Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

John,

Since you're apparently back to posting as opposed to merely lurking (Welcome back), you might appreciate this. Since it is relevant to the discussion here, you might want to take a stab at what Mikebert was looking for, as you believe in it more than I do.

Yeah, I had a whole day off... but unfortunately I've slept through most of it and it will be over soon.

I've mentioned before that I agree with Mikebert's cycles... possibly more than he does, largely because I'm looking at the USD index rather than nominal (or even BLS inflation-adjusted prices).

Shadowstats might be crazy, but that doesn't mean you can trust the headline number at face value. BLS surveys target upper-income households, and they're better at gauging the prices associated with luxury and comfort rather than mere survival.

80s-90s, no one really gave a fuck - even the people who said they did were probably lying to make money
2001-2006 we argued about what we should be worried about
2008-20?? we agreed that we should be worried about the economy, but we're arguing about how to fix it

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

I sat on that post for half an hour and about two minutes after I hit submit I figured out what I was really trying to say.

In 2001-2006, the people who were most worried about terrorism were probably the least worried about money. The people who were worried about money were younger, and they were probably much less worried about terrorism.

But pretty much everyone had something to worry about, and that's quite unlike the mood through the 80s and 90s.

The '00s mood was more subdued, but most people were not worrying much about either concern, not much more than usual. It's a matter of degree, of course.

Welcome back, John!

Originally Posted by Kinser79

One problem there Mike.

The reason why those who claim that 9-11 was the 4T trigger have such a difficult time with generational constellations. Considering that if one uses the birth years given for the Generations currently existing by S&H one finds that the oldest Millies (1982) were 19 years old, but that the vast majority of the generation were under 18, and the greatest portion of it (the 1990s mini-baby boom) were all in the single digits age bracket. Clearly we send 7 year olds off to fight wars.

I'm not sure it matters that much. The point at which a 4T begins may still be far removed from when it reaches its crescendo or culmination. 7-year olds might well have grown into 22-year old grunts by then.

Or, alternatively, the late 70's cohorts are not really Xers. Which would make sense insofar as someone born in 1978 would have lived through exactly 2 years of (late) Awakening if the 3T began in 1980. They didn't know about that earlier world. Their earliest memories would be of a neon colored 80's of harmonious postmodernity and superficiality, with Aha on the telly, everyone agreeing that Amadeus was a great movie and someone playing guitar on the MTV (get your money for nothing and your chicks for free). And had they actually experienced the 2T first hand, they would have been inoculated against it and not joined seriously minded protest movements of extraordinary naivete in the mid to late 90's, such as for instance the Attac.

Originally Posted by Kinser79

Except that they didn't. At the time of the Crash of 1929 someone who was born in 1907 was 22 years old, but did not take on the hero mantle. They may or may not have taken on a civic mantle depending on their placement within the social paradigm, but everyone over the age of 30 was clearly a Nomad, and the vast majority of those born before 1907 would be as well.

Indeed the vast majority of those who worked in CCC camps, and WPA works were aged in their early to late 20s when those programs really started to get off the ground, as such the oldest civics would be born starting around 1914 (though I would argue that enough from the 1907-1913 cohorts existed to create a significant interbellum cusp between the GIs and Losts).



I would argue that in the case of external crises (WW2 and Revolution) it would only be those playing the "hero" role at the end which will have that imprint on their character. Interbellum GIs and Late Losts were clearly different. In the case of internal crises (Glorious Revolution, Civil War, and the current one) no one plays a "hero" role. Likewise, defeated powers in 4Ts in External Crises do not produce "heroes" either (Confederacy and Nazi Germany)--they do however all produce civics.

I don't think that this is really a failing on your part, but rather poor word choice by S&H, much like they call 1Ts "highs" but clearly not every 1T has a "high-like" quality. Just ask any European about the years between 1946 and 1965/66. Unfortunately I can't think of a better word other than merely calling it a 1T which would mean that one needs at least an elementary understanding of the theory to start with. Resolution, or perhaps Denouement, comes closest, but that would mean that one would have to shift the whole paradigm one full turning forward--as a resolution is usually something that comes to an end. Personally I don't have a problem with that as I've long thought that it is awakenings that seem to be the start of the new saeculum rather than the resolution of the crisis.

Chas will like this...

In essence my long held thoughts have been that the crisis (a normal [or old style--o.s.] 4T) would really be a climax (and a new style [n.s.] 3T) with the resolution (o.s. 1T) being a n.s. 4T.

I really do need to sit down and write this idea out in a separate thread to make it coherent, but suffice it to say it should be clear to anyone who took a high school literature course (assuming they still teach the basics of literary analysis in high school).

I actually have sat down and written out threads in the past with a few of these ideas each. I was surprised once in conversation to hear that David Kaiser (old member of the forum that he was) once considered that the GI boundary should be pushed to 1907/1908 territory given the emergence of most of the famous GI personalities (Jimmy Stewart, Katharine Hepburn, LBJ, and the like).

As for the restructuring of the Saeculum--I also did that several years ago. I eventually came to the conclusion that a 1T belongs to both the Old Saeculum and the New Saeculum equally. It is both Denoument and Exposition in one--depending upon your point of view. It resolves old tensions and establishes new ones.

1Ts end with Exposition for the next story, introducing all the important themes and "characters" so that one feels they have a grasp of them in a "normal" state
2Ts begin with an Inciting Incident (i.e. the exposition is shattered) and continue with Rising Action (i.e. more intrigue)
3Ts begin with a Peripeteia (i.e. plot twist which reverses roles or expectations) and continue the Rising Action with taking the new twist into account
4Ts begin with Anagnorisis (i.e. clarity to the true situation as it stands) which then enters a Climax (i.e. the final confrontation)
1Ts begin with Falling Action (i.e. actions that resolve issues that the Climax didn't address) and then enters a Denouement which is also the Exposition for the next story.

And as for the name you're looking for for 1T's that aren't so "High"-like, I've been using the term "Recovery" along with a few others (millennialX for instance, who coined the term).

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Mikebert

The vast majority of the Prophets (like me) we just kids when The Sixties happened. Like by 10 year old self was at Woodstock.

Your complaint is true about all the generations. The latter end all lives the next generation's pattern. My rising adult phase of life was in the 1980's and 1990's mostly during a 3T. Am I an Xer? No they have me a Boomer. Same thing for you. You are still in your rising adult years and its a 4T. Yet you are pegged an Xer.


No they didn't. This isn't a monarchy, the president is not the entirely of the ruling class. I think you know this.

The funny thing about writing about Generations who are dead (or mostly dead) it becomes rather easy to characterize them by specific members of their generations at specific times.

For instance if you read the biographies of all the Generations from the Silents and going back, most of their characterizations focus on the latter-end of the generation--not the forefront. In the Lost Generation, a whole love letter is given to WWI vets and those who drove ambulances through the trenches and then tried to forget about it all by drowning themselves in speakeasy liquor afterwards.

But what about those members of the Lost generation who started coming of age just before the Titanic sunk? Do you think if they had the opportunity to read that description on "their generation" that they would consider themselves a part of that culture? Or how about the Flapper of 1910--who was a completely different animal than the Flapper of 1920 as the term evolved. Early Losts often preferred Ragtime and its animal dances to the Jazz of the late cohorts. Sure there were some things which held them together (like the Tango--the Tango was one thing which unified them in terms of dance and music--1913, the year the world went Tango mad!), but just as much existed to differentiate them.

And yet what do we remember more, the early or the late? The late.

Similarly the Silents are described (especially in their teenage years) with language and vocabulary that more appropriately is applied to latter-end Silents such as "going steady", which is the one that has stayed with me since I read that section of the book.

Sure, they did try to create a unified identity with some generations across the 20 year span. I specifically recall the beginning of the GI chapter where S&H go out of their way to quote Hemingway and Fitzgerald about how their juniors were "different" to say the least and throw out the example of Coolidge sending a ship specially for Lindbergh to bring him home. But when it came time to talk about GI culture? Swing is what got brought out--something that would've been alien to Lindbergh's youth experience given that the dance and music form

The pattern is quite clear then, the latter end of a Generation is the one which gets remembered more as time passes (makes sense since the early members should theoretically die first and the latter ends live the longest).

It also explains why the term Millennial is so big now and why I go to work and hear a 1984 & 1985 cohort each talking about how to attract the attention of more Millennials and attend seminars with the focus of doing so--and look at me with confusion when I mention the fact that they themselves are Millennials--somehow the term as society is applying to it is becoming more focused around the latter end members who are "important" right now. Similarly, Generation X had been coming of age throughout the 1980s--but it wasn't until the early-to-mid 1990s that suddenly they appeared as a cultural icon or cemented themselves as such. And while I love early Xers (some of my favorite people on the planet were born in the cluster of years around the central year of 1967 for instance), I don't think society is going to think of them or their cultural identity when they think of the term "Xer".

The latter end of the Boomer Generation is a good example of a suppressed latter end (which can theoretically exist, I suppose)--so much so that they've declared cultural warfare on the early Aquarian Boomers by declaring themselves to be Jonesers.

And yet, despite all this focus on latter-end members of generations for past generations (and increasingly on current ones as the latter members are letting themselves be known), somehow in looking at Gen Xers, Millies, and Homies, S&H have become extra focused on looking at the earliest members of the generation--when it would seem, history favors the latter end cohorts in terms of preservation of identity.

So how did we become so obsessed with looking for new beginnings? Well, S&H put us on that path didn't they. Eager to predict when new kiddies would appear, they gave us that reassignment in that first place. That and Boomers I think assumed that just because they had a strong enough beginning to a generation that the rest after them would as well. That's at least my hypothesis for now.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Chas'88

Similarly, Generation X had been coming of age throughout the 1980s--but it wasn't until the early-to-mid 1990s that suddenly they appeared as a cultural icon or cemented themselves as such.

Well, at least we were very aware we existed as a generation unto our own looong before Coupland came along to write about it (or Jonesers, rather).

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

And yes, the word millennial was specifically coined for the high school class of 2000. You don't get to go back in time and rewrite our history to make us nomads, even if it better fits your conception of a late 4T start :P

Is that so? Think about it. When one rewrites turnings that affects the generations involved in that history. For example, changing the CW start from 1860 to 1854 or 1850, makes the Gilded way too young. Heading into a 4T the Nomad generation is supposed to fill the rising adult phase of life (age 22-43). In 1850 the Gilded were aged 8-28. In 1854 they were 12-32, Both way too young. So pushing back the start date earlier you push back the generations too.

So if the current 4T ends up starting in 2001 versus 2008 that has a say on the GenX/Millie and Boomer/GenX break points. S&H pointed this out when they said the last boundary that has pretty much been set is the Silent/Boomer one (which was defined by the Vietnam war era (the most recent social moment at the time of the writing). Some of the boomer biography, most of the GenX and all of the Millie is still unwritten, much depends on what they will do during the 4T. A 4T start in 2005 (where S&H put in 1997) then the GenX/Millie cusp is in the early 1980's where they put it in Generations. Howe since has picked 2008 as the 4T start, which implies a cusp in the mid 1980's. A 2001 start implies the late 1970's.

We aren't really going to know when the 4T began until we are about halfway through the 1T. There was certainly a breakpoint politically and economically around 2000. They was another one around 2008. Both are of sufficient magnitude to serve as a trigger. Both moved the country in the crisis direction that is in the 4T direction. If events that drive us deeper and deeper into crisis continue all through the 2020's and into the 2030's then we are not going to see anything very 1Tish for a long time, and the 2008 start date (or even later) will make the most sense.

On the other hand if there is a move towards political stability/unity (say the de facto destruction of one of the major parties which ends gridlock around 2020), this would make the earlier start date make more sense to a future historian.

Originally Posted by Chas'88

It also explains why the term Millennial is so big now and why I go to work and hear a 1984 & 1985 cohort each talking about how to attract the attention of more Millennials and attend seminars with the focus of doing so--and look at me with confusion when I mention the fact that they themselves are Millennials--somehow the term as society is applying to it is becoming more focused around the latter end members who are "important" right now. Similarly, Generation X had been coming of age throughout the 1980s--but it wasn't until the early-to-mid 1990s that suddenly they appeared as a cultural icon or cemented themselves as such. And while I love early Xers (some of my favorite people on the planet were born in the cluster of years around the central year of 1967 for instance), I don't think society is going to think of them or their cultural identity when they think of the term "Xer".

A few months ago on the morning radio show "Lex and Terry in The Morning" Lex got angry at a 30yo caller calling himself a Millennial because Lex so associated the label with the age group of his 19yo daughter.

2000 marked the end of the Indian Summer as the Supreme Court decided that George W. Bush would become President. The Supreme Court acted decisively -- but as events showed, wrong. America then went fully into the depraved Degeneracy of bad politics and bad business. A Party Boss (Karl Rove) turned the Republican Party into a de facto fourth branch of government and allowed special interests to take over much of the government.

I see George Bush as the telescoping the bad Presidencies of the 1920s (Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover) from twelve years into eight, while throwing in a costly pair of wars that would devour huge amounts of resources and ruin the credibility of America. At the least, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover were men of peace -- if not progress. I see the collapse of Enron as a strange parallel to the Teapot Dome scandal. The big parallel was the bubble in real estate based upon predatory lending.

If the 1920s were not a Crisis Era, then neither was the Double-Zero decade. The Double-Zero Decade, like the Roaring Twenties and the awful decades before the American Civil War and the American Revolution, were times of extreme decadence. They led to the Crisis by gutting old safeguards that generations that knew the last Crisis well sought to keep things from (chose your metaphor) flying apart, imploding, or going gangrenous.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

Yeah, I had a whole day off... but unfortunately I've slept through most of it and it will be over soon.

I've mentioned before that I agree with Mikebert's cycles... possibly more than he does, largely because I'm looking at the USD index rather than nominal (or even BLS inflation-adjusted prices).

Shadowstats might be crazy, but that doesn't mean you can trust the headline number at face value. BLS surveys target upper-income households, and they're better at gauging the prices associated with luxury and comfort rather than mere survival.

80s-90s, no one really gave a fuck - even the people who said they did were probably lying to make money
2001-2006 we argued about what we should be worried about
2008-20?? we agreed that we should be worried about the economy, but we're arguing about how to fix it

This is more or less how I saw things. I thought the 2008 event would happen sooner (I was looking for it in 2002). Out of frustration with purely economic indicators I tried to develop a political one using critical elections as a cycle marker. For example if we get a Democratic victory next year that makes 2008 a likely critical election. I had thought that because the timing of the critical elections in the last two 4Ts was early in the turning, this would mean 2008 was close to the start of the 4T. But drawing conclusions from a sample size of two is really stretching things (like running a regression on 4 data points that Nate Silver snorted at). If you expand the sample size to all five American social moment turnings (each with their own critical election) then such elections can occur anytime during the turnings. All the 2008 start of K-winter and the critical election in 2008 show is that the 4T contains 2008.

So now I am resorting to the generational theory (in a simplified form). The basic idea is this: All societies have a ruling class. This class has some average age. In all societies young people come of age at some characteristic age. Average turning length is the difference between the two.

l set coming of age at 22 (the same age S&H used) because it works best. After 1789 I used leadership ages from Howe. Before 1649 I used Kurt Horner's idea that in the age of rule by traditional nobility the ruling class served for life and power tended to rise with experience, making individuals most influential late just before death. Thus the effective age of policy makers was the elite life expectancy. I found an excellent source for European elite lifespans over 800-1800.

After 1649 I assume that elites can be represented by legislators. So I extended the Howe leader ages back by subtracting one year for each year lost in elite life expectancy. So whereas leadership average age was 47 in 1790, they were about 40 in 1650, because elite life expectancy was 7 years less. With this I have leader ages from the year 1000 right down to the present. And as they change turning length changes right along with it.



In this figure the S&H entries use the turning dates for Awakenings and the social moment dates for crises, except for the Armada crisis in which the dates for the actual war (1585-1603) were used.

This eliminates the need for an old saeculum and a new saeculum. There is just one saeculum that works the same way all the time. Its length changes because the average age of the ruling class changes. That's all there is to it.

I am cautious to be on the same side as whackjob up there, but it is worth pointing out that there was a nasty recession and a plunge in commodity prices at the beginning of the 1920s. Abroad there were wars in Eastern Europe, hyperinflation in Germany, recession in Britain, etc. etc. The Great Depression for farmers started 10 years early, and it hadn't exactly been rosy consistently in the years prior. One of the reasons I remain so sceptical of the 2001 turning date is that for all the of the countries on the WWII-as-4T-Climax timeline (and I'm not just talking about Western Europe, but East and South Asia as well), there is no indication that they experienced anything like 9/11 at the time, whereas there were not merely economic but huge political changes (the Euro crisis is obvious, but so was the flaring up of China's territorial disputes, the LDP's election losses, Mumbai attacks, etc.) that occurred around the 2007-2009 timeframe.

Edited to make sense.

Originally Posted by Chas'88

The funny thing about writing about Generations who are dead (or mostly dead) it becomes rather easy to characterize them by specific members of their generations at specific times.

For instance if you read the biographies of all the Generations from the Silents and going back, most of their characterizations focus on the latter-end of the generation--not the forefront. In the Lost Generation, a whole love letter is given to WWI vets and those who drove ambulances through the trenches and then tried to forget about it all by drowning themselves in speakeasy liquor afterwards.

But what about those members of the Lost generation who started coming of age just before the Titanic sunk? Do you think if they had the opportunity to read that description on "their generation" that they would consider themselves a part of that culture? Or how about the Flapper of 1910--who was a completely different animal than the Flapper of 1920 as the term evolved. Early Losts often preferred Ragtime and its animal dances to the Jazz of the late cohorts. Sure there were some things which held them together (like the Tango--the Tango was one thing which unified them in terms of dance and music--1913, the year the world went Tango mad!), but just as much existed to differentiate them.

And yet what do we remember more, the early or the late? The late.

Similarly the Silents are described (especially in their teenage years) with language and vocabulary that more appropriately is applied to latter-end Silents such as "going steady", which is the one that has stayed with me since I read that section of the book.

Sure, they did try to create a unified identity with some generations across the 20 year span. I specifically recall the beginning of the GI chapter where S&H go out of their way to quote Hemingway and Fitzgerald about how their juniors were "different" to say the least and throw out the example of Coolidge sending a ship specially for Lindbergh to bring him home. But when it came time to talk about GI culture? Swing is what got brought out--something that would've been alien to Lindbergh's youth experience given that the dance and music form

The pattern is quite clear then, the latter end of a Generation is the one which gets remembered more as time passes (makes sense since the early members should theoretically die first and the latter ends live the longest).

It also explains why the term Millennial is so big now and why I go to work and hear a 1984 & 1985 cohort each talking about how to attract the attention of more Millennials and attend seminars with the focus of doing so--and look at me with confusion when I mention the fact that they themselves are Millennials--somehow the term as society is applying to it is becoming more focused around the latter end members who are "important" right now. Similarly, Generation X had been coming of age throughout the 1980s--but it wasn't until the early-to-mid 1990s that suddenly they appeared as a cultural icon or cemented themselves as such. And while I love early Xers (some of my favorite people on the planet were born in the cluster of years around the central year of 1967 for instance), I don't think society is going to think of them or their cultural identity when they think of the term "Xer".

The latter end of the Boomer Generation is a good example of a suppressed latter end (which can theoretically exist, I suppose)--so much so that they've declared cultural warfare on the early Aquarian Boomers by declaring themselves to be Jonesers.

And yet, despite all this focus on latter-end members of generations for past generations (and increasingly on current ones as the latter members are letting themselves be known), somehow in looking at Gen Xers, Millies, and Homies, S&H have become extra focused on looking at the earliest members of the generation--when it would seem, history favors the latter end cohorts in terms of preservation of identity.

So how did we become so obsessed with looking for new beginnings? Well, S&H put us on that path didn't they. Eager to predict when new kiddies would appear, they gave us that reassignment in that first place. That and Boomers I think assumed that just because they had a strong enough beginning to a generation that the rest after them would as well. That's at least my hypothesis for now.

~Chas'88

Actually, Boomers is where the pattern breaks down. The stereotypical Boomer is Aquarian, not Disco.

I would also say with X it is not clear that Nintendos overly dominate the stereotype vs us Ataris. Maybe these two cases are different because most of us are still alive and still very much "on scene."

Originally Posted by Tussilago

Well, at least we were very aware we existed as a generation unto our own looong before Coupland came along to write about it (or Jonesers, rather).

There was even some popular awareness. A bit prior to Coupland, Time Magazine had a featured article titled "Twenty Something" that discussed the generation without a name that lived in the Boomer shadow. I remember reading that article and saying, "yep, they've got my number."

I must have been about 27 or so at the time, I think it came out in '90 or '91.

Originally Posted by Kinser79

I have. Apparently you haven't because I clearly remember them discussing the turnings. I could be wrong of course I've not read the books themselves in years.

Originally Posted by ”Generations p 76”

We define the chronological end of each era by locating the specific year of what we call an “aligned” constellation.: the moment at which the last cohort of a new generation is born and each older generation has fully moved into a new phase of life. Aligned constellations arrive as often as new generations arrive—about once every 22 years. An Awakening era ends, for example, in the year when the last cohort of a new Reactive generation is born…The most recent such year would be 1981; before that 1900.

............

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

I am cautious to be on the same side as whackjob up there, but it is worth pointing out that there was a nasty recession and a plunge in commodity prices at the beginning of the 1920s.

The commodity supercycle could be a mechanism for the "alternating paradigm" theory. This commodity price cycle seems to run about ~50 years, so you end up with crises that alternate between trough commodity prices (U.S. Revolution & Great Depression) versus crises with peak commodity pricing (Civil War, Great Recession)

WW2 is a little weird because prices start rapidly coming up off of those Depression-level lows, but the price level doesn't peak out again until after the war and into the rebuilding phase.

there is no indication that they experienced anything like 9/11 at the time, whereas there were not merely economic but huge political changes (the Euro crisis is obvious, but so was the flaring up of China's territorial disputes, the LDP's election losses, Mumbai attacks, etc.) that occurred around the 2007-2009 timeframe.

You've got a good point - there was definitely a lot less intensity to the 02-06 timeframe in continental Europe.

But they still rushed to war in Afghanistan, and the UK in particular was quite enthusiastic about being America's biggest ally in war. The switchover to the Euro was also a little bit of an existential crisis for the diehard nationalists (who might have otherwise enjoyed the military displays). So some people saw the death of old Europe as a crisis, some saw terrorism, some even blamed U.S. and western imperialism as the force that would upend stability.

Much more divided and much less intense, but I do think a big, visible event can tip the scales a little early, too. London's definitely in 4T mode by 7/7/05, and the years before that are much more questionable, but this is a really organic cycle and I see no reason why two countries should have the exact same saeculum indefinitely. Sometimes the trends favor convergence, sometimes divergence. Either way, 2-3 years is within the expected margin of error.

Oh and as much as I like 9-11 for a start date, I've also been half-way talked in to 2003. This puts 1999 to 2003 as a micro-crisis, but still set within an unraveling.

Ok, ok, I gotta get back to workin' and lurkin' (hey Odin! how's it kickin? I might even get *another* day off for the holidays! maybe. lol)

You've got a good point - there was definitely a lot less intensity to the 02-06 timeframe in continental Europe

There's a reason I included in my earlier response this:

(and I'm not just talking about Western Europe, but East and South Asia as well)

And, even here, I think characterizing anywhere in Western Europe (particularly the Continent) as being in a Crisis in the 2001 to 2007 is a bit of stretch.

We define the chronological end of each era by locating the specific year of what we call an “aligned” constellation.: the moment at which the last cohort of a new generation is born and each older generation has fully moved into a new phase of life. Aligned constellations arrive as often as new generations arrive—about once every 22 years. An Awakening era ends, for example, in the year when the last cohort of a new Reactive generation is born…The most recent such year would be 1981; before that 1900.

In the sense that young adults start having a cultural impact, 22-year generations make sense, more or less. Youth born in 1961 and 1962 could have fit Boomer patterns had they wished -- but they didn't. There's nothing Hippie-like about Barack Obama, and he doesn't offer any claim to high ideals. He may be a smart, decent, principled man -- but he is definitely not Boom.

Kids can no longer be chips off the old block as they were in traditional societies -- not even if they are brought up in the controlled environment of the elite boarding school and sheltered from exposure to mass culture. They tend to reject what their parents do to excess and seek what they are missing in childhood once they become adults.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

The commodity supercycle could be a mechanism for the "alternating paradigm" theory. This commodity price cycle seems to run about ~50 years, so you end up with crises that alternate between trough commodity prices (U.S. Revolution & Great Depression) versus crises with peak commodity pricing (Civil War, Great Recession)

I think you are making a significant error here. The commodity supercycle you refer to is the classical Kondratieff cycle, which was orignally identified by N.D. Kondratieff in the 1920's. The K-cycle for the US showed troughs in 1790, 1843, 1896 and peaks in 1814, 1864 and 1920. They are also associated with peaks and troughs in interest rates. In 1933 the US went off the gold standard. As a result commodity prices are no longer good indications of relative inflation/deflationary eras. Monetary velocity is still a good indicator. During the era of the gold standard, money supply relative to economic output was maintained at more of less a constant ratio (this is the function of a gold standard). Thus, velocity fluctuations show up as price fluctuations. After 1933 you have to look at velocity directly. So after the peak in 1920 you have a velocity trough in 1946. a peak in 1981 and we are still waiting for the next trough.

The reason you have problems seeing the peak for WW II is it was a trough period. The 1940's were actually inflationary, but the Fed had the accelerator all the way to the floor, that is, what we nowadays call quantitative easing, but what used to be called printing money to pay for the war. Surely you have read the helicopter speech (I literally fell off my chair when I read that back in '02).

This also makes the early 2000's confusing (and why much of what I wrote here turned out to be bullshit). I was way under-bullish on gold. Frankly, I did not expect gold to quintuple during a deflationary era. Then again I did not expect a fucking panic and quantitative easing. Back in the 1990's I expected QE in the 2010's but that was based on a 2002 K-winter start. When it didn't happen I figured it would be later. But what was it about commodity prices and the divergence from interest rates?

Once off the gold standard, nominal prices can vary with business cycles. They shouldn't necessarily show 50-year K-cycles anymore. And I believe they have not. Take gas prices. In the early 1980's they had quadrupled from where they were a decade earlier. The same thing happened in 2008. This isn't 50 years, its closer to half that. The first was was an actual K-peak, associated with high interest rates. The second was during an deflationary era associated with low interest rates.

Since 2008 the Fed has turned on a firehose of money with very little inflation. Commodity prices have gone up and down, with no correlation with the monetary environment. It is clear that commodities follow their own cycles today, uncoupled from the global monetary environment. If I were as Marxist like Kinser I would probably try to build a core versus periphery model ala Immanuel Wallerstein. But I'm not

Just an observation. I like that we are discussing he theory instead of Red vs. Blue
I like posting here because after 15 years it hasn't devolved to total red vs. blue invective like so may comment sections.

Me, too. The recent surge in theory-discussion as opposed to mere political wrangling from the usual subjects is what brought me back when I thought I was going to take a break. If I just want to be angry about partisan, beside-the-point bullshit I can read the news.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

Actually, Boomers is where the pattern breaks down. The stereotypical Boomer is Aquarian, not Disco.

I would also say with X it is not clear that Nintendos overly dominate the stereotype vs us Ataris. Maybe these two cases are different because most of us are still alive and still very much "on scene."

In my mind the stereotypical Xer is a Nintendo-wave Xer, but that could be because my sister is a '76 cohort and so many of the Xers I grew up around were her friends and acquaintances.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

I think characterizing anywhere in Western Europe (particularly the Continent) as being in a Crisis in the 2001 to 2007 is a bit of stretch.

Personally, I think one of the reasons the 3T went on for so long in the US is because Western Europe is slightly behind us, the rebuilding after the war and the reconstruction of Western European politics on an Anglo-American progressive liberal-democratic basis (Germany's current constitution was partially written by American New Dealer progressives, for example) caused the 4T in Europe to last the full 20 years from 1929-1949. The long 3T allowed North America and Western Europe to get re-aligned.

Odin,

In complete agreement. And not just for Western Europe, but East and South Asia as well.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Just an observation. I like that we are discussing he theory instead of Red vs. Blue
I like posting here because after 15 years it hasn't devolved to total red vs. blue invective like so may comment sections.

Eventually the Red-Blue divide (much of it regional and ethnic, which is extremely ugly) will become irrelevant, perhaps replaced by something more benign. Maybe getting good from the Government instead of using it to punish those who believe in the "wrong" values will make the difference. Such has been the norm and it can be again.