Neil Howe is a historian, economist and demographer who writes and speaks frequently on generations, the economy and social change. He is America’s leading thinker on who today’s generations are, what motivates them and how they will shape the nation’s future.
He has authored nine books on American generations, many co-authored with William Strauss, including Generations (1991), The Fourth Turning (1997), Millennials Rising (2000) and, most recently, Millennials in the Workplace (2010). In relation to The Fourth Turning, the Boston Globe wrote “If Howe and Strauss are right, they will take their place among the great American prophets.” He has also authored numerous books and policy reports on demographics, most recently The Graying of the Great Powers (2008).
He is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he helps lead the Global Aging Initiative. He holds graduate degrees in history and economics from Yale University.
Erico Tavares: Neil, we are delighted to be speaking with you today. Your work has influenced many people over the years, including us. We read the “Fourth Turning” many years ago, and had almost forgotten about it. Then 2008 happened and we felt that this time was indeed different. Upon re-reading your book we were stunned by many of the things you had predicted over a decade ago. For the people less familiar with your work, could you briefly describe what a Fourth Turning is, which as we understand it results from a specific generational sequence that you have identified?
Neil Howe: A turning, as you define it, is a unit of history which is roughly the length of a social generation, about 20-23 years long. We identified these units looking deeply at the history of America and of other countries around the world, and originally discovered this idea of turnings by analyzing the generational history over many centuries. What we noticed is that not only social generations are very different, they also tend to arrive in a certain pattern, a certain order. Certain types of generations always follow other types. And this in turn is connected to a certain order and rhythm in history itself.
For example, America’s great crises – certainly our greatest total wars – have arrived in our history roughly at intervals of a long lifetime, including the War of the Spanish Succession, the American Revolution, the Civil War all the way to the Great Depression and World War II. That’s kind of the sequence.
These are the great Fourth Turnings of American history. And we call them so because of where they are in a cycle of different mood shifts that we observe. The Second Turnings by contrast happen almost in between these crises, and that’s when you get the great awakenings in American history. These are the great cultural upheavals.
So in a Fourth Turning we remake the outer world: the economy, politics, empire, technology, infrastructure… In Second Turnings we remake the inner world: religion, values, art… This basic yin and yang of looking at a multiplicity of social trends is something you don’t notice unless you are looking at all of it. And once you do, you can see how these intergenerational patterns move to the same beat.
I should also add that within this cycle there is an interaction between how different generations are shaped in childhood, coming of age when they are young. They then become parents and leaders as they reach mid-life and then go on to shape history, which in turns shapes the youth of a younger generation. You can see how that works. It’s a fully integrated and complete cycle.
And it's one of the few cycles – whether you are talking about war, realigning elections, cycles in family life or the long cycle in the economy – whose periodicity is strictly determined by the phases of life of a human being. One of the problems that long cycle theorists have had, be it 60-year or 100-year cycles or whatever, is that they often wonder what governs these cycles. Why isn’t it 2 years or 5 years?
So our research shows a connection with the biology of human life.
ET: Yes, many historians, economists and even politicians have studied the cycles of history, and you are correct, they tend to link these cycles with nature and in some cases more obscure things like planetary movements. What your work has revealed in some fascinating detail is that they are in many cases driven by the different generations as they come and go. Each generation tends to be different from the one that preceded it. We tend to think of society as a continuation but this is generally not the case, as you point out...
NH: Yes, each generation tends to be different not only because they are so encouraged by their parents but also as a reaction against the world created by the mid-life generation in charge. And that leads to a constant turning in the direction of each new generation. We actually identified four different kinds of generations, each coming of age in one of these different turnings we talked about. The ageing of each generation into a new phase of life is what gives each of these turnings its distinct mood and emotional feel.
ET: In fact you were the first to coin the term “Millennials”, which groups that generation of people born from the 1980s onward...
NH: Yes, that’s correct. That was in our 1991 book “Generations”. The oldest millennial alive then was only about 8 years old. It is interesting to remember that at that point Gen X-ers did not even have a name. The book that named that generation, Doug Coupland’s “Generation X”, was still a year away from being published.
And so, if Gen X-ers already don’t feel bad enough about their lives, they can reflect on the fact that the generation that came after them was named before theirs was!
ET: That’s right! As Gen X-ers ourselves we had never thought about that…
NH: Well, they did a study a few months ago on which generation was referred to the most in corporate earnings calls over a certain recent time period. The #1 was Boomers, right behind them were the Millennials – in fact only just behind them, and #3 were Gen X-ers – way, way behind.
I get this complaint a lot from Gen X-ers and I think it is legitimate. People have never quite paid attention to their generation coming in between.
ET: Do Fourth Turnings always occur after Third Turnings, or are we merely speculating about a potential generational outcome?
NH: Historically the answer is “yes”, it always comes in that order. In fact, the regular nature of the order is really striking. I’m not an historical determinist, in the sense that certain events or catastrophes have greatly shaped turnings in the past – for instance, in the 19th century we had a very quick turning during the Civil War, and we see similar patterns in other countries as well – so we are not saying that the length and the order of the turnings is exact. But the overall pattern is overwhelming.
I think that today most Americans are aware that we are in a social mood much more similar to the 1930s – and we can go through many other parallels – than the 1950s, the 1960s or even the 1970s.
ET: And typically how long can such a turning last? You mentioned about 20-23 years.
NH: Well, that has the same variability as the generations themselves. They can vary from 18 years to maybe about 23 years. It can be longer or shorter depending on the accidents of history, but overall it is aligned with the basic cycle of life of most people. It keeps coming back to that governor of time. So it can vary, kind of like the seasons. Spring can come a little earlier one year, Winter late in another.
When we talk about periodicity, this is not a simple physical system like a planet orbiting around the Sun, which is very exact. This is more like a complex system which has different factors at play, regressing or being attracted to a certain kind of periodicity. This is typical of such complex systems. And obviously human society is a complex system.
ET: Within the limitations that you just described, we can reasonably predict when those “turnings” are likely to occur, but not the magnitude of the turning in terms of socioeconomic changes. When we look back at history some turnings were very profound, others less so. Is this correct?
NH: Yes, and I also think that the sense of urgency of a Fourth Turning and how the outer world and the world of institutions is reconstructed, can differ from one turning to another.
Now, it is true that all the major wars in American history have always arrived in a Fourth Turning, but I don’t see it as necessary that a Fourth Turning requires a total war. It could be some other sense of urgency pushed by, for instance, economic necessity.
The sense of collective urgency to solve a dire problem which is perceived to threaten the very future existence of this society is something that Fourth Turnings do have in common. That is not necessarily a war, but I think it will be something with a strong collective incentive for society to act in a way that it wouldn’t otherwise have in other turnings.
ET: What type of economic conditions are typically associated with Fourth Turnings? You established a parallel with the 1930s which was a very challenging time with the Great Depression and the like. In addition to that societal objective, that urgency, are there any economic factors that tend to occur in a Fourth Turning?
NH: We looked very broadly at this. The 1930s was a decade of deflation, competitive trade wars, chronic underemployment of workers and capital, all of which are being experienced today. Alvin Hansen, who was the great popularizer of John Maynard Keynes in America, in 1937 coined the term “secular stagnation”, which has been recently revived by Larry Summers today.
And you look too at some of the demographic phenomena going on: declining migration rates – we’re certainly seeing declining immigration in the US over the last few years, declining fertility rates, declining mobility (people moving around)...
And some of them are not negative at all. Some of them are positive in fact. One of the things we’ve noticed is that from the early 1930s into the 1940s there was a pretty dramatic decline in crime. That is something that we have experienced over the last 15 or 20 years, in fact a very substantial decline in youth violence, which is one of the hallmarks of the Millennial generation – how risk averse they are and how little violence we see from this generation.
You can go across a long list. Another interesting parallel is really an incredible shift that we see in America over the last 20 years towards the great strengthening of the extended family. Back in 1980 only 11% of 25-34 year-olds lived with their parents or other older family members. Today it is 23%. We have tens of millions of young people living in extended families. This is something that we also saw in the 1930s. In both cases it is partially motivated by the economy, but also because the generations personally got along very well.
It is a complete closing of the generation gap on values. This is something we have always seen in Fourth Turnings.
ET: That is fascinating! So based on everything that you are describing, are we already in a Fourth Turning? And when did it start?
NH: 2008 is when it started. We had many readers and people who came up to us and said, “Well, it actually started in 2001” and we’ve always said “No!”
Part of the reason is that we can time turnings by looking at generational ageing, and typically a turning begins just after each generation reaches a certain age because they enter a new phase of life. In 2001 that’s too early because Millennials weren’t really coming of age into their adulthood, Boomers weren’t fully retiring and Gen X-ers weren’t entering mid-life. So we thought the timing was off.
We believe 2008 is a much better political and economic divide and will eventually be perceived as such. We perceive these turning points in history better in retrospect than we do up close.
ET: We understand why many people think that 2001 is the critical turning point because after 9/11 America was never the same again, both domestically and abroad…
NH: I think that mainly abroad. But in terms of the differences since 2001, we still had a bubble psychology in the economy very much alive and it did not take much to come back to that by 2003-04-05-06... And we also had almost like a celebrity circus, kind of a roaring 1990s tone in our household finances and how people were looking to the future.
I think all of that has really shifted. It’s only after 2008 that issues like standard of living growth, income inequality and fundamental doubts about the ability of America’s economy to recover, came to the forefront, as well as much longer term questions about geopolitical anarchy.
By the way, here’s another interesting parallel with the 1930s: a world that no longer has any great power or congress of powers ruling over it anymore. Back then this happened after the collapse of the League of Nations. We see that today nobody is running the world any more. We see authoritarian regimes doing what they want in their own neighborhoods.
This has come back to cast a great shadow of doubt to both political leaders and investors.
ET: The commonalities are indeed striking when we look at history from your vantage point. Today we benefit from insightful research that people like yourself have conducted over many years, so we can get a sense of what’s potentially ahead; perhaps people back then were much less aware. And yet we still seem incapable of changing course. There is just too much momentum, too much political bickering and too many opposing forces preventing us from reaching a consensus, or so it seems. This may make all the ramifications of a Fourth Turning even more likely. Do you agree with this?
NH: Yes, in fact one of the aspects of a Third Turning is that nothing much really happens in public life. You look back at the 1990s, certainly after the end of the Cold War, what happened politically and legislatively that was really important? Even up until the Great Recession, what happened?
But after 2008 we saw last minute measures being implemented with desperate expedience, to keep the economy afloat. It’s amazing if you look back at the prior 20 years how little we have done in any way to legislate and form a collective public policy to change even the basic direction, or just adjust the direction, of our country.
This is typical. We have seen eras like that before in American history and what happens – and what people forget – is that public history does not always move in the same way. Decades go by and then suddenly certain events hit, and everything changes on a dime. Huge changes occur! And it’s almost like a seismic event, you know, suddenly the tectonic plates collide…
ET: A tipping point is reached…
NH: Right. And suddenly too. You often find that one generation’s power – its senior leaders – ebbs and another generation takes over the day after. What we will see now is a time when Boomers ebb and Millennials suddenly discover that they are actually running things, setting agendas and the like. And I really think that is the next major change for the country we are going to see.
Millennials are much more collective in their orientation and they are much more optimistic about the future. We do a lot of surveys on political attitudes by age and Boomers are by far the most pessimistic of all generations and the most apocalyptical in their values and orientation. Whereas Millennials are much more practical, collectivist and much more optimistic about how things are going to turn out.
This is the kind of generation that typically rises right around the time a Fourth Turning occurs. And again the last time this happened was in the 1930s. What was the new generation that everyone saw coming of age? It was the G.I. generation which was chronically optimistic. As kids they went to see Mickey Rooney in Hollywood movies; they accentuated the qualities of their own generation.
After World War II ended, their Boomer kids eventually began to hate the positivism of their fathers, the G.I.s... But we forget that during the 1930s it was that generation that added hope for the future and held the nation together through that period of crisis.
ET: It seems that Millennials will have a very busy schedule indeed, given our current predicaments... We talked a lot about the US, but you have also looked at other countries around the world. Is Europe in a cycle consistent with that of the US from a generational standpoint?
NH: Yes, we see Europe reaching as far as Russia, the English-speaking world and East Asia all having strong generational parallels.
They all had their World War II generation – probably because that and the Great Depression were global events. And they all had their silent generation, the little kids of World War II, which gave birth to leaders like Jacques Delors in Europe who constructed the European Union as a way to contain war. That was something which that generation never wanted to see again.
We have Boomers in America, who were certainly huge in Europe – the 68-ers in France and Germany and the euro communism youths – which embodied the clashes and terrific problems with their parents. In China this is the Red Guard generation…
ET: So even China is following the same cycle?
NH: Yes, think about it. Our G.I.s were their Long March generation which was a huge civic generation, our Boomers were their Red Guards, which basically tried to destroy 2000 years of culture and replace it with something new. It is very similar.
Today, we talk about our Millennials, China talks about their Little Emperors, you know, the generation which never tasted bitterness, who are incredibly positive about the future and who trust their parents to educate them and wanting to join something big – the China Dream.
We’re seeing this play out in the Far East in ways that are both fascinating and at times a little disquieting. Every major Asian power is now governed by a leader who has no memory of World War II. That’s true for Modi in India, Shinzo Abe in Japan, Xi Jinping in China and Park Geun-hye in South Korea.
And this is the old lesson of Arnold Toynbee, of what he calls the great war cycle that arose every 80 years or so: it’s when the generation who doesn’t remember the last great catastrophe finally become the senior leaders.
You look at what is going on in Asia and you sense a lack of that collective risk aversion that you saw with older leaders who did remember some of the terrible things that happened earlier in the 20th century.
ET: That’s an incredible insight. Is there any country or region right now that is in more optimistic turnings at this point?
NH: I don’t see it as more or less optimistic. You know, a Fourth Turning is necessary, it’s both good and bad. I like to emphasize that to people. In some ways it is like a forest fire: it burns away the brush and allows new seedlings to grow.
ET: Well, you are talking to a Gen X-er who by definition are pessimistic…
NH: Well, look at it this way! If the S&P500 were to come down by 50% - and, my God, if we have a reversion to the mean in corporate earnings as well as a decline in some of these lofty PE valuations this might actually happen – look at the bright side. The Millennial generation can finally buy into America’s future at a good price. Look at what they are facing right now: very little return on their savings and very lofty prices that they have to pay to invest in their future.
So we often forget that these wrenching dislocating financial events, particularly for older generations, can create opportunities for the young, and often create space for something more durable for the times to be built.
I think we are going to see a lot of creative destruction both politically and socially. In fact we are seeing it this week with Grexit becoming widely recognized as more probable than not. I think this will lead to an unravelling of Southern Europe from the Euro and I think that the heightened tensions – from the Middle East to Putin’s Russia to the Far East – and again the fact that nobody is in charge, not even pretends to be in charge, will create problems.
For those of us remembering earlier times, this is disquieting, disorienting... I think better things will grow out of it, in fact they have to. Right now the youth of the world in the midst of these tensions are not happy. Their needs are not being met from the systems that are in place.
So I’ll just summarize it with Schumpeter’s phrase: creative destruction. That’s how I prefer to see what happens in a Fourth Turning.
ET: Actually another field that we believe urgently needs some creating destruction is mainstream economic thinking. One thing that is striking about your work is how accurate you have been so far in advance. And yet – not wanting to pick on anyone in particular – very few mainstream economists could see 2008 coming, if any. Is a deeper understanding of demographics and this generational interplay what is lacking in mainstream economics today?
NH: Oh, there’s so much to talk about mainstream economics, I really would not know where to begin…
ET: If you had to pick one thing...
NH: I would say in general the narrowness of the way economics is now taught and published and its inability to embrace a much more multidisciplinary way of bringing in the other social sciences is a big limitation the longer it comes to looking into the future.
ET: One of your companies publishes research which is widely read by top hedge funds and institutional investors. Is this based on the work that you have done over the years to enhance our understanding of possible economic, financial and societal outcomes, particularly in light of the limitations of mainstream economics?
NH: Yes, our company Saeculum Research publishes research to institutional investors.
By the way “saeculum” is the Latin word for century, but in this derivation not so much referring to 100 years but rather the Etruscan meaning which is a long human life. And we introduced that word in our book The Fourth Turning to describe the full cycle. You can sort of get my picture – the four seasons of a person’s life.
To our clients at Saeculum what we focus on is – more important to them than the long cycle – insights into how breaking generational changes at this moment are reshaping individual industries, from airlines to hospitality to artificial intelligence to big data. So we are looking very closely at people’s behavior, consumers, workers and investors, and looking at how a longer view helps us get a much more accurate fix on how things are changing this year and impacting the various brands and companies that they are investing in.
ET: That’s fascinating work. In addition to your books, which we vividly recommend, is there a site where people can go to get your latest insights and updates on your thinking?
NH: They can go to our website and sign up to a free newswire, where we are constantly alerting people, daily or weekly at their wish, on demographical and generational events and news and reports that we find interesting. There are also a number of links to publications that we have done, my own opeds and other things that we have written. So it’s a very important portal for entering into our world.
ET: Neil, this has been fantastic. Thank you very much for taking time off your busy schedule to talk to us. All the best with your work – hopefully the Fourth Turning will turn out to be OK!
NH: We certainly hope so! Thank you.


Interesting read.
Markets..arent markets..they are pegs by men behind curtains.
RIPS
since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality http://www.philiacband.com/propaganda.html
Wow....very pleasantly surprised to see The Fourth Turning posted on ZH today! I've read this book a few times and have recommended to many people.
This is an awesome book and is extremely profound in it's theories and cyclical predictions...found it about 4.5 years ago and I still read through it all the time. It's so packed with incredible historical information that I found myself needing to make notes constantly as I read through it and wanting to re-read many parts of it to keep it all fresh in my mind and to refer back to all my notes the further along I got through the book.
I did not find this frustrating in anyway, don't get me wrong. It is very well written. But a book this packed with information is a rare find "in my book" (haha, pun intended), so I like the challenge of so much information that is so well written and put together as this book was. When I find a book like this I'm more than happy to take my time to thoroughly digest the information and to make tons of notes and re-read it as much as I can to absorb that kind of info.
Highly recommended...these guys nailed it and were several years ahead of their time in their predictions that have all come true, and now we are upon the next cycle which is the 4th Turning...so this book is still extremely relevant today. This is the critical 4th cycle where the shit hits the fan, so we all need to pay attention big time, and this book, if everything pans out as it details will be very important in helping us make it through this cycle to the 1st Turning cycle again. Hopefully....
Here is an excellent podcast interview between Neil Howe and Rick Wiles on Trunews that anyone who has read this book or is interested in this book would probably like to listen to very much. Neil Howe lays out the theory of what the book is about and the seasonal, generational cycles (Turnings) that they outline in the book.
From 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvE_A2MaM50
if the market goes down that much, look for companies to keep trying to take themselves private.
Here's the website for The 4th Turning also...pretty cool...interactive...explains a lot...very informational
http://www.fourthturning.com/
"Whereas Millennials are much more practical, collectivist and much more optimistic about how things are going to turn out." If this clown thinks practical and collectivist should ever be on the same side in a sentence he is a fool! I'll Pass!
Another $3 book on amazon.
I agree, always an interesting read. Oswald Spengler did a similar morphology of history in the 1930's, much deeper, in fact than this treatment. Howe and Strauss focus on generational change; so they see these cycles as generational. I see similar cycles, but more exact, looking at the cycles through geometrical 'eyes'. 36 - year cycles, not dependent on generations but generations dependent on geometry. Our views are not so different. Our years don't always allign. In my view (time based) 2001 is High Noon. This is when the Sun Hero dies and creative energy goes entropic. In terms of economics, 1983 (MIDNIGHT) is seed tune for recreation of the world -- the Sun Hero is the seed, as a child -- and the season is Reflation, Winter to Spring. 1992 (Dawn) is when the Sun Hero comes of age and defeats the shadow, casts him into the underworld -- economically this is the Inflation Season, Spring to Summer. 2001, High Noon, is the completion of the expansion; the Sun Hero is wounded (1965 is this same season, and the assassination of JFK is very close to this time, late 1963) ; (1929 was an earlier High Noon, the collapse of Wall Street) -- this is the apex of light, the Greek Olympians on Mount Olympus -- and the weakest (seed-time) season of the SHADOW. The Sun-Hero creates, builds, the material world, the Earth -- and the SHADOW destroys it. From 1929-1947, the Fascist Shadow destroyed the world the Sun-Hero built from 1911-1929; from 1965-1983, the Communist Shadow destroyed the world the Sun-Hero built from 1947-1965; today, the Islamic Shadow is destroying the world the Sun-Hero built from 1983-2001. The economic season of High Noon is Disinflation -- the economy stops growing, the world crop (the expansion) is harvested, Summer-Autumn. 2010 is Dusk, the Deflation Season, in which we are now living: 2010-2019. This is the most difficult for the creators, becuase the 'light' is defeated in this Winter Season (1938-1947; 1974-1983...) -- this is the season, Autumn to Winter, where many of the structures upholding the material construction get torn down. The Black Principle is on top of the White Principle, as the White Principle is on top of the Black Principle during Spring-Summer, the Inflation Season.
I like Howe and Strauss. But I grow weary of their insistence on causality. In Nature Winter always begins on December 21. This does not means that the first snow falls on the same day every Winter; one Winter is very cold and very snowy, another is not -- but there are similar patterns connected to seasons. From 1983-2001 there are more marriages and more children born; from 2001-2019 there are more deaths, plagues, natural catastrophes, famines.
Ancient Hebrew Astrology apparently believed in 36 year cycles, which they received from the ancient Chaldeans. Sepharial wrote about this in the 1920s. Through this system I am predicting the 'end of the world' this cycle in 2019 -- 1983 last cycle -- 1947 the previous cycle -- but be clear, the 'end of the world," with its regular "Last Judgment" in the Deflation Season, will be accompanied by the birth of the next world. An Old World dies; and a New World is born. Sometimes this is a very clear break between the old and the new -- usually not so much. The Fall of Nixon was very much the fall of the Old World in the 1965-1983 Night-Cycle -- not necessarily 'on time', but very much the symbolic disintegration of the beast face of an empire. The fall of Hitler and the Japanese fascists was a very clear destruction of the White Beast also.
Two beasts: the White Beast on land, Behemoth (High Noon's decay, Roman Emperors such as Neo and Caligula) and the Black Beast in the sea, Leviathan. Russia is a pretty standard Leviathan image. Global Communism was the same in the 1970s. America and Russia, the White Beast and the Black Beast. In 1983, the world came very close to World War III -- the queen of England actually had an announcement of the beginning of World War III written, and she practiced deliverying it to the English people. It came right after the Russians shot down KAL007, the South Korean passenger plane; and then the pope and Reagan were shot. So World War III is a very clear possibility around 2019 as well. In 2019, the Black Beast (be it Russa or Islam, or a combination of these) is at its greatest power. So I predeict that Isis, and Russia, and Islam generally will be very strong in 2019, seemingly invincible. The West will seem incredibly weak, as it did in 1983. But 2019 is when the tide will turn, and the light (materialism? Light is Matter. the West) will begin to strengthen again.
In Greek myth, Jupiter-Zeus is the Light force, Expansion, the Day-Cycle (1983-2001; 2019-2037) -- and Saturn-Kronos is the Dark Force, Harvesting the Light.
Today, in 2015, we are about 9:15 PM. Night. Darkness is still gaining. 2016 is 10:00 PM. From 2013-2016, we are very aware of death, of the ideas of sin and failure. From 2016-2019, we become very aware of right and out own sense of destiny.
In my view the generations are not the driver of these forces, but the forces being pushed by Time, Nature, God or whatever you like to call it -- Universal Mind.
Howe and Strauss are a very commercial view of historical morphology, as I say not as deep as Spengler, but clearly valuable in that they are getting Americans to think about cycles. Agrarian socieities understand cycles implicitly -- hence, they are religious. Urban sociaities are cut off from nature -- and have no sense of cycles. Everything is causality. This caused that. Cycles are about sequences more than causes. About pattern recognition. Day-Cycles are the left brain (causality) cominating; Night-Cycles are about the right brain (patterns and metaphors) dominating.
In my system the four cycles reduce to two cycles (Day and Night) -- and the two cycles reduce to two economic cycles: SPENDING CYCLE (1983-2001), growth and economic expansion; and the SAVING CYCLE (2001-2019): non-growth, economic rest. We should have made the transitoon from the SPENDING CYCLE to the SAVING CYCLE in 2001, with higher interest rates to begin accomplishing this, discouraging more debt, and supporting the Dollar, after 18 years of trying to weaken the Dollar. During the SPENDING CYCLE the economy can't grow, so higher rates do not inhibit growth. Everything in nature grows and then rests. In this case, the economy grows for 18 years (1983-20010 during the SPENDING SEASON, and then rests for 18 years during the SAVING SEASON. Day followed by Night. Lower interest rates followed by higher interest rates.
Our society is very left-brain. We have, in fact, forgotten how to use the right brain. GDP measures only left brain activity -- and consider saving a sin. We need to jetison GDP: it is one-eye blind, and leads us to make bad decisision like taking on way too much debt to simulate real economic growth when there is none camouflaged as debt-spending, which creates cancers after the business cycle ends.
Look Captain, I don't mind pimping a blog if it has some relative and on topic significance. But coming in here, over the top of us and posting a link which quite honestly- I'm not gonna waste the time to look at- is just bad manners. At least try to stay on topic which is the 4th turning and fat millenials. LOL
Not a damned thing about changing the system. Specifically eliminating fractional reserve banking practices and mechanisms that create massive bubbles of boom-and-bust. Unless and until the root causes of economic turmoil are addressed nothing will be solved, only bandaged.
It is summer so I suppose we have entered the re-run season.
The Fourth Turning is a Gordian knot of glib, facile generalization, intellectually dishonest, and riddled with pungent strands of self-loathing ( Boomer Bashing).
This book is simply another tiresome exercise in NeoCon, crypto-ideology.
How unfortunate for us all of us that it was Strauss and Howe who thought to trot out the dusty old "cycles of history" scheme for this generation, because readers should know that, in spite of the clumsy polemic and shoddy prose in this book, (I would insert an example here, but there are just too many to choose from) there really may be something valuable in the "cycles of history" theory.
Unfortunately, you won't find much to value here; for these two authors, the "cycles" theory is simply a vehicle for conservative ideology.
These boys have obviously suckled at the poisoned teats of the William Bennetts of this world for far too long to ever again create anything resembling honest scholarship.
I guess we'll have to wait for another generation with a bit more intellectual integrity to come along to see if the "cycles" theory holds water.
"honest scholarship" is your crypto-code phrase for ideas that happen to agree with your own.
anyone who holds a view differing from yours, is, obviously, "dishonest".
hey, david pierre, instead of being all butt-hurt that you were kicked off of the burning platform blog for being an asshat, maybe you should get a clue?
Only proven 9/11MORONS like you and Jim(Smokey)Quinn will swallow wholesale the rancid intellectual cum of S&H, et al.
9/11 Is the Litmus Testhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6O4LE0eTYc
You're just another TOOL!
in what way am i a "tool"?
you're very liberal with the way you throw around accusations of other people, but, you provide scant evidence to back up what you say.
instead of providing evidence to back up what you said, you decided on a distraction tactic, trying to get into a discussion about 9/11, which had nothing whatsoever to do with the issue that was being discussed.
but, ok, i'll let you get away with your nonsensical distraction tactic...tell me, then, what views do i hold about 9/11 that you disagree with, as you claim? you don't even know what my views on 9/11 are, and they have nothing to do with quinn's views. here you are, trying to bash others about "intellectual dishonesty", when that's EXACTLY what you are doing with your straw-man arguments, and trying to put words into other peoples' mouths. hypocrite much?
look in the mirror first before you go around trying to accuse others of exactly the thing that you do.
rational thought and discourse is cleary not your strong point. your insane level or rage towards quinn, something i dont understand, makes you sloppy, incomprehensible, and downright ugly.
the 'cycles of history' correspond to large-moving heavenly bodies altering the clumps & filaments of dark matter/dark energy, which itself affects human consciousness at the quantum level....in predictable "cycles" & patterns.
all else from this book is pure rotgut conjecture
I agree. Very commercial. However, something at least.
Read Oswald Spengler instead. Yes, there IS something to this 'cycle' theory. But it requires development of the right-brain, something most Americans consider a fossil, something we've left behind for ever in our mad pursuit of technological brilliance. When the Empire finally closes down -- the Corporate or Wall Street Empire -- and we have our historical Dark Age, we will begin to do for the right brain what the Goths and the Renaissance Europeans did to balance post-Empire left-brain ism.
Many of the millinials are taking a Fourth Turn at the buffet.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2868992/
"Default to the Data."
In the case of Greece LITERALLY.
This is not about our "human minds." The "computers" and their "algo's" simply cough up a number that is "only" right
99.99999999999999999% of the time.
"Veering" might have something to do with it...but not "turning."
The other day, I held the door open for a herd of millenials exiting a Chinese buffet. Of the 12 or 13, not one of them was an oz. under 275 nor were any over 5'10" or so. They should have scales outside buffets- like weigh stations for these chunkers. If they are morbidly obese, no ticky in. Why should I, the recipient of the great Obamacare, have to subsidize the effects of this gluttony? Please someone get hold of Huffington Post- we need some more laws- chop chop mf'ers.
I often look at this abundance of flesh and think, "when exactly did they give up?" I have two friends who were so fat all they could do was anal sex. So maybe there are some positives, well except, that one of them died last year.
You always have the best, stories.
Take action, my man. You had your chance to hold the door shut, thereby forcing them to eat more and possibly die. And you failed in your Obamacare responsibilities. You, therefore, deserve to be saddled with the increased healthcare costs of these stubby refrigerators.
Take action my man!
If we can get the health care costs up high enough the government will have to ration health care enough so that the beetus will take care of a chunk of the population prior to getting on social security. Given the obesity epidemic is directly related to the western diet concentrated in the consumption of grain based carbohydrates, which was suddenly the government mandated diet of choice starting in the early 70's, it makes one wonder if the obesity epidemic is the government's answer to social security.
Buffets attract the rotund like water attacts fish. It is their natural habitat. Go to a healthfood store and see how many McFatties you can find.
Given that they were that young, it might not be a question of when they gave up but rather did they ever even try to begin with. Certainly mom and pop were helpful along the way.
American mind prefers oversimplification. Setting up what they like against what they don't like, aka duality, is what makes them stupid.
"Yes We Can."
The Nuclear age is over, imho this is the core of the problems we are seeing today. Here's the evidence you will not see anywhere. Finnish Nuclear engineer explains.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSQdB3myW9M
Further evidence that Uranium deposits would be depleted by year 2000ish
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBXrr7N9kKs
In my opinion understanding the HISTORY of the "nuclear age" does matter however...
A fukushima talk talk...from 2012...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-ZumauvnaU
Thanks ORI, listen to your talk now.
BTW, recent muon images at Fukushima confirms that all 6 reactors had complete melt downs, now there is unconfirmed reports that as many as 11 Japanese Nuclear power plants suffered complete melt downs/explosions.
Poor Japanese people Rusty, like they have been squeezed into being these lab rats for transhumanism...
Some people love to try and fit complexity into simple models .
How does this tie up with Martin Armstrongs' number-theory then ?
.... or the LT Debt cycles caused by central banking ?
All a bit wishy-washy ... and I have read too many books already ... thanks.
I think the turn is coming. But I KNOW that what they taught us about our own system is just a fairy tale. In honor of July 4th, perhaps a bit of reality about our founding is in order. http://www.thetruthaboutthelaw.com/the-peoples-case-for-what-happened-at...
Great link...Thanks
We are born, we struggle, we die. Same as it ever was. The end......
Yeah but along the way we get to fuck hot chicks when we can so there's that.
:)
Yea,,, who needs the final frontier, goals, wisdom and all that shit....
Just screw your brains out....
In the end that is all that will remain. Your progeny are your legacy. Without progeny your race will disappear.
We have made the mistake of putting the final frontier, goals, and wisdom above the primary directive of nature. Nature likes slow and constant change. We have instead taken shortcuts. Shortcuts lead to mistakes and mistakes sometimes lead to massive danger to the whole species. If we weren't in such a hurry make "progress" toward having everything for nothing then maybe we would take the time to understand the implications and potential costs of our actions before we take them.
"Homey say what?"
Fukushima. Your Honor, I rest my case.
"Fuck you too. And my name aint Shima."
So heads down you indebted ,over-qualified burger flippers and table attendants , you might get lucky and get in on this Markit.
If the stock markets fell by 50%, housing prices declined by 50%, manufacturing returned to the US and interest rates returned to 7% then there would be a future for those living in the US and only the government, Wall Street elitists and pension funds would be crushed.
A future with smaller, less intrusive government and banks that are only banks would be a benefit to most.
Crush leverage and lets get going.
Amen brother. Fuck old people who rely on fake fiat wealth.
You can have your ice cream but not your pensions and 401ks because the ice cream is real.
Causality is defined in terms of herd instinct; generations react irrationally to the achievements of their predecessors.
There is something Freudian in this analysis. I can live with the fact that psychology leads gut-ache in periods of plenty; as the US knew a period of euphoria post 1945, when it became THE REFERENCE.
The boomers grew up not knowing war on home soil.
But when preeminence moves to decline then the dominant psychology is no longer the Zeitgeist in positive terms but in negative terms and all who oppose it become dominant players on the other side of the divide.
When gut-ache then asserts itself amongst the majority, as age of plenty moves to age of EMPTY, the mindset and psychology then has to change.
But then... can the Millenials understand the hubristic mindset and subsequent denial of reality of their predecessors, which fogs their reality in false complacency and makes them impotent to see right from wrong; until maybe, maybe, its too late.
Thats what happened to Oedipus, when past hubris condemned his generation and his city, Thebes, to years of sterile war and tragedy.
Oedipus never met Freud. Now that is the timeline of human progress of mind over matter. We are our worst enemy when we go arrogant but we can avoid irretrievable decadence that haunted past civilizations if we learn from the past.
Our common data base built over millenia now allows us to see quickly and act fast. I guess that is the thesis of Schumpeter's creative destruction in theory. Humanity now has the logic meme tools to right wrong; unlike in Oedipus's times.
Lets hope so anyway.
If you slap a label on it, it sells better. History repeats, because people are lazy and easily forget the sacrifices of people that gave their lives for their freedoms.
Hey, Biforcated, Orthodox Yen Cross .... happy 4th of July .... to you and yours !
If the S&P500 were to come down by 50% look at the bright side. The Millennial generation can finally buy into America’s future at a good price.
What future? More BS deluding the public into thinking the only thing that matters is the S&P 500 and their 401K. You can send them to the gulag as long as their 401K or IRA has a positive return.
Amerika is a F'ed up police state.
Yeah, suggesting BTFD doesn't sound like much of a "turning".
And there's not much "collective urgency" out there either. The only collective urgency we have in Atlanta is people urgently trying to run over the cars in front of them and beside them in order to get to the place their oh so important selves are going a couple of minutes quicker.
NH is a Yale guy?
Just another Ivy League pontificator?
The only thing the Millennials will become famous for is breaking length of time records for staring down at their phones.
I think millenials get a bad rap. Our kids aren't fat at all, don't owe anyone anything, and *never* believed any politicians. I suppose if one if were to look around and see nothing but fat kids they're probably sitting at a buffet table themselves.
Weathy families have all but beaten childhood obesity, but middle class and mostly lower middle class and lower class children are still WAY overweight.
I live in a village/town of about 2500 and about 1/2 on some sort of financial assistance. Last picture I saw in the local paper was a picture of the kids standing around a flag pole on flag day. There were 2 or 3 that were just a bit over weight and the rest looked like little round balls with hands and feet.
P.S. I didn't give you the down arrow :)
Some people "get it"...
There will be monumental change and not all of it will be for the worst.
One of my favorite economic sayings is that 20% of the economy does "beter" during an economic depression. (The old funeral home and liquor store analogy)
If the USD loses 50% or more of its value, there will be a re-birth of USA based manufacturing.
Many people say that the depression era was a "unifier" for many families, since they could simply not survive without each others help.
Though I must admit that I am horrified to live in a country where people don't know how to live incredibly frugally.
I am horrified to guess what will happen when people with no cooking ability need to feed their family on 10 bucks a week or live in a world where the "freebies" end... I am afraid they will either wander the streets with clubs, curl up in fetal position and die or hopefully become adaptive and smart... Perhaps even become better as a result of the coming hardship.
Guess that is why I prefer to live in Ukraine as long as they keep worshipping these green things I have with me with pictures of dead presidents. :)
Yes, we're in it!
No.Fifth.Turning
"Less immigration"?
"Lower crime rates"?
What am I missing?
Everyone has to pay a piper. It is usually displayed through their sometimes and sometimes not so subtle omissions.
HERE IT IS!
Stop whoring for Wall Street.
http://www.showrealhist.com/yTRIAL.html
http://patrick.net/?p=1223928
Thank you!
Collective consciousness, deeper social trends, rhythms of history, ya I can get behind this stuff. We are creatures of pattern and imitation which are traits we should be putting more emphasis on.
BUT
If he is suggesting that we should invest, or reinvest in the current market structure IF there is a collapse, then I simply can not consider this guy to be a "leading thinker" in any thing. If this goes down in flames that is a opportunity we must capitalize on with aggressive and comprehensive action.
We have all of the knowledge, tools, and infrastructure to build a healthier, more properous society designed around decentralization as the main theme. No Wall Street, no Washington DC, or in my case Bay Street and Ottawa. Nobody needs, or wants for that matter a small, remote, group of people making choices and handling the property/prosperity of the nation. It does not work, it will never work. Period.
There is no reason the complete function of society can not be handled at a local level. Local markets, local government and law allow for adaptive and reactive systems and prevent the overbearing blinding power of the institutions we see today.
For him to say, OH FOR SOME REASON... things don't change much and suddenly they do without even suggesting how that would be possible is plain intellectual dishonesty. We(the masses) are trapped in a social matrix that is designed to ensure a small group of people maintain ALL of the influence over society. Until I start hearing conversations revolving around that topic specifically and what can EASILY be done to rearrange it, then it is safe to assume any change being put forth will be the same pig with a new wardrobe.
Peace, one love to the people, fuk the oligarchy, rant off.
Gold suppression is a blessing .... for young people who are serious about .... diversifying into PMs .... but, personally .... I hate it .... I'm running out of time !!!
Rub this magic stick and i shall tell you the future!
"In 1980 only 11% of 25-34 year-olds lived with their parents. Today 23%. This is partially motivated by the economy, but also because the generations personally got along very well."
Motivated by the economy: 99.9%
Motivated by generations "getting along well": 0.1%
the elephant in the room he doesn't touch is the changing of the global guard. the usa has enjoyed an immense advantage over the world just as britain had before them. the brits may have ben really optimistic pre ww2 but that same generation suffered greatly in the aftermath as the empire collapsed. the same fate is awiting the optimistic millenials.
interesting comment about the study of economics. i studied economics when it changed from a socisl science to a math science. i have been coaching my daughter to write about the economic links to her various elective courses in anthropology to history courses and polysci courses. the profs have been impressed.
He is America’s leading thinker on who today’s generations are, what motivates them and how they will shape the nation’s future.
Who's the runner up?
And exactly how are they going to buy stocks flipping burgers 25hrs a week???
There's gona be so many people with no income when they reach retirement age in the US, this place is gona make the "Living Dead" look like a cakewalk.
I have a great idea, while we're at it, let's make sure their parents assets get taxed at least 50% when they die so the kids will be fucking homeless also.
And save me the bullshit 'learn a trade', 'be frugal', etc etc etc comments. My comment isn't about 'what you can do', it's about 'what is going to happen'.
I forgot, if the market crashes and the economy goes to hell(even more), and with the robots coming, will they even have the 25hr week slave labor job?
The insane inflation of the late 70's and the battle to strangle infaltion in the 80's opened a great opportunity for me, as a teenager, to get into a very carefully laddered CD portfolio, timing was everything, and if you did follow Fed policies, you could ride the high inflation returns well into the 80's and even beyond in some cases. The turmoil is always an opportunity. Being so very young, I went for the simplest way to play interest rates, and won.
Were I in the same place today, I would be hard pressed to see an opening. Nobody in the average income range can afford stocks. Bonds are in a bubble, coupons are near zereo, negative with inflation. Today, there is no opening to profit, not like I saw in the late 70's. The play was obvious, all you had to do was follow carefully the Federal Reserve's plans as regards taming inflation.
I missed the interviews with Messers Dewey and Screwem. They should be made into a series with this one.
What a bunch of simplistic, wordy, and mindless gibberish. This kind of "Junk History" contributes nothing to the advancement of mankind's journey. It only serves to feed the simplistic and lazy mind to make overdrawn conclusions and in this case this tome tends to lean to the right on the political spectrum. Never has the nation and the world been in such dire need of rational and sound thinking to guide us through this difficult time.
Yet, we are now turning to this kind of junk thinking, simplistic answers from religious zealots and useless polemics from mindless politicians.
If our species is to survive and our enlightened culture to progress, we must reject such simplistic models...the thinking minds among us must do the hard work necessary to discover rational solutions to our most perplexing problems.
Having suffered thru the 4th Turning both in grad school and as a management consultant, I found the interview just short of a bore by a man (two really) who have created their own device for viewing human history and life. The value of the work is that it attempts to make sense of human life as we want it: logical and meaningful, but fails at both. The patterns introduced are interesting but misleading. Human life is infinitly variable since man shapes his existance to suit life on a planet which has many factors impacting how human beings can survive and live. Human adaptability means that humans are highly capable of adjusting to change, we like to adjust to change and do it well. Avoid patterns since they are the first thing to go in human life.
The early religious literature took human life cycles as the bones of history and hung a great deal on the bones, social roles, famal life and the lessons of human history to ligitimate their efforts to give form and substance to human affairs. One rule they seem to overlook is that mankind seldom learns from past history and seems to relive events again and again but with different outcomes.
I think it is easy to believe in cycles. Let's face it, life is about cycles, or waves (waves are really just cycles drawn out over time). All energy travels as waves. DNA is really just cyclical strands bound together.
But the problem with cycle theory is that you cannot predict how high the highs can get, or how low the lows can get. Let's hope that after the destruction there is enough left to create.
What fucking planet does this guy live on?
- Ned
There is no effing' 'fourth turning' here, BuckO. The simple truth since March 10th 2008 is that the global Ponzi of Casino Capitalism has collapsed, and Too-BIG-to-fail was invented to delay the onset of a global collapse, but because of leverage in these too-BIG-to-fail banks, there is no possible way for Casino Capitalism Ponzi schemes to get anyone out of the DEBT Ponzi that will soon topple every Western Government in the entire World. World War Three may buy more time, but the fact of the matter is that the entire World economy, and banks, are not going to turn anything around once the contagion starts manifesting. Markets will implode on Monday, tuesday, et cetera. There is no escape from Ponzi Hell except in the pea-brains of industry shills like, Tavares.
Yup. 100 years of central planning (federal reserve) is enough to destroy just about anything.
If one reads carefully, one can see this guy is a massive statist, collectivist, authoritarian. Maybe that's what happens to people who study too much history, and think too little about individuals and fundamentals.
One example: he attempts to claim collectivist == practical.
Millennials are much more practical, collectivist and much more optimistic about how things are going to turn out.
I'll leave the other clues for everyone to figure out on their own.
I couldn't agree more. I find their theory useful but their view of the future is the usual academic Marxist in denial trope.
No one is even pretending to be in control?
Ughhh
just quit while you are ahead NH.