No offense taken, as I hope you're taking none from me either.
Here's why I think generations are defined by geography, at least some times. The timeline is continuous. There is no specific rule that says "Every 15 years, you cut one generation and start another". Generations are defined either by external events such as a world war, or a common set of experiences, such as the hippie movement. These events tie a group of people together across several years.
The "baby boomers" are lumped together because there is a huge spike in births following the end of world war 2 that doesn't end until 1960 (or 64 according to some definitions). This group has experienced, together, a unique set of circumstances as they have aged as a result of the unusual size of their generation. It would make no sense to group the people of New Zealand together in the same way, because they did not experience the same increase in birth rates.
During the Olympic games, I saw a piece on the current generation of young people in China, who are being lumped into a single generation because they are of the "1-child-rule" era. They share a common experience with each other that other ages within China and people of the same age outside of China do not experience. It would be rather silly to define children born in the United States in the 80's and 90's as children of the "1-child rule".
There certainly are times when generational labels can be applied across borders. Children of the nuclear age, for example, and those that can be applied in small subsets. Cincinnati now has a "generation" (actually, 2) that experienced the race riots, and the subsequent fallout that Columbus doesn't have.
As it relates to "baby boomers", as they are discussed in this thread, I believe them to be a uniquely United States group. I don't know, but I would suspect that there are similar spikes in births in Europe following the end of the 2nd world war, but the common definition of Baby Boomer in this country does not include them.
That's my 3 cents.
Results 41 to 47 of 47
Thread: I.o.u.s.a.
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08-22-2008, 10:51 AM #41"Give a toast to my brother, hug your family, and do everything possible to live the life you dream of. God Bless."
-Matt McCormick
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08-22-2008, 10:56 AM #42
I may be wrong, but I understood the "great" in greatest generation to be a measure of size, not awesomeness. The "greatest generation" is the global generation of those who were called to serve in World War 1. I believe the name is a nod to the fact that in this case, there is a common set of experiences defining people worldwide, and that it created a "great" generation.
These are also the people who called the depression "great", so I really don't think it means how cool it was.
"Man, this depression is great.""Give a toast to my brother, hug your family, and do everything possible to live the life you dream of. God Bless."
-Matt McCormick
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08-22-2008, 12:15 PM #43
I wish I would have seen that. I find the topic interesting. I heard a report on radio of a Chinese School with 350 kids. They were all only children. Nobody in the school had any brothers or sisters. None of their parents had any brothers or sisters.
I wonder if they have forgotten the words for Aunt and Uncle. They probably aren't used much in Chinese language. Nobody at that school had an Aunt or Uncle, and they probably didn't know anyone with one either.
What a tremendous amount of social engineering on behalf of the government.
It is going to have dire consequences in the future as well. The one child policy has given birth (pun intended) to the 4-2-1 problem, where one child could be responsible for 2 aging parents and up to 4 aging grandparents.
“You have the prospect of 400 million Chinese elders, age 60 and over, by 2040, 80 percent of whom, do not have any formal retirement pension, either public or private, most of whom won’t have access to government-financed health care. They’re depending on the extended family, but the government told them not to have children, or not to have more than one—or, in some cases, two.”RIP Brian Dargin McCormick
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08-22-2008, 12:26 PM #44
Another review of the movie:
I.O.U.S.A., I Want a Refund by Lew Rockwell
"The book [Empire of Debt, upon which the movie was inspired] offered several options for dealing with the debt; the movie had only one: more government. The post-movie 'town hall' was as silly and even worse than I feared. It took only a few minutes before new taxes were proposed under the guise of "forced savings." More than once, the worthies on the stage opined that if several of them were to huddle, they could solve this problem. Of course, their solutions invariably included taking more money from one or another out of favor group. Once again, even so much as the possibility of market solutions was never acknowledged, let alone discussed.
"The notion that government is the source of this problem and unlikely to be the solution was never raised. The book made this point clear, the movie carefully ignored it. The movie focussed exclusively on the problems of paying this government debt; the book explored other, more realistic options, such as repudiation and inflation. The book explored the enormous malinvestments, misallocation of resources, folly, and harm caused by the same policies that allow such a monstrous pyramid of debt and credit to be created in the first place. The movie studiously ignored any mention of the harm these policies have caused to civil society."RIP Brian Dargin McCormick
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08-22-2008, 12:57 PM #45"Give a toast to my brother, hug your family, and do everything possible to live the life you dream of. God Bless."
-Matt McCormick
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08-22-2008, 01:05 PM #46
Right about that KK. Late 70's. Plenty of old school aunts and uncles, though they would be diminishing at a good rate.
People have already been born during the one child and grown up to have a child, starting the 4-2-1 problem. It will only get bigger as time passes. And it really is weird to think of a high school of all single children and what sort of change that would make in society.RIP Brian Dargin McCormick
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08-22-2008, 01:09 PM #47
It is an interesting subject. Some provinces are allowing couples that were both 1-child rule children to have two children.
"Give a toast to my brother, hug your family, and do everything possible to live the life you dream of. God Bless."
-Matt McCormick
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