Being a bridge — not just between government and the people, but between the two large and idealistic generations that bookend us — may ultimately prove to be Gen X’s destiny. Boomers and millennials are both good at making everything very black-and-white. Idealism can be a powerful tool, but lately it’s turned everything from politics to the workplace into a never-ending, polarizing game of tennis. Gen Xers? We’re much more comfortable living in the gray. So yes, we do worry, like my dad says, but we aren’t afraid to get our hands dirty. And there’s great hope in our secret sauce of cynicism, humor, resiliency and tough love. We figure out how to move forward whatever comes our way.Whatever Happened to Generation X?
Pew Research redefines Gen-X and Millenials. This is what they’ve come up with:
The Silent Generation: Born 1928-1945 (73-90 years old)
Baby Boomers: Born 1946-1964 (54-72 years old)
Generation X: Born 1965-1980 (38-53 years old)
Millennials: Born 1981-1996 (22-37 years old)
Post-Millennials: Born 1997-Present (0-21 years old)
Gen x and Boomers.
We are a revolt against the boomers, a revolt against the revolt, a market correction, a restoration not of a power elite but of a philosophy. I always believed we had more in common with the poets haunting the taverns on 52nd Street at the end of the 30s than with the hippies at Woodstock. Cynical, wised up, sane. We’d seen what became of the big projects of the boomers as that earlier generation had seen what became of all the big social projects. As a result we could not stand to hear the Utopian talk of the boomers as we cannot stand to hear the Utopian talk of the millennials. __We know that most people are rotten to the core, but some are good, and proceed accordingly.__Why Generation X Might Be Our Last, Best Hope
Lavanya Ramanathan of the Washington Post writes about how the “slacker” generation created the tech world we live in.
The Great Ideological Wars of 2017 have pitted gray-hairs against snowflakes, the we-liked-it-the-old-way boomers, more than half of whom cast their ballots for Donald Trump, vs. the idealistic millennials, who would prefer it if Grandpa kept his paws off their rights.
Then there’s the wild card: The 66 million aging hipsters known as Generation X.
Are Generation X about to get screwed over by Millennials?
This skipping of a generation, if it happens, will be a special sort of injustice. The youngest Xers are entering the prime of their lives; the oldest among them have passed 50. With no time left to start over, they’re the ones for whom public policy, cultural change, and a growing economy really matter. Their salaries have stagnated over the last nine years, along with GDP growth. The underwater mortgages are largely theirs. The ever-heavier costs of college education fall on their shoulders. Social Security, if it isn’t somehow fixed, is going to disintegrate just as they are getting ready to retire.Zero Hour for Generation X
