't due.
Go suck a bag a dicks fool.
no, the iraq war was to prop up the petro-dollar and stop hussein from selling oil in euros, nice try at changing the subject, though.
so, you're unable to have an intelligent rational discussion and debate the actual issue, and you instead resort to hurling insults?
grow up.
"the facts are pretty clear that the polar ice caps are melting, and the sea level is rising"
Jesus. Did you not leave the house at all last winter or do you live in the tropics?
what does leaving the house last winter have to do with it?
i can't see the polar ice from outside my house - can you?
winter was warm here, but i don't take the simplistic view that the temperature outside my house is indicative of a global trend.
Why not, the proponents of this horseshit take the simplistic view that data from the last hundred years plus some guesses about ice cores are indicative of a global trend. The one I read tonight (linked in some comment on ZH) had WaPo quoting a draft of a dissertation from some student in Austin; 'reported' as news. Climate science has actually transcended Economics as the poster child of modern-day alchemy.
I sure can. I live in Canada and just went through the coldest winter on record. I can see plenty of ice from my front porch and can only believe that it is even colder 1000 miles north of here.
Milion dolar bonus . is that you .. miss you when you are gone. OR has Man Bear Pig returned.. Al .. Al .. I hear they got you on the short list for pres next go round.
He definitely has some things right. But imo he also has maxed out the fear-based selling marketing. i.e. 'It's all going to hell completely maximally in every conceivable way and worse across the board! Then it's going to get really bad!!!'
In times of radical change in history, even good change, people are very motivated by avoiding harm and by fear of loss. (Salem, Massachussetts: fear of the rising hybrid farmer-merchant, and fear of being left behind by one's family's failure to change with the times...leads to people associated with hybrid farmer-merchants being accused of witchcraft.)
That said, I'm a silver stacker, a beans'n'rice stacker, a self-sufficiency stacker....etc. Just don't toss your skeptical inquiry out the window, folks.
Re: Dollar collapse itself: The intelligent people in the debate over dollar collapse range in their predictions from the perennial "It could be this year" to "Sometime within the next 10 years" to "Sometime over the next 20 years, probably least likely over the next few years. Several years out at minimum."
This is Global. I disagree however with the thesis of ignorance as an excuse. The monsters actually behind this farcical mindfuck have conducted it as a war, and they are perhaps actually winning. It's a question really worth considering.
Ignorance can, and I believe in most cases should be, addressed far differently than malice. the 'folk's' running this gang (Globally) are not nearly as intelligent as you would hope for them to be. The fiat bomb will be going off sometime in the next few days....Next few weeks...Years?
It's going to happen though and it will be cataclysmic. It's obviously true that most seemingly 'normal' people are clueless. They actually are sucked into the propaganda matrix and so have been effectively sidelined, enslaved, 'knocked-out'.
The elites ultimate objective is a sort of globalized communism. 'Governments' will all be subject to a singular high authority. The U.N might be employed as cover, however the actual rulers will be essentially the same as they've ever been. Control freaks....Utopians, Marxist, Capitalist, Catholics, Neo-Cons, Neo-Liberals..
All of it is bullshit. Disaster invariably happens when too much power is consolidated into to few hands.
It's primarily international institutions (and the 'policymakers' therein) who are wreaking the greatest havoc upon the typical poor human captured with-in the matrix of that particular criminal organizations bullshit story.
A serious crash is long overdue.
Turn already, I have shit to do.......
The book was done in conjunction w/ CSIS another Stink Tank & "PNAC". The bottom line is we all know exactly what he's talking about. it has been all setup by the PTB.
"The First Global Revolution" The Club of Rome. Arnold Toynbee - "The Reluctant Death of Soverignty"
"Immanentize the Eschaton" Eric Voegelin
via man made anthropomorphic Mathusian Catastrophe's / Eco-Terrorism / Arc of Crisis's / Black Swan Events etc.
How we survive is what makes us who we are.
“Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.”
The fourth turning is now complete,
I m now churning out a fly covered peanut and corn kernal infested steaming brown log that I now present as an excremental offering of peace to Putin
Enjoy, "smell the roses"
It is the demand for order from chaos that powers tyranny. If we could only learn to tolerate a little more chaos, uncertainty and risk, we might find a whole new world of liberty.
Everybody dies. Ain't none of us gonna survive that. Does it really matter who we were when the last star twinkles and the universe fades to black? Ha, just messing with you. Still, I think they're just gonna kill as many of us as they possibly can without killing themselves in the process.
Do not smear a particular generation with the blame for the debt-based 'monetary' system we have that requires an exponential increase of debt to function. Anyone with an ability to plot an exponential function on a linear, semi-log or log-log chart could have visually seen in 1913 what that would require in total debt by 2013 or earlier.
The people behind the Federal Reserve Bank have used it to loot America and the rest of the world for 100 years + 2--so far. What I don't understand is where do they think they can hide after it collapses?
Do the international banking and corporate gangsters think that we will let them get away with all of America's and Americans' collective wealth? What country will protect them as they undergo their own trials and tribulations following their own collapse. It's a foregone conclusion that all of their political puppets are going to be severely disciplined.
Obama, by his Imperial actions, has declared himself above the law with his glaringly obvious crimimal violations of the US Constitution. Obama is nothing more than a whore for the international/national banking and corporate gangsters. Yet, the current Officers throughout the Congress have violated their Sworn Oaths to uphold the US Constitution by allowing Obama's violations to continue unchecked.
Those oaths may just be empty words to the whores of the political class including Obama. But, there are millions of American veterans, who love America and the American Republic and the American Constitution, to whom those oaths were not and are not now empty words.
We know that Russia, Russians and Vladimir Putin are not our enemies. No, America's enemies are the international/national banking and corporate gangsters and their political puppets in Washington, D.C. and New York City and other locations.
All active-duty officers, especially flag-level officers, should realize that a war with Russia is NOT in the United States of America's and Americans' national interest. The only reason Obama is alienating and risking war with Russia our natural ally against Islamo-Fascism is to enrich the international/national banking and corporate gangsters. All United States military officers, non-commissioned officers and enlisted men and women all took an oath to defend the United States of America, the US Constitution and Americans from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
It's time to fish or cut bait. Are you going to follow Obama's insane orders and risk beginning an all-out nuclear war with Russia? If so, please resign until you find a junior officer with the balls to say no to this insanity.
American Nationalists or Nationalist Americans are going to fire all of the Democratic and Republican whores, indict politicians and their masters in the banking and corporatist gangsters to include extradition from any country to which they have fled to avoid prosecution to include clawback of ill-gotten gains from manipulation of the fractional-reserve banking system via the Federal Reserve System; ban political parties; require written hard copy ballots for all elections (no computers allowed--period!); close the borders and make English the only language allowed within the United States of America; and so much more.
Or, would an all-out civil war make you happier? <---Question for the NSA to answer.
That is a good question. Is the NSA's allegiance to the Constitution or to international/national banking and corporate gangsters?
It'll be civil war. I'm not lucky enough for the other option.
Don't believe the 16 ups .. They are just egging you on in your delirium, having a cheap laugh at your expense.
PS: I sure hope you don't hold a job with responsibility for other people ...
Among a lot of other things, I own a small hobby coffee shop. The GOVERNMENT requires that I have a high heat dishwasher which costs me and every other coffee shop in the nation four thousand dollars plus a lot of maintenance. New studies have proven common sense and that the high temp dishwashers are no better than the cheap low temp ones. I can not fathom at what point the GOVERNMENT will EVER back off that rule and a hundred other ones we could all think of. However ONLY if that day comes can we put the genie back in the bottle and create jobs again. I am sticking to my prediction that by the time this next cycle ends a billion people will have died in the coming war. Even if they make my other rule, that you cant sell a stock for 60 days after you buy it, (effectively shutting down Wall Street) It would take something like that to change anything that matters....... like the low temp dishwasher rule. Death by a million cuts.
That's easy, some criminal friend of a politician owns the hi temp dishwasher company. When he sells out and retires they will change the law, maybe, if enough guys like you push for it.
Leave Gen X out of this... Left to our own devices when young, then forced to scrape by in college because of Boomer parents who overindulged on themselves and didn't save enough, then asked to pick up the pieces when Boomers finally get the fuck out of the way.
Yeah the poor little gen x whiners didn't get enough nipple to suck so now everything is mommy & daddy's fault.
Boomers are the kings of whining. Don't sell yourself short on that account.
When the last baby boomer is dead and gone, you will still be a whiny loser waiting for somebody to give you a handout.
Argle bargle blippity boop? Comment bot says what?
More like the final turning....
THE PERFECT STORM (see p. 59 onwards)
The economy is a surplus energy equation, not a monetary one, and growth in output (and in the global population) since the Industrial Revolution has resulted from the harnessing of ever-greater quantities of energy. But the critical relationship between energy production and the energy cost of extraction is now deteriorating so rapidly that the economy as we have known it for more than two centuries is beginning to unravel. http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2013/01/Perfect-Storm-LR.pdf
You will have to pull the political gun out of the Baby Boomer's cold, dead hands. (Look at HRC and that Witch Peloisi).
Man...so much existential jive over simple, yet pretty profound times.
Let's leave "turnings" to the chef and the rotisserie, shall we?
Look.
It's really kinda simple; we've run out of ideas to feed an industrial engine well more than 100 years old. We outsourced the last of our productive, manufacturing past, replacing it with nothing. Now, we find ourselves in a place where there's not much for us to do. At least nothing the rest of the world can't (and does) do as well, much cheaper. Moreover, most everything "new" today is a mere upgrade of the old--nothing more. I mean, how much different is Apple's watch from the very first IPod?
Still, without the work of our past, we're without income.
Without income, we are bored, broke, and apathetic too. While easy credit mimicked income growth for awhile, it couldn't replace lost income, and so we find ourselves not only with the original outsourcing-produced income crisis (come full force in 2008), but now so much deeper in debt that cannot be easily repaid on dwindling incomes.
The fact is, we have never been more self-absorbed and self-centered than we are today. And there are many who love it too. There won't be any revolutions for positive change in that kind of world. There MAY be violent expressions of selfishness however. Absent a new national purpose, we shouldn't expect any outbreaks of a new American Manifest Destiny though. We're far, far too full of our individual selves for that to germinate; we don't seem to have that in us anymore.
The DOW, for example, could give a damn about the real economy; it's completely disconnected from old school fundamentals. So is housing. There are literally millions who'll do ANYTHING to get on that wagon, mostly for a fast buck, caring less about the rest of Main Street. At least, not as long as there remain a few greater fools to play the game of whacky, baseless asset inflation. The national attitude today is: 'I got mine...'.
Ditto for corporate share buyback (and other) games. How is any of that an honest reflection of a nation honestly coming to terms with the real cause of its predicament?
None of these are among the ingredients necessary for things like another American Revolution or humanity's first trip to the moon either. You need national purpose to inspire those things, not chronic obsessions over housing and corporate share prices--at any cost to the future.
Someone was developing the Industrial Revolution WHILE our primarily-agrarian economy began to wind down.
Someone was introducing new methods of mechanized farming to improve yield with less manual labor, BEFORE old methods of farming dissolved into history.
NO ONE thought through our rush into the outsourced world we now find ourselves. We sharply truncated ways of life, developed over decades of invention and innovation, within the context of a much smaller, less capable and competitive globe. We rushed foward without preparing anything really new for the future, and now, we're lost and confused about what to do with the inevitable consequences. We (via a vis dimwitted and shortsighted American/western corporations) justified all of it in the short term, without the slightest advance preparation for a really new "next".
And so, here we are...
What did we expect was going to happen?
m
Nice post MD4
I think finance was supposed to be the solution but it wasn't ......
The power of finance sounds so good, the reality of debt quickly overwhelms everything.
The political class led themoronic self-important sheeple on. Both are part of the "WE" class Both comprize the lower 3/4 of the bell curve on anything that may be of logical, educated, rational usefulness. . You may include yourself with the dullards you refer to as the "WE" class, I however am not included in that set.
You may want to use a less incluseive word than the "WE"....
The least worst case scenario is: Government Does Nothing.
The worst case scenario is: Government does something.
This is by design. Stop fighting the design.
I am glad somebody brought up Rome. Why is it so inconceivable to most that America will eventually fail as EVERY SINGLE PAST GOVERNMENT AND CIVILIZATION DID.
Because the United State of America, and its leadership class, is exceptional, indispensable and special... and more-virtuous-than-average to boot. The creation of America, and it's current flowering into world hegemony, marks the end of history.
Every prior society was merely a forerunner of America's perfection, and every non-American culture a footnote.
I know...it seems so obvious, doesn't it? ;-)
Two words: Normalcy Bias
FOUR !
Societies since the dawn of time have become over-whelmed with debt.
In ancient times they used to have regular debt jubilees to deal with the problem.
Capitalism used to have recessions that wiped out bad debt.
Throughout history lenders have always lent to much and borrowers borrowed too much.
The modern world is not as sophisticated as many like to think and excessive debt is an age old problem.
The current stance where there is an expectation that all debts will be paid seems to indicate we are actually more stupid than previous generations.
Time is the sole arbiter between Prescience and Paranoia
I am disappointed that nobody has yet quoted the Bible with some doomsday quote ..
American evangelicals to ISIS: "My apocalypse is better than your apocalypse."
I like their generational theories, but saying that government does nothing is the most simplistic and innacurate statement around these days (and for decades actually). How can government grow as it has and be doing "nothing"? And nothing is ever planned, according to Howe. All of this power centralization is by accident...simply outcomes of flailing reactions. Yeah...right? He says they are doing nothing and then states generally all the enormous things they are doing...but since these things seem to be bad ideas for everyone but the powerful who are doing it...he just assumes that they are all unintended. It comes across kid of silly and naive Neil...don't you think?
Casino Capitalism is _DEAD_ and this so-called 'fourth turning' will not lead to a renewed state of organization throughout the World unless one believes that nuclear war is somehow to be viewed as 'renewal'. I, for one, don't view mass murder and genocide as 'renewal'.
NOTE: Furthermore, this article basically leaves one with the impression that the 'neocon' logic of 'order out of chaos' is in play here.