Today's post is a bit unusual for several reasons. First, it centers on a podcast rather than a TV clip, article, movie or music from a genuine media outlet (like a printed newspaper or magazine). These days, the number of new online newspapers and magazines has exploded, although not all are legitimate businesses, many are simply mining for web clickbait and may ultimately spam people willing to provide their email addresses. But the evolving media market is a key part of this story. My main reservation is that the podcast itself comes from a conservative think tank, rather than a genuine media outlet, so I had some reservations because many such organizations are proven to promote known falsehoods. But upon listening to the discussion in this podcast, I feel pretty comfortable sharing it.
The origins begin with a new book that will be released on August 14, 2018 entitled "Zero Hour for Gen X: How the Last Adult Generation Can Save America from Millennials" by Matthew Hennessey (available for purchase on August 14, 2018 at Amazon.com, see http://amzn.to/2D1GqPt for detail). There is a podcast at the end of this post which I am sharing because its interesting and not overtly partisan in nature in spite of coming from a conservative think tank.
Note that the book's author, Mr. Hennessey, is a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, which has been owned by Australian immigrant Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation since 2007. The Murdoch purchase ended a century of Bancroft-family ownership at Dow Jones & Co. (the WSJ publisher) and it put the premier U.S. business newspaper directly into Murdoch's very partisan media oversight, although its worth acknowledging that Dow Jones has struggled financially since being acquired by News Corp. The difficulty has more to do with a rapidly changing media landscape than the political leanings of its primary owner. The new media landscape includes adept outlets including startups like Business Insider which began in 2009, plus traditional newspapers like the UK's Financial Times which have expanded into the U.S., not to mention Bloomberg's ubiquitous terminals at firms all over Wall Street which have rendered the WSJ far less important (and less relevant) than traditional newspapers are, with their less frequently updated publishing schedules.
Immigrant Rupert Murdoch's Struggle to Keep Up With Tech
Indeed, the global television and entertainment conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch and his family renamed its entertainment assets 21st Century Fox (including its TV network and movie studio among other things) in 2013, but surprisingly, on December 14, 2017, it announced (see http://politi.co/2qM81PC for the news) that The Walt Disney Co. had struck a deal valued at $52.4 billion to acquire most of the Hollywood holdings of 21st Century Fox. All that remains of the original conglomerate he created is what he calls "the new Fox" — essentially, Fox News, Fox Business Network, the national Fox sports networks, his broadcast network and a some local stations. None of "the new Fox" are considered leaders in breaking important news, and in spite of being quite profitable, they have also won fewer prestigious journalism awards such as Pulitzer's compared to their biggest rivals. Instead, Murdoch's model has been to use media to advance his particular view of conservatism, often by perpetuating biases of his viewers in order to secure their political votes, rather than legitimate news coverage.
Anyway, in Murdoch's core news business, Rupert Murdoch made a number of atypical missteps since taking control of the WSJ, including a completely incoherent pricing strategy for the newspaper itself (aggressive and unjustified price increases among longtime subscribers, who started dumping the WSJ), a poorly-conceived and poorly-executed Weekend Journal that aimed to compete with the New York Times but which failed by most measures, and perhaps most importantly, rapid turnover of the valuable journalism staff of the WSJ, relying instead upon more freelance journalists without much loyalty to the news outlet they were doing work for, rather than the paid staff who had helped to made it such a great American news outlet to begin with.
About Demographic Groups, And Particularly Generation X
With all that said, this post isn't even a diatribe about about Rupert Murdoch's (un)ethical or even business failings, it's about demographics, specifically Generation X (or Gen X) being squeezed out by the loud and self-absorbed generations before and after it.
In spite of having personal reservations about City Journal, which is published by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research — a conservative think-tank based in NYC, not too dissimilar from entities including the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute — I would just acknowledge that facts (something that the Heritage Foundation in particular seems to have run away from in recent years) should always be considered non-partisan, especially when it comes to demographic trends which are validated by U.S. Census Bureau data and is mandated to be collected by the U.S. Constitution.
I do not dismiss data simply because the source is from an entity whose political leanings are different from my own, although I will not blindly accept them, either (I do the same for more progressive sources) and all media consumers should do the same.
This particular podcast is one I am willing to share because the content is not especially political or partisan, rather it addressed the author's forthcoming book and some of the broader implications of demographics. In this podcast, Mr. Hennessy discusses with Aaron Renn the fading of the Baby Boom generation, the rise of supposedly tech-savvy millennials (who did not build any of the tech they will be responsible for maintaining), and what he considers to be the challenge for those in-between, known as Generation X and potential implications in the future.
They discuss the fact that Gen X is sandwiched between two large demographic cohorts, and how those cohorts share some similarities in terms of size and the impact their size has on making them both more self-absorbed simply because of their raw numbers. While some of Hennessey's assertions are more of a warning for his own generation (Gen X), particularly because younger Millennials seem very impatient in spite of their lacking relevant experience and old Boomers refuse to step down even though they really should because they are now too old to continue (especially in governance), the concern Hennessey seems to suggest is that Millennials don't view the world from the conservative perspective that 1980's sitcom "Family Ties" character Alex P. Keaton (played by actor-turned-star Michael J. Fox) is not viewed favorably by younger voters who now outnumber both Gen Xers and Baby Boomers.
Gen X's Ability to Navigate Around Self-Absorbed Generations
In reality, Gen X is not especially conservative from a political perspective, with about one-third being registered Democrats, one-third being registered Republicans and one-third being independent voters. Also, Gen X has proven itself to be fairly nimble in standing out rather than being swept away by much larger demographic cohort groups before and after them. Its not that special, but it was a survival skill necessary for a group used to being overlooked, and that's a skill that neither Boomers nor Millennials posses. It's also a huge credit to Gen X's ability to stand out in spite of the odds which the author doesn't appear to acknowledge.
While it's most likely that Gen X's tenure in political leadership will be short-lived due largely to Baby Boomer unwillingness to step aside and get out of the way, combined with overly-eager Millennials eager to take center stage, its also appropriate to acknowledge that the transition Generation X leadership might prove to be very, very valuable for the country due to several reasons.
As the generation who literally grew up with the computer, one can convincingly argue (successfully) that Gen Xers are the true "digital natives" (the 1983 movie "War Games" which starred a young Matthew Broderick is perhaps the best example) who also grew up in a time of analog television, radio, movies, media, etc. which means Gen Xers are therefore uniquely able to assess the benefits to each way of doing things, and they might more wisely choose a path that seamlessly blends traditional and new methods of doing things than their younger Millennial or older Boomer counterparts.
Beyond that, there's also a degree of maturity that Gen Xers can bring to policy discussions that has been sorely lacking from current Baby Boomer political leadership, which has become overtly partisan and less willing to compromise, which has always been a cornerstone of successful, good governance. The selfish "my way or the highway" is a hallmark of Baby Boomer leadership in recent years, and its an utter failure in governance.
Also, as already noted, Gen X is neither conservative, nor liberal. Overall, they are middle-of-the road, with roughly one-third registered as Democrats, one-third registered as Republicans, and the last third as "independents" who are not registered with either of the two major U.S. political parties.
Baby Boomer Ethos: We Don't Care About Fixing Social Security As Long As We Get Ours
There are a number of big challenges on the horizon that Baby Boomer lawmakers have simply refused to address, perhaps hoping to force their younger counterparts to deal with them instead. One is the ballooning of people their age who are actually eligible to collect Social Security and Medicare. Privatization is a favored solution offered by many conservatives, but that's really trying to transfer the problem to another party that can take blame for any Boomer failure, rather than a genuine fix. It's a myth to say that the system will be bankrupt because that's a falsehood; and the numbers prove it.
Social Security Not (Yet) Bankrupt, But Giveaways to Higher-Income Earners Must Stop
Social Security taxes are paid for by both employers and employees. Yet for reasons that are unexplained, there is a mysterious cap to earnings that are taxed, which means that Social Security taxes are only paid until incomes reach $128,700 in 2018. That means for every penny earned over $128,700, no Social Security taxes are paid into the system. Admittedly, the maximum benefit someone can collect from the Social Security system is also capped, but its always been a tax, not an indemnity life insurance plan or investment. I would add that the maximum earnings of $128,700 is not especially high, either. Perhaps it was unthinkable that anyone could earn $128,700 in 1935 when it began, but the few, periodic increases have not kept pace with changes in the cost of living. Today, that's not even considered a particularly high income level, especially in certain geographic regions of the country.
So the earnings cap for Social Security taxes can and should be increased to a higher level (or eliminated completely), the exact amount is what lawmakers really SHOULD be discussing, with a debate about what that amount should be and why. We can also discuss whether there should be a certain level of income and/or assets that merit no longer being eligible to receive Social Security benefits. Remember, its a program to keep the elderly who can no longer work from going hungry or homeless. But should Rupert Murdoch be entitled to collect as much in Social Security and Medicare as an older widowed woman from Nebraska of modest means gets? Does he really need or even deserve it? After all, hasn't he received enough in tax benefits?
Yet Baby Boomer lawmakers have not had a single serious discussion of this matter even now that 10,000 Baby Boomers a day are going on the proverbial dole. Yet rather than doing anything about the issue, Baby Boomer lawmakers still in office have kept kicking the proverbial can down the road for future American lawmakers to deal with. The only issue for them is that the solutions future generations make may not necessarily be good for Baby Boomers. That means middle-of-the-road solutions are arguably the best outcome for all parties involved, except the very wealthy (and the selfish).
Anyway, have a listen to this podcast below, or by visiting the following two links (one is the conservative think tank's "City Journal" magazine article on the author's forthcoming book, the other is the website for the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research's podcast). Although some of the narrative is speculative or uncertain (such as excessive technology use altering the way Millennials' brains process information), or what the priorities will need to be for the future leaders of America known as the Millennials) but most of the conversation is interesting and relatively on-point. Certainly, there is a risk of cutting Gen X out of the discussion prematurely, which would be a mistake. I did like the reference he makes to succession in the British Royal Family.
Whether Mr. Hennessey's prophecy is too worrisome is also a relevant subject to debate. But I believe its an appropriate conversation for America to have. Failure of society to do so could mean some very useful solutions are overlooked.
If you were born between 1945 and 1965, you are by definition a Baby Boomer whether you admit it or not (the exact start and finish of a generation is not universally defined, but the consensus is that each generation lasts about twenty years, though people at the beginning or end could likely fit into the generation that precedes or succeeds it).
Yet contrary to the Boomer-centric publishing industry (or television, radio, movies or any other media outlet within their control) of years past, today Baby Boomers are no longer most of the authors, readers or publishers anymore, which means that's no longer a Boomer pep rally as it previously was (indeed, the publishing industry is struggling somewhat these days, which means that today, publishers more likely make decisions on what to publish based on what will actually sell). It began when a venture capitalist questioned why technology hadn't improved as fast as it did previously (leading to slow economic productivity growth, listen/see http://bit.ly/2imEfHQ for more detail), or the recession lasted longer and saw a weaker recovery, and all of his research suggested that Boomer behavior and the economic/political policies implemented under their watch was largely responsible.
In that environment, Bruce Cannon Gibney, who is a 40-something Gen Xer (he was born in 1976), has published a new book entitled "A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America". He says the Boomer attitude of "Me first and damn the consequences" has been a disaster for the country. In short, He posits that too many Boomers are selfish, lacking in empathy and financially irresponsible and its been a disaster for the U.S. economy. Known as the "Me Generation," the Baby Boomers have long been described as self-interested, but never quite in such damning terms.
"My assertion isn't that all Boomers are sociopaths, but that a sufficiently large percentage of them behave in ways that appear to be sociopathic and because they're such a large generation ... any personality defects could easily translate into political dysfunction. I think that is what happened."
Suffice to say, Mr. Gibney's new book is making headlines not only because of the provocative title, but because he uses a lot of verifiable facts to validate his central thesis that as a whole, the Baby Boomer generation have some sociopathic tendencies, and they have undermined the prosperous, progressive America they were raised in. He uses credible statistics to show how Baby Boomers have turned American dynamism into stagnation, inequality, and bipartisan fiasco.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Bruce Cannon Gibney has also been getting a lot of angry mail since his new book, "A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America," came out in early March 2017. Of course, a lot of that correspondence is still snail-mail paper letters, since Boomers tend not to e-mail as instinctively as subsequent generations do. Still, he has wisely not published his own e-mail address, just in case.
There was an interesting video accompanying the typical news promoting a new book, which can be viewed below, or at http://ow.ly/CZKe309WwHa:
This Salon Talks Video was produced by Alexandra Clinton Men's Journal had an interview with Mr. Gibney at https://bit.ly/2Vne7kQ which is worth reading. Also, the Boston Globe interviewed him which can be seen at http://bit.ly/2l9KXCA.
Similarly, WBUR, which is Boston's NPR news station had an equally interesting radio interview with him. The central thesis is not Baby Boomer narcissism or sociopathy per se (he doesn’t claim to be a psychiatrist who can diagnose anyone), but the tendencies of the generation as a whole have failed to save for their own retirements as they should have, and are therefore are over-reliant upon their own children. As proof, he notes that we see this in the national data based on cohort savings levels and national savings levels, for which there have been in significant declines in savings rates since the 1970's when the Baby Boomer generation first entered the workforce.
Beyond that, he also cites data that supports the claim that Boomers have largely failed to support public policies that maintained critical infrastructure on things like roads, airports, schools and the like, putting future generations at a disadvantage relative to the environment Boomers grew up in, which he claims is sociopathic behavior.
"I don't posit that all Boomers are sociopaths, just that a large fraction of them are," Mr. Gibney said. "The study done by the National Institutes of Health speculated in the '80s that the consequences [of Boomer behavior] would get worse over time, and I think it has," said Gibney.
Raised in an era of seemingly unending economic prosperity with relatively permissive parents, and the first generation to grow up with a television, Baby Boomers developed an appetite for consumption and a lack of empathy for future generations that has resulted in unfortunate policy decisions, argues Mr. Gibney.
"These things conditioned the Boomers into some pretty unhelpful behaviors and the behaviors as a whole seem sociopathic," he said.
Not surprisingly, he also cites the Boomers' unprecedented divorce rates. Mr. Gibney told WBUR:
"Prior generations did not divorce frequently, in substantial part because no-fault divorce wasn't around until '69. But the odd thing is that the Boomers actually have higher rates of divorce than even their children at comparable points in the marriage. So their rates of divorce are lower. And that's relevant not because divorce is a moral good or bad, per se, in any given situation, but because one of the key sociopathic indicators is an inability to form a lasting relationship, and I think divorce certainly falls into that category."
To listen to WBUR’s interview with Mr. Gibney, listen below, or visit http://wbur.fm/2mJId1d:
Washington, DC's WTOP Federal News Radio interviewed Bruce Cannon Gibney on April 5, 2017. That interview can be listened to below, or by visiting https://wtop.com/life-style/2017/04/13310521/:
Canada's MacLean's magazine covered it from a non-American perspective, which some have equated to being the equivalent the U.S. magazine Time or Britain's Economist, and that can be viewed at http://bit.ly/2m1nHvK.
"A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America" is an important work because it systematically dismantles many of the claims that Baby Boomers have made for the past several decades. He also argues that several hallmarks that Boomers have attributed to themselves are simply them taking credit for the work of others. He notes that it's time that we dispense with this meretricious Baby Boomer rebranding that's gone on. For example, items Baby Boomers like to give themselves credit for, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not occur because Baby Boomers decided to protest, rather that legislation was passed into law by their parents. He also notes that Brown v. Board of Education was not decided by 14-year-olds, and that would have been the oldest Baby Boomer at the time. It was decided by nine old, white men on the U.S. Supreme Court. The Clean Air Act that was passed in 1963. Again, that's not a Boomer victory either.
Although his core thesis is negative, it's probably not completely unexpected. Gen X has been told by Baby Boomers for its entire existence that there would never, ever be a generation as 'great' as the Baby Boom was (although now we have the Millennial generation which not only outnumbers Baby Boomers, but will eventually surpass them in votes, too). Gen X was also force-fed Boomer music, movies and television for decades. But keep in mind that Gen X fought Baby Boomers over our name, as many Boomers wanted to call Generation X (unoriginally) "Baby Busters", but we know how that turned out. Similarly, Millennials followed the same path and rejected the labels "Gen Y" and "Boomer Babies" for a label that's better suited to them. As a result, there is deep-seated resentment of the Baby Boomer generation, especially among the generations that follow. As a result, they don't always write glowing endorsements that Baby Boomers have grown accustomed to.
Forbes does suggest that Gen X seems destined to assume political power in the not-too-distant future due to no other reason than demographic reality (see http://bit.ly/2n1HQ4d for the article), and Politico suggests (see http://politi.co/1K9zu1t for the article) that the country as a whole will likely be better off once Gen X assumes political power in Washington, DC. But Boomers have been slow to relinquish power, perhaps to ensure that they keep policy benefiting them as long as possible.
Bruce Cannon Gibney does say "I do have hope [for the future]. Young people do seem to embrace an empathetic agenda, up to and including supporting senior entitlements, I think in part because they've been misled about it. They're certainly much more progressive about climate change and civil rights than the Boomers are. So I am hopeful, but it will be some time before they're in control. The Boomers still hold 69% of the House. They're obviously in the White House for some time. Whether that's four more weeks or eight more years remains to be seen. And they control substantial chunks of the judiciary and the administrative state. So we are going to be living in a Boomer America for some time, in part because the policies themselves will carry forward for some time."
I've always argued that generation lines are fuzzy (see one post at https://goo.gl/DPruQP for more). At best, generations describe more of a common mindset. The Wall Street Journal reports (see http://on.wsj.com/29CoIAC for the article) some commentary by Neil Howe, who along with co-author William Strauss, used the term "Millennials" in their book "Generations: The History of America's Future 1584 to 2069." By Mr. Howe's estimate, Gen X is a group defined by parental divorce and indifference, and the date ranges in birth from 1961 to 1981.
"The old joke is that it [Gen X] was the first generation born when people took pills NOT to have children," he said. "Much of the culture turned actively anti-child. The giant genre of the 60s and 70s was child-devil horror movies." The U.S. fertility rate hit a low thanks to the intro of the birth control pill in the 1960's, plus the divorce rate accelerated to unprecedented rates, so children born into that era have been described as one of the least-nurtured groups in American history.
But Gen X doesn't wallow in self-pity as Baby Boomers and Millennials sometimes do (listen to some Boomer music or watch some of their movies if you need proof), rather Xers grew up fending for themselves, and learned that the ONLY institution we could depend on was ourselves. Hence, long ago, Gen Xers developed an independent spirit and can-do attitude, and became more than capable of taking care of ourselves. Boomer parents didn't do a great job looking after Xers as kids, and government was close to useless with an ineptitude caused by a complete lack of funding and public support.
Less anyone get the wrong idea, that's not to say that Gen X is explicitly anti-government, but our perspective most visibly manifests itself in outright Gen X hostility towards government infringement upon people's individual rights. That's one reason why Gen X has led the way (and become quite good at navigating how to succeed) with issues like bans on same-sex marriage, restrictions on voting rights or police brutality going unpunished. This means that not only did Gen X make marriage equality happen nationwide (Jim Obergefell, whose name is associated with the supreme court case that made it legal nationwide is a Gen Xer who was born in 1967), but they also see right-wing attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement as oppressive, and Gen X has learned to successfully use the courts to overturn many attempts at voter restrictions that Republicans have implemented.
Voting restrictions have lost in the courts in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Texas, Indiana and elsewhere, although its unclear whether all are complying. The Republican party has been under a U.S. Supreme Court consent decree in place since 1982 because of previous voter intimidation efforts in New Jersey back in 1981. Donald J. Trump has been actively encouraging vigilantism among his supporters by claiming the elections are "rigged" against his candidacy. The Trump campaign's questionable "poll-monitoring" vigilantism (most often targeting racial minorities who tend to vote for Democrats), with supporters who call themselves "vote protectors" complete with phony, semi-official looking I.D. Badges that could be generated by vigilantes online at websites like stopthesteal.org which now threatens to extend the original decree against the Republican National Committee for another 8 years because it may held in contempt of that decree. Slate is reporting (see http://slate.me/2fa0JMJ for more) that on October 1, 2016, U.S. District Judge John Michael Vazquez demanded that the Republican National Committee (RNC) provide certain documents in 24 hours.
Anyway, back to the actual campaigns. The appeal of the campaign slogan "Make America Great Again" from Republican Presidential nominee Donald J. Trump means absolutely nothing to kids who grew up when Xers did (or later), which could be a major problem for his candidacy. Zilch. Nada. Zip. It's all just empty words that doesn't mean anything. Make no mistake, this is really a generational perspective, only the Baby Boomers-led campaigns don't quite know what to make of it, but its clear that Gen X and Millennials aren't quite necessarily rallying around that message.
For Gen X kids, most of whom were born in the late 1960's and 1970's, Mr. Trump couldn't have chosen a more irrelevant slogan, so he shouldn't be surprised if few of us are rallying around his candidacy.
I was born in April 1969. The Baby Boomer Summer of Love and Woodstock all took place a few months afterwards. The joke among many Gen X kids is that we weren't at Woodstock, but at least a few of us were likely conceived there! But Gen X doesn't look back at those days with reverence, but a sense of having missed the big party. We Gen Xers didn't get to celebrate, but many of us feel like we got stuck with the hangover. Gen Xers were raised in the least child-friendly era in U.S. history. Not only did more than half our parents get divorced when we were kids, but most of our mothers entered the workforce even if they didn't get divorced. The latter issue wasn't completely their fault. The OPEC oil embargo played a role, as did stagflation, but the point is that our childhoods were probably best remembered by waiting in long gas lines and inflation gobbling up our allowances so it wasn't worth as much a week later. Oh yeah, and the Iranian revolution in 1979, during an era when America was making enemies around the world. We also grew up amid racial riots, following the Stonewall riots and a "white flight" out of the cities, as well as hearing endless stories about how horrible Vietnam was, yet we have zero first-hand knowledge of any of that. We don't understand what you're talking about when you say "make America great again".
That said, our parents were smart enough not to implement another draft, although that didn't stop them from sending troops to Grenada, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. While Boomers had free love in the 1960's, when we Gen Xers came of age, we were taught that HIV could kill us, but what did they try to teach us? Abstinence, like that's ever worked. Making matters worse, they screwed us when came to education financing. Gone were the days of being able to attend college tuition-free in some Western states. Oh, and because so many Baby Boomers defaulted on their student loan debts, Congress re-classified student loan debts the only type of debt that could NEVER be charged-off in a bankruptcy court -- thanks for that, Boomers. Once again, you got the party, but left the hangover for your kids.
I don't think there's really all that much from the past that Gen X kids really want to return to. We grew up watching TV shows from the early 1970's fail at racial integration, at least initially. From our perspective, those days are best left in the past.
I acknowledge that neither political candidate is exactly loved, in fact, both the candidate the GOP nominated and the nominee that Democrats elected BOTH have the highest disapproval rates in the history of Presidential elections. Mrs. Clinton should not presume we are "with her" even if she is preferable to her opponents. Both candidates also represent only the Baby Boomer generation of politicians, which is a problem. While we may yet see other Boomer candidates in coming elections, their days of leading the country are thankfully nearing their natural end, and that won't happen a moment too soon from many Gen Xers' perspective. Politico recently observed that (see http://politi.co/1K9zu1t for the article) Baby Boomers in Congress have given us nothing but years and years of gridlock; yet research shows Gen Xers will be more productive. It's time to step aside Boomers. Let Gen X lawmakers like Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin (a lesbian) or New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (an African-American) have a chance to change a Congress best known for a culture wars and gridlock into something better as a "gift" from Baby Boomers' time in power. We want a government that works for the people who elected them, not special interests who bought and paid for many of your campaigns.
The Boomer experience at the gas pump in 1960 vs. the Xer experience in 1973
Important Points of Comparison between Baby Boomers and Generation X:
Viacom International Insights, part of the global media conglomerate Viacom, home to such channels as MTV, TVLand and Nickelodeon (among others) has conducted an extensive international study, called Gen X Today, which asks what's become of global adults ages 30 to 49, and offers a more in-depth picture of what their lives are like now.
In the 10-minute documentary (see below), you'll hear in their own words what participants from the Gen X project had to say about their lives – especially their relationships, careers, and interests.
To better understand Gen X, Viacom surveyed over 12,000, conducted a quantitative survey of people ages 30 to 49 and 18 to 29 (for contrast) across 21 countries, spanning every region of the globe (Viacom hosted a series of intimate dinner discussions and ethnographic interviews in 8 countries). This was supplemented with qualitative Gen X research that included asking them to document their lives through photos, dinner gatherings to talk about their lives, and time spent in their homes in 8 cities around the world. Viacom says it believes theirs to be the most wide-ranging study of the Gen X demographic to date.
The reason?
Because Gen X grew up with Viacom's channels and continues to be very important to the company. Worldwide, Viacom says it reaches well over 180 million Gen Xers.
Viacom correctly observes that while Millennials rather than Gen X are usually associated with the world of technology and social media, and acknowledges that there are many notable Gen Xers among the tech and social media trailblazers whose work is still shaping lives around the globe today:
Google: Larry Page, 43 / Sergey Brin, 42
Twitter: Jack Dorsey, 39 / Biz Stone, 42 / Evan Williams, 44
Uber: Travis Kalanic, 39
WhatsApp: Jan Koum, 40 / Brian Acton, 44
Spotify: Martin Lorentzon, 47
This is just one area where Viacom found that Gen X was the source of socio-cultural shifts sometimes credited to Millennials, most of whom were not even old enough to create the technology companies that they are so closely associated with. In fact, no baby in diapers ever created a social media network. In fact, it was Gen X who created each of these things. Viacom's research shows that it was Gen X is the force behind many recent socio-cultural transformations more often associated with Millennials.
For years, the world watched Millennials with fascination. But Gen X came of age with social media and interactive screens, and they have been credited with countless transformations of what it means to be an adult. As it turns out, while the world was focusing on Boomers, Millennials and Post-Millennials, Generation X quietly reinvented what it means to be an adult. Importantly, Gen X is not dependent on the technology it invented, rather sees them are tools that enhance their lives, but does not define their existence. This is a generation that can still hold an actual conversation on the telephone, not just rely on truncated text messages that eliminate all the subtle nuances that make human interactions so great. One reporter (likely a Baby Boomer) for the Knoxville News Sentinel (see her article at http://knoxne.ws/2eZczMb for more) observed "You can still get a Gen Xer to talk to you on the cellphone, for example, but you might as well forget it and just text the Millennial" which says a lot. From social media participation to flexible work arrangements to the acceptance and normalization of a wider range of relationships, one thing is clear: Gen X did it first.
One of the more interesting findings is that as Gen X approach mid-life, they're managing to avoid midlife crises. While earlier generations became overwhelmed with responsibility, stymied by regret, or unsure of their identities in their middle years, Gen X have unwittingly stumbled upon a remedy.
Yet importantly, during this time, media and advertising have targeted Gen X with tired and unimaginative messages based on antiquated ideas of adulthood—including the three milestones of homeownership, marriage, and children. So, how did one generation go from young iconoclasts to conventional married homeowners in 20 years? They didn't. It quietly reinvented each life-stage and put its own stamp on each one.
The rebellion that once defined their youth has transformed into a radical acceptance of who they are. They're not struggling to follow a script. They don't want to be anything they're not. They're living life in their own way. And they don't give a f*ck about what others think. That's a pretty radical change from the way that Baby Boomers approached middle-age, often associated with mid-life crises and regrets.
Although I live in New York City, I've never been a really big fan of Wall Street investment banks for many reasons. For one thing, they aren't really big employers, its just that they pay the handful of people who work for them obscene amounts of money (in good years, at least). But the typical employees remind me a lot of the character Patrick Bateman portrayed by Christian Bale in the 2000 movie "American Psycho" ... a pompous investment banker who rambles on about Whitney Houston's first album and pays high-price hookers to have sex in front of him before he murders them and many, many others. The fact is that all banks, including investment banks, earn money by selling money for a higher price than they pay for it, and Goldman isn't unique in that regard. But consumer lending is very tightly regulated, while the same is not true for investment banking, although competition does help regulate prices somewhat there. Oh, yeah, and Wall Street made some big bets that failed and crashed the world economy in 2007-2008 and came to taxpayers for a bailout, which is why Goldman Sachs is becoming more "banklike" while others, including GE decided to get out of the banking business altogether.
"The years since the financial crisis have not been particularly kind to Goldman Sachs's moneymaking machine — not that anyone is weeping for the company or the people who work there — despite an improving economy and record numbers of corporate financings and mergers and acquisitions."
Goldman has basically acquired its way into the consumer banking business by buying GE Capital Bank (now known as GS Bank, see the news story about the acquisition from GE at http://nyti.ms/2caS9Q2 for more). But GE actually acquired that part of the consumer banking business from the insurance giant MetLife back in 2011 (see http://on.wsj.com/2bJsJpG for the news), though GE made some improvements, among them offering much higher-than-average interest rates on savings and simplifying the online banking interface which resulted in the deposit base growing from $7.5 billion when GE bought the unit to $16 billion when it sold the business to Goldman Sachs five years later. One competitor is now known as Synchrony Bank, which has both a consumer lending business as well as a deposit business that GE spun off a few years ago, mainly because the business was too big to find a lender that could both afford it, and that regulators would allow to buy the business. So far, Goldman Sachs has kept the consumer deposit business going largely as GE did, although its not without competition in the online banking space, including companies like Synchrony, Ally, American Express, Charles Schwab, State Farm, Discover, Mutual of Omaha, Nationwide, TIAA and others. Most offer a pretty good deal on deposits, certainly much better than your local bank is offering, although I think Goldman's offering is one of the better ones around. The company will get into consumer lending a bit later this year with a business its calling Marcus (see also http://nyti.ms/2bHPKKY and http://bit.ly/2dmOaxG for more), named after one of the company's founders.
Anyway, on August 13, 2016, Goldman Sachs' investment bank unit shared some interesting analysis about Gen X, claiming:
All eyes are on Millennials, Baby Boomers and increasingly Gen Z, but according to Goldman Sachs Research's Hugo Scott-Gall, Gen X is an underappreciated influencer when it comes to the economy. Already responsible for around 30% of U.S. spending, "Xers" are going through their peak consumption years, with different spending priorities than the Boomers that came before. Scott-Gall explains the implications for the auto industry, real estate, and more.
Goldman Sachs says that they define Gen X as people born between the years of 1965 and 1980. You can download the Adobe Acrobat version of their report HERE.
Really, these observations should be apparent to everyone, but evidently have escaped the notice of enough people that Goldman Sachs analysts think that its investors should beware of Gen X.
According to a 2015 U.S. Census Bureau report, the U.S. is rapidly headed toward the day when white, European-American people will no longer make up the majority of the population. Similarly, Pew Research predicts that by mid-century, their own forecasts show that the U.S. population will be majority non-white, although their timing differs slightly from the Census Bureau's analysis. Indeed, in 2014 there were more than 20 million children under 5 years old living in the U.S., and 50.2% of could be considered "minorities".
The 2015 report by the Census Bureau estimated that by 2020 or so, "more than half of the nation's children were expected to be part of a minority race or ethnic group." Note the wording of that statement. It doesn't say that minorities are taking over, it says that more than half can be considered PART of a minority group. Its a nuance, but an important one. This is a trend that demographers had been predicting for many decades (see http://n.pr/1QQ30Mr for more detail), so it really comes as no surprise to anyone, except perhaps the most uneducated segments of the population, who live in kind of a bubble with little interaction with the rest of the world.
However, unlike the narrative of some right-wing commentators, its not as if white, European-Americans are being replaced by brown people. Instead, as part of the process of broader cultural assimilation, "white" Americans are combining with Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, African-Americans, Native-Americans and others to create more mixed-race individuals. Indeed, people who identify as "two or more races" is projected to be the fastest-growing segment during the next 45 years. No longer can people be grouped into a single race, but several races. Census Bureau data validates this and has been reporting this since at least the 1970s.
Celebrities are perhaps the best exemplification of this. Trevor Noah, the host of American late-night comedy/commentary television program The Daily Show, who succeeded Jon Stewart, is originally from South Africa, but his mother is of mixed Xhosa and Jewish ancestry, while his father is white, of Swiss-German ethnicity. He jokes that he could have been considered criminal under South African apartheid. The point is that he is very much the face of America (in spite of being of South African origin) today.
There's also Michael Key and Jordan Peele (better known as Key & Peele, who wrapped up a successful TV comedy show on Comedy Central, although both appeared on MADtv before that, and more recently in a movie called Keanu). Like Trevor Noah, these comics defy the notion of being a single race, but are definitely the face of America. Only the most racist individuals seem to have much of a problem with it.
Millennials Did Not Pave The Way for U.S. Diversity
Despite the news stories about how wonderfully diverse Millennials are (at least according to Paul Taylor, whose interview appears a bit later in this post) who claims it was all Millennials who were the transitional generation to a majority-minority population, know that it was Gen X, and not Millennials, who really were the transition -- and I back my assertion with facts.
Perhaps not ironically, most articles about Millennial diversity are usually written by Millennials themselves. But the fact is that Gen Xers grew up with very high levels of immigration, without immigration there would be even fewer Gen Xers. Consider this: in 1945, just over 38,000 new legal permanent residents were created in the U.S.; in 1965 it was 323,000, and then half a million by 1976. Thus, Gen X was the first generation to learn in multicultural classrooms (approximately 22% of Gen X are immigrants), and as kids of every color, we all watched TV shows like "The Jeffersons" and "Diff'rent Strokes," and we later backpacked across Europe, Asia or Australia in unprecedented numbers. In fact, Gen X is the largest immigrant generation (not just in absolute numbers, but per capita) of any generation born in the 20th century. As a result, most Xers are fairly comfortable with diversity — which is a handy trait for surviving in a global village. This definitely isn't something new or unique to Millennials. Sorry to break it to any Millennials who have been taught to believe they're special, and set every trend.
Gen X Gave Also The U.S. Marriage Equality, Not Millennials
As we approach the anniversary for two discriminatory laws being found unconstitutional (both the key provision of Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA] being gutted as unconstitutional in 2013, and subsequently all gay marriage bans being overturned completely in 2015), as well as California Proposition 8 being overturned (actually, the Supreme Court let a lower-court ruling stand), reporters have done a lousy job of identifying exactly which group deserves credit these things.
Credit for marriage equality is being bestowed on a group that doesn't deserve it. Culture War veterans (victims?) really deserve credit, not people who only became adults recently (Millennials). On March 18, 2016, New Hampshire Public Radio ran a short news piece in its "Word of Mouth" segment entitled "Why Gen X Gets Ignored" which you can listen to below. They interview someone named Paul Taylor, the author of a book he's very obviously trying to sell called "The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown", which he wrote along with some former colleagues at Pew Research Center where he was formerly EVP.
Jim Obergefell Is a Gen Xer Born in 1967
Gen X's diversity extends beyond its ethnicity to gender roles and identity. It wasn't Millennials who made gay marriage in the U.S. the rule of law (nor did that suddenly happen with them), Gen X is entitled to most of the credit. Indeed, a 2015 Pew Research study showed that 59% of Gen Xers supported gay marriage (see http://bit.ly/1LjElY1), which was nevertheless, a clear majority.
Perhaps the most notable fact is that Jim Obergefell (the Supreme Court decision which legalized it nationwide bears his name) is a Gen Xer who was born in 1967. So are most of the other plaintiffs, including Jayne Rowse and April DeBoer (although one of them could be considered a Baby Boomer, as per the discussion in the paragraphs ahead), the couple from Michigan who, in an effort to protect their own family, successfully challenged that state's same-gender marriage ban in a trial that proved highly embarrassing for the State of Michigan and ultimately cost state taxpayers some $2 million. I don't need to research all the other plaintiffs in the consolidated trial, but a fair guess is that a bulk of them are Gen Xers due to no other reason other than basic demographics. Let me add that the attorney for the case was tried by Mary Bonauto was born in 1961, so she's borderline Gen X.
There were a great many factors that played a role, but we can safely say Gen X was behind most of it (indeed, Art Levine, an attorney and professor of ethics and legal studies at Cal State Long Beach who worked in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice in the mid-1960s during the height of the Civil Rights movement says Gen X deserves much of the credit, see the article at http://ow.ly/10rQZd for more), including working for businesses who resented the fact that their HR departments suddenly had to keep 3 sets of employee records instead of just 2 for the married, unmarried and then a third for same-sex married (for states that permitted it) which created a huge new legal burden (and expense) for them that social conservatives never seem to mention.
That also explains why so many U.S. businesses just wanted the bans overturned, it was a very costly hassle for them to comply with. Longer-term, there was also a big societal cost for not allowing same-gender couples to marry because people who are not in state-sanctioned relationships tend to rely on more government services, rather than having a spouse who can help care for them as they get older, or vice versa.
Factors That Shaped The Gen X Perspective on Marriage
There's no denying that Gen X was partially shaped by growing up during the Reagan era, but its as important to note that the years that preceded the Reagan presidency were equally influential. One thing that's notable is that the Baby Boomer parents of Gen Xers had a bit of disdain for marriage (ironic, considering Baby Boomers were also the generation who claimed to be all about "family values" back in the 1990s, a claim most Gen Xers viewed very skeptically, since many of the lived through Boomer divorce).
Boomers' actions spoke volumes. During the 1970s, the U.S. divorce rate surged and was never higher (before or so far, after) in U.S. history. Gen Xers were more likely than any preceding generation to grow up with divorced parents. (The national divorce rate peaked in 1980, when most Xers were barely into their teens.) At the same time, New York magazine's Tom Wolfe called the 1970s when many Baby Boomers became adults and had Gen X kids "The 'Me' Decade" if that tells you anything (see the article at http://nymag.com/news/features/45938/ for more) about the environment for raising kids that Gen X kids grew up in. With their parents getting separated in droves, many Gen Xers felt the brunt of those separations, being latchkey kids who were left to pretty much fend for themselves. Take a look at the following chart which visually shows the experience Gen Xers grew up with (see also http://nyti.ms/1yEIuC8 for more):
That surge in divorce rates can be attributed to the Baby Boomer "me generation's" pursuit of their own self-interests rather than having families and sticking with them. Then, later, the number of working women grew rapidly, especially following the OPEC oil embargo which more than quadrupled the cost of oil and forced many more women into the workforce just to make financial ends meet. That meant that the Gen X childhood was perhaps most defined by its high likelihood to have divorced parents (meaning absentee parents), which meant many Gen Xers had a lack of parental supervision, which resulted in most Gen Xers developing a get-tough-or-die mentality.
Incidentally, if you presume that time has changed the Baby Boomer general indifference for the institution of marriage, you'd be wrong about that. Even today, as senior citizens, Boomers continue to divorce at unprecedented rates (see http://n.pr/1ZjzVtg for more background). This group's utter disdain for the institution of marriage played a HUGE role in Gen Xers' willingness to accept less conventional forms of marriage because frankly, many Gen Xers felt the brunt of divorce, with mothers of that era entering the workforce and leaving their children behind as latchkey kids who had to fend for themselves. The Gen X perspective was there was no reason not to permit others into the marriage "institution" because their parents largely helped to destroy it with divorce.
In March 2016, New Hampshire Public Radio ran a short news piece in its "Word of Mouth" segment entitled "Why Gen X Gets Ignored". They interview Paul Taylor, the author of the book called "The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown", which he wrote along with Pew Research Center where he was formerly EVP. Mr. Taylor basically credits Millennials with making gay marriage a reality, when the facts clearly indicate Gen X is responsible, with Jim Obergefell being the Gen Xer whose name is assigned to the case being the most notable example of how Mr. Taylor got it wrong.
I take issue with Mr. Taylor on several important points, but there's only so much that can be addressed in an 8 minute news clip. As I noted, he was basically trying to promote his book. But I also acknowledge that at least some of what he claims is perhaps partially correct. I still found the clip interesting. Have a listen below, or by visiting http://tinyurl.com/GenXignored:
Photo collage: Epoch Times Weekend Gen X is the generation who made gay marriage a reality. Thank their Baby Boomer (see below) parents' unprecedented divorce rates for shaping the Gen X perspective on marriage.
Paul Taylor's book makes no mention whatsoever about Gen X, as if the entire generation didn't even exist, leading me to question whether he was really the best party to interview (he does claim Gen X's modesty is a trait he finds "charming"). No matter. Note that Mr. Taylor is a Baby Boomer, a generation that is among the most self-absorbed in history (which he basically acknowledges in the interview) but in his book, he dismisses and ignores an entire generation. He makes a few valid points, but he also makes several critical mistakes/oversights in his dialogue, which I'll elaborate on a bit here. One of the more important points he glosses over is that several years ago, Pew Research correctly observed (see http://pewrsr.ch/1rOV2GI):
"Gen Xers have also gotten the short end of basic generational arithmetic. Due partly to their parents' relatively low fertility rates, there are fewer of them (65 million) than Boomers (77 million) or Millennials (an estimated 83 million assuming a roughly 20-year age span and including those who have yet to reach adulthood). But there's another reason that Xers are a small generation: They've been deemed to span just 16 years, while most [other] generations are credited with lasting for about 20 years. How come? No one really knows. Generational boundaries are fuzzy, arbitrary and culture-driven. Once fixed by the mysterious forces of the zeitgeist, they tend to firm up over time.".
That sounds a lot like the type of lame excuse that a self-absorbed, narcissistic Baby Boomer might give for screwing Gen Xers out of some 20 million more people than they are otherwise entitled to.
In fact, Gen X is the group behind several of the key trends Mr. Taylor specifically tries to attribute to Millennials, most of whom weren't old enough to actually do what he credits Millennials with.
Why Gen X Is Bigger Than Its Numbers Imply
As already noted, Mr. Taylor’s former employer, Pew Research, already acknowledged that Gen X was screwed out of approximately 4 years, which accounts for perhaps 20 million additional people. Based on that, one could argue that Gen X is likely much bigger than its numbers suggest. That's no small oversight, yet all he says is that generational definitions are "contrivances" even while his books relies on those very contrivances for its central thesis. Not a good start, Paul.
Photo: Leif Parsons. Many Millennials mistakenly believe they made gay marriage happen. They didn't, although they helped.
Mr. Taylor proceeds to perpetuate the "artificial constructs" in his dialogue about Baby Boomers and Millennials. While its true that Gen X grew up during the Reagan years, his statement that Gen Xers are much more politically conservative is false, and he backs his assertion up with nothing. When it comes to social and political views, the reality is that liberal Millennials didn't just come from nowhere. Gen Xers were already leaning that way at least on social issues, breaking away from the more button-down Baby Boomers. The vast majority of credible surveys show that Gen X is very evenly split between Democrats, Republicans and Independent voters with about one-third for each group. A more accurate statement might be that Gen X grew up in the aftermath of Reagan, they also helped to elect Bill Clinton into office, proceeded to help get him reelected in spite of a conservative effort to make hay out of the Monica Lewinski scandal (who was a Gen Xer herself), and they were also partially responsible for putting Barack Obama into office (the media love to claim it was all Millennials responsible for that, but fact is that there simply were not enough Millennials who were of voting age when Obama ran the first time to have elected him into office, something he also conveniently fails to mention).
Beyond that is the reality of the world Gen X grew up in. Frankly, its a mixed story.
Gen Xers' parents left the cities in droves as part of the so-called "white flight" to the suburbs which started in the 1960s. But at the same time, music was telling a different story. Gen X learned new forms of musical expression like punk rock (including imports such as the Sex Pistols, which was really fighting the UK establishment) which showed us that yet again, music can play an important role in broader societal changes. But Xer's musical expression isn't limited to just a quartet of white boys from Liverpool shaking things up, Gen X's musical platform was/is global in nature.
Consider the example of soul music. While Baby Boomers viewed soul music through the lens of struggle, with voices like Aretha Franklin being a key part of that, Gen X grew up with singers like Roberta Flack. The difference is where that music originated; rather than struggle of the old south, it was striving in the new south (Roberta was raised in Arlington, Virginia which is an affluent Washington DC suburb), and while Virginia was still segregated until the 1960s, the population was definitely middle-class and decidedly more affluent, living the "American Dream".
At the same time, it was also Gen X who developed hip hop music, something very much rooted in the struggle of African Americans, but a brand new type of voice to express the issue of an entire generation of young, black men (and some women). Both are equally valid forms of expression, but the point is that Gen X witnessed both forms aspirational soul and hip hop musical expression, and others including punk rock, as well as a new form of global rock that their parents helped to start, it was incredibly diverse with voices from all over the globe.
Gen X kids also grew up receiving mixed messages about gender/sexual orientation. On one side was a major push for gay kids to come out that legitimate politicians like Harvey Milk were helping to encourage (and it largely succeeded). On the other side was an effort to keep LGBT people in the closet, fueled by religious conservatives like James Dobson. Dobson co-founded the Family Research Council, a militant right-wing Christian lobbying group focused on criminalizing all aspects of homosexuality. For its stream of inflammatory propaganda, laced with bogus anti-gay scare stories, the Family Research Council earned its place on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of hate groups in 2010, alongside the Klu Klux Klan and the White Aryan Nation.
Hence, many of the adults of today grew up in a time when hurling homophobic slurs on the playing fields wasn't just widely tolerated — it was in many cases encouraged. Gen X was left to figure things out for itself. Another Influence Behind Gen X: "The Pill"
Divorce wasn't the only reason Gen X was smaller than the Baby Boom, lower fertility rates spurred by the advent of "the pill" also played a big role.
The FDA first approved the pill (as in the female birth control pill) for contraceptive use in 1960. By 1962, the pill had become a really big hit for the pharmaceutical industry, and by 1964, an estimated 1.2 million American women were on the pill; three years later, the number had nearly doubled to 2.3 million. Still, at that time, the pill was still considered by some to be "controversial" and it remained illegal in 8 U.S. states. The Catholic church also declared its use unholy.
None of that stopped American Baby Boomer women from using the pill en masse, and by the mid-1960s, the U.S. fertility rate had plunged significantly in spite of a huge surge of women who were then at child-bearing age.
Baby Boomer disdain toward marriage is responsible for the societal changes behind gay marriage.
All of these things helped make Gen X to be America's neglected 'middle child' as Pew called it. However, Mr. Taylor is absolutely right that Gen X doesn't really seem to care very much about that. I certainly don't. Gen X's goal has never been to be the center of attention, but to make the best of the hand it was dealt, and that includes allowing the legal recognition of groups that have traditionally been marginalized. That may be one reason Politico (see http://politi.co/1K9zu1t for the article) has posited that the best way to fix Washington is to elect more Gen Xers and let Baby Boomers retire.
In case you haven't guessed it by now, I'm neither a Baby Boomer nor a Millennial but a Generation Xer, and true to form, I'm actually happy about that. I'm middle-aged, but have absolutely no desire to be in my twenties again and struggling to pay my rent. Not by a long shot. Now, I can realistically look forward to a retirement which is no longer decades away but only a few more years away. I'm also not like the Baby Boomer stereotype of the middle-aged Boomer men who bought expensive sports cars and tried to pick up women half their age to maintain their fast-fading youth. That's how many Boomers dealt with middle-age, not most of the Gen Xers I know, and I know a great deal more Gen Xers than any Baby Boomers do.
No mid-life crisis for me, plus I've been a very good saver (my 401k was a real blessing from a tax standpoint, so I put a great deal into that), so I don't really fear living my golden years in dire poverty as many spendthrift Baby Boomers and even some Gen Xers are/were. Yet most Baby Boomers and Millennials have no clue (or even any interest) in knowing that an entire generation between them even exists, but news flash: it does. We're known as Generation X (better known as Gen X). One thing that defines Gen X is its relatively small size compared to the two groups ahead and behind us. That means Gen Xers are bookended by two much bigger generations – the Baby Boomers ahead and the Millennials behind us – and both groups are pretty different from one another, except perhaps they both seem to share the notion that they are the only demographic segment that matters.
More on Gen X's Size and the Baby Boomer View of Other Generations
As noted, a big reason for Gen X's smaller size is because there's no consensus on when Generation X actually starts or ends. (One could say that's because the narcissistic Baby Boomers ahead of Gen X thought they were so fucking great that their generation simply never ended.) As a matter of fact, Gen X has been pegged as starting anywhere from 1961 to 1966, and it's been capped off anywhere between 1977 and 1985. Probably the most popular range is between 1965-1980 (Pew Research, the Department of Defense, and the Urban Dictionary, and others define it that way).
Baby Boomers initially called Gen X "Baby Busters" (they also called Millennials "Boomer Babies" even though some of them were clearly Gen Xers' babies, if that tells you anything), but as a generation, Gen Xers rejected being branded as something that sounded like Baby Boomers Chapter 2, so we adopted the name Gen X. I won't get into exactly how that name came to be (Google it if you're so inclined), but suffice to say, it's a unique name and it belongs to us. Fortunately, Millennials rejected the Boomer Babies AND Gen Y labels for a pretty decent generational name, although some younger Millennials are trying to claim themselves as a unique generation now even if they’re squarely in the same 20-year range as other Millennials are). Good luck with that, I'll likely be close to death by the time it has any personal relevance to me, so I don't really care.
A July 15, 2016 Wall Street Journal article featured this graphic which I include now because it visually depicts the fuzzy boundaries between generations.
Back to the fuzzy generational definitions. The reality is my spouse was born in 1963 and my sister was born in 1964 and they're both definitely Gen Xers; neither could be considered Baby Boomers at all. It seems only logical that either some of the youngest Baby Boomers and/or the oldest Millennials are most likely Gen Xers, so those people can likely pick their own generation, even if it doesn't count for very much in terms of the raw generational numbers. I think it's usually more of a mindset. Gen Xers are from an era where trophies had to be earned because you actually won them; there was no such thing as getting a trophy for participation. We also watched TV broadcasts on just 3 broadcast TV networks (the Fox network came when we were well into high school) later turn into cable and most recently, into streaming. We didn't have helicopter parents, in fact, most had absentee parents, and many Xers vowed not to make the same mistake with their own families, effectively becoming helicopter parents to many Millennials themselves. I don't really think Gen Xers care all that much that there are fewer of us. The facts suggest we actually turned out very well in spite of having less-than-ideal childhoods, at least if the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research's fact-finding is as reliable as most experts believe it deserves to be (see http://home.isr.umich.edu/files/2011/10/GenX_Report_Fall2011.pdf for more background).
Gen X Contribution: Coming Out, From Scandals to Yawns
Also don't discount the fact that Gen X celebrities including Anderson Cooper, Jodi Foster, Matt Bomer, Jim Parsons, Lance Bass, Sara Gilbert, Ricky Martin and Cynthia Nixon are also all gay (Apple CEO Tim Cook could be a Boomer according to one definition, but as I've already noted, because he's at the tail end of the Baby Boom, he could also be considered a Gen Xer if he really wanted). It's no accident, rather it’s a huge contribution, that Gen X made to the larger cause of gay rights in the U.S. What makes each of these particular individuals unique from a historical perspective is that ALL of them came out in very matter-of-fact ways. Instead of horrible, career-ruining scandals that were splashed on the front pages of newspapers or magazines as was often the case as recently as a generation earlier, these were very open secrets that just were, but they were hardly scandalous and were treated with more of a yawn when they ultimately went public.
That's a very typically Gen X way of doing things, and the understatement of one's personal, sexual orientation definitely helped Millennials and others to finally start treating sexual orientation as less of a news headline and more of the entirely personal matter that it really is, hence understated "coming out" stories are also quite Gen X. True, there are still occasional fights about a same-gender couple trying to attend a prom together in some conservative locations, but the downplaying of one's sexual orientation from everyone's right to know to a more "that's my business, and I'll tell the public only if and when I want to" is a pattern that's likely continue going forward. What someone does in the privacy of their own bedroom is no one else's business but their own, unless there are laws that provide rights only if you're married to someone of the opposite gender. Our government cannot pick and choose which relationships it's going to allow to exist or sanction, they all have to be treated the same way. At the same time, Gen X recognizes these aren't "special rights" as anti-gay activists tried to depict them, rather they are rights that ALL Americans are entitled to by law.
Silent Generation Was Not Silent: Their Contribution to Gay Rights Is Immeasurable
Note that Edie Windsor, the woman whose legal challenge for more than a half-million dollar inheritance tax bill from her legal spouse (another woman) successfully gutted the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" (better known as DOMA) in 2013 was neither a Gen Xer or Baby Boomer, but a member of The Silent Generation which preceded the Baby Boom generation.
The Silent Generation was anything but silent on gay rights, as it produced such memorable gay rights leaders like Franklin Kameny, Barbara Gittings, Jack Nichols, Harry Hay, Rudi Gernreich, Del Martin, Phyllis Lyon, Randolfe Wicker as well some of folks behind the original Stonewall riots (including the late Marsha P. Johnson and the late Sylvia Rivera), and similar protests preceding it in Philadelphia, Washington DC, San Francisco and Los Angeles -- think of events like the Dewey's restaurant sit-in, the Cooper's Donuts fight, the Black Cat uprising and Compton’s Cafeteria riot as prominent examples of events that all preceded Stonewall.
Most importantly, until 1973, psychiatrists generally classified sexual orientation toward members of one's own gender to be disordered (note that The American Psychiatric Association had only listed homosexuality as a "sociopathic personality disturbance" since 1952). Yet there was little if any peer-reviewed science behind this classification, rather it was based on old Freudian theories, only few scientists ever questioned that; at least not until 1970. In 1970, activists like Dr. Franklin Kameny started to legitimately question the actual science behind the disordered classification, and the hollow truth was revealed: there was no legitimate reason for labeling an entire group of people as mentally ill, hence the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality off its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1973. The American Counseling Association, the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, the American Medical Association, the American School Counselor Association, the American School Health Association and the American Psychoanalytic Association all reached the same conclusion in the years that followed.
While a few homophobic members resented the challenge, and founded groups that continued to consider them disordered (many would support pseudo-science to support that perspective until the 1990s. For example, in 1992, the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality [NARTH] was started by Charles Socarides [whose own son Richard is gay], Joseph Nicolosi and Benjamin Kaufman, which the Southern Poverty Law Center concluded had become the main source for anti-gay 'junk science', see http://bit.ly/2cetHuI for more detail), the reality is that without valid, peer-reviewed research, that perspective became increasingly fringe.
Those truths would also become revealed in the California Proposition 8 trials which followed years later, and the baseless "science" which supported those viewpoints would increasingly be viewed as little more than animus which motivated gay marriage bans in the first place.
Use of "Culture Wars" and "Dog Whistles" To Motivate Conservative Voters
In the 1990s, DOMA was only enacted once conservative politicians in power sought to motivate conservative voters to re-elect Republican candidates by using so-called "dog whistles" (called that because they are supposedly silent except to those who can hear such coded messages) like gay marriage (described as "family values" or other euphemisms) in an effort to deflect attention from the fact that their economic policies were actually decimating the GOP's white, working class base.
As UC Berkeley professor Robert Reich has correctly observed, the modern GOP is based on an unlikely coalition of wealthy business executives, small business owners, and struggling [working class] whites. Its durability depends on the latter two categories believing that the economic stresses they've experienced for decades have a lot to do with the government taking their money and giving it to the poor, who are disproportionately black and Latino.
The real reason small business owners and struggling whites haven't done better is the same most of the rest of America hasn't done better: while the output of Americans has continued to rise, almost all of the gains have gone to the very top. That's a function of Government policy.
Conservative "Coalition" Fragmentation
The GOP's base of white, working class voters may have the last laugh, since they seem to have abandoned the conservative Republican party establishment in 2016 by voting for Donald J. Trump, a news-invented candidacy that now threatens to destroy the establishment Republican party.
Gen X and Gay Rights
To be sure, Gen X didn't start gay rights, but Gen X did help take them to where they were in 2016. Gen Xers were the ones to help push for gay marriage rights nationwide, and to openly serve in the military and live and raise families in the open, NOT Millennials. Gen Xers were of an age most likely to benefit from these things immediately, although future generations will no doubt benefit. It's simply impossible to discount the Gen Xers on this matter. So no, Paul Taylor, you may credit them in your book for ushering gay marriage, but Millennials did not make that stuff happen. Millennials were a useful contributing factor, but they were not the reason or even the impetus for making gay marriage a reality, Gen X deserves most of the credit.
Millennials too often receive (and they willingly take) credit for gay marriage rights, and they often seem to bask in the credit as if they're the demographic group singularly responsible for this development, thanks to misinformation from people like Paul Taylor. Gen X deserves much more of the credit given that they were on the front lines of this culture war battle while Millennials were still kids in grade school.
Sexual diversity is and always has been a fact of life for Gen X. While Baby Boomers were the original instigators of the Sexual Revolution, Gen Xers were its primary beneficiaries, coming of age in an era of increasing awareness of LGBT issues, women's issues, etc. While most Xers are too young to remember the 1969 Stonewall Riots that gave birth to the original gay rights movement, they grew up amid the rancorous national "debate" about gays' actual right to exist which was fought between supporters of gay rights and socially conservative, but politically-motivated religious groups including the Moral Majority and then-popular, political figures including Anita Bryant, Jerry Falwell, and Senator Jesse Helms to name a few. But conservatives' hypocrisy is really what solidified a willingness to abandon those cultural mores.
The fact is that Millennials don't get to claim credit for all this stuff (at least until the last Gen Xer has died), and by then, I'm guessing Millennials won't really care.
Writer, speaker, brother, son, friend, spouse, advocate for people with autoimmune (type 1) diabetes, thinker, dreamer. Reading and writing is becoming a lost art, but we can learn a lot from reading the medical and scientific literature before drawing conclusions. The press publishes abbreviated facts to fit into limited space, I don't mince words or omit facts.
