New Foundations?

A Generation X Representative is the only one with a plan to avoid the enslavement of us and our descendants from the entitlements of the G.I.s and the Boomers. A telling quote:

Ryan comes from a family of industrial earth-movers—the business, now run by his cousins, was started by his grandfather, and he helped out as a kid. They clear away obstructions so new foundations can be laid.

Wait, there's more:

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which produces Congress's official projections about the long-term fiscal effects of legislation, Ryan's Roadmap for America’s Future would zero out the deficit, balance the budget by 2063, and reduce Medicare's expected share of the economy in 2080 from a projected 14.3 percent of GDP to a mere 4 percent. The Roadmap also calls for a substantial simplification of the tax code and a replacement of the corporate income tax with an 8.5 percent business consumption tax. CBO's projections are inherently uncertain—even the most competent economic forecasters can only guess at how the world will change over 50-plus years. But the result is, at the very least, a compelling conservative vision of the country's fiscal future.

Guess what? The Leadership of neither party is interested...

Here's the Newsweek article:

Here's the Plan:

Birthright Sold

"Plato reminds us that democracy follows plutocracy as its antithesis when the younger generation realizes that their elders have sold their birthright."

No More Intergenerational Theft!

"I admire the courage of the junior senator from Kentucky," he said. "Somebody has to stand up finally and say, 'No more inter-generational theft!'"

And with that, the Senate adjourned for the weekend.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/26/jim-bunning-repeatedly-bl_n_477910.html

Agree with the sentiment, but it's like emptying the ocean with a bucket

Indications of the Fourth Turning

"These kids are so over-scheduled and tired"

The Race to Nowhere is an important indication of a major cultural and societal shift that is taking place. Generational experts Strauss and Howe called it the Fourth Turning and, from the Financial Crisis of 2008 to the election of the first self-consciously styled "Post-Boomer" president in that same year, the secular crisis of generational realignment they predicted in the 1990s seems to be taking place. In discussing this generational shift Howe has this to say:

"We think that generations move history along and prevent society from suffering too long under the excesses of any particular generation."

What is interesting about The Race to Nowhere is it focus on meaning, especially over a decade after the Boomers par excellence, the Clintons, sought to imbue us with the Politics of Meaning. Because this time Generation X is seeking to articulate the meaning. The film is also a sign of potential generational cooperation.

This film indicates that adults, especially Gen Xers, are reacting to the excesses of how the Millennials have been raised, while at the same time listening to some of the idealism of the Boomers, and attempting to bring some practical reality and implementation to Boomer ideals.

The hyper-scheduled herd of Millennials that the Baby Boomers first began raising and planning for in the 80s, with their Baby-on-Board signs and vicarious goal-setting, are developing some ominous habits of shallowness and depression. As Strauss and Howe indicate in their book, The Millennials Rising, the great Civic potential of the Millennials can develop either virtuously -in a "let's all pitch in and solve problems together" kind of way, or they can develop the vices of the herd, steamrolling all in their path so that everyone gets the trophy to which they have been told they are entitled.

The last time this generational alignment happened in this country, when the newest Artist generation was age 6 and under, was 1931. In that year, unemployment rose over 16% two years after the crash of 1929 and many auto-manufacturers went out of business; roughly 2500 banks went out of business. President Hoover said in March that "prosperity is just around the corner.

"Artists are, "subtle, indecisive, emotional and compromising, often having to deal with feelings of repression and inner conflict. They grow up as the over-protected children of a Crisis, come of age as the sensitive young adults of a High, rebel as indecisive midlife leaders during an Awakening, and become the empathic elders of an Unraveling. The Silent Generation is an example of an Artist generation. The Homeland Generation is expected to emerge as the next generation of this example."

We can see the similarities in the times, and the concern and care for the next generation. As Howe says:

This generation will have no memory of anything before the financial meltdown of 2008 and the events that are about to unfold in America. If our research is correct, this generation’s childhood will be a time of urgency and rapid historical change. Unlike the Millennials, who will remember childhood during the good times of 1980s and ’90s, the Homelanders will recall their childhood as a time of national crisis.

In a time of crisis, how do we change a road to nowhere, into a road to somewhere. And how can we ensure that somewhere is not anywhere?