A few weeks ago, I wrote about how a shift is taking place with the world as we know it, a shift in the global zeitgeist - the dominant belief or idea or psychological state - that we will only truly appreciate in hindsight.
Here is one example of the driving force for the transformation that the world is experiencing.
If the post-World War II was dominated and defined by America, post-war America was shaped by what's called the Baby Boomer generation. In demographic terms, the 76 million Americans who were born between 1946 and 1964 still represents the largest "generation" in demographics. Their parents were the children of the Depression-era who were raised in the farms and small towns amidst economic hardship but also with great resilience and hope. They were the ones who followed their own parents as they fled out of their crumbling farms into the cities, out of the industrial belt and on to new opportunities in California and the West.
The children of the Depression came of age in World War II and with the expanded educational opportunities of the New Deal and the GI Bill eventually became known as "the greatest generation" who built that golden-age of US economic, political and scientific power in the post war era.
And they gave birth to the Baby Boomer generation - a golden generation who rode the wave of peace and prosperity, blessed with material abundance and ever improving standard of living. They saw from the new inter-state highways, from the TVs in their living room, air travel, higher education, gender equality and the conquest of space a world of limitless horizon for their generation. Their live experiences compared to their parents' are like night-and-day. In the 60s, the Baby Boomers saw themselves to be revolutionaries and vanguards of a new consciousness to change the world. Much of the rest of society at the time saw only the excesses and self-indulgence of their adolesence. But from within that also rose a remarkable generation that turned rebellion into creativity and compassion. They gave us the computer age, biotechnology and the information revolution. And from within their search for self-actualization, they gave us global NGOs, alternative energy and a new respect for nature.
True enough, they were by virtue of number, wealth, health, peace and lifestyle the most influential generation in modern US history. And their influence are felt all over the world.
They also spawn the glorious age of consumerism that lasted roughly within the 30 years from 1978 to 2009. In 1978, the Baby Boomers were between 15 and 35 years old (25 +/- 10 years). The oil shocks of 1973-74 and again in 1979 hit them hard, and so did the double-dip recessions of 1979-80 and 1982. But you cannot escape demographics, and true enough there was a whole enormous numbers of people who needed to start new households, buy new cars, homes, appliances and services. The flood of people into their productive years did not go unnoticed either because the US economy went into a remarkable period of steady growth.
You would notice that 1978 coincided with China's opening and reform policy. In fact, on hindsight, China was extremely fortunate in its timing which positioned it perfectly for an consumption-fueled export-led economic boom. When the US Baby Boomers spent, those money often ended up in China. I focused on the US, but to be perfectly clear there were similar post-war demographic booms in Europe and Asia as well. Every place on earth affected by World War II - Europe, Japan and Asia - all had their own baby boomer generation.
The steady and uninterrupted pace of growth continued unabated even when the Baby Boomer workforce began to taper off from 2000 onwards (as the first of them hit 55 and they began to retire), because they were being enticed to switch to an (even) bigger home, buy another car and generally spend more money on credit.
But this merely delayed the inevitable. Rather than being 25 +/- 10 years old as in 1978, by 2009 the Baby Boomers are now between 55 +/- 10 years old. As we all know, the lifestyles and spending pattern of 55 year olds are very different from 25 year olds. More importantly, the psychology pattern and risk-appetite for the Baby Boomers are now very different from what the whole world have been assuming and operated on for the last 30 years.
The current recession might just be one of the many consequences of the long term disruption resulting from this shift in energy, appetite and priorities of this most influential group in global economic demographics. These disruptions to long standing economic patterns and assumptions has to happen one way or the other. Just think about it. The Baby Boomers are once again influencing the world in ways that we must first learn to understand before we can even get to know the new world that is emerging right at this moment.
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3 comments:
is it demographic alone? i presume it is just a way of explaining.
China's population is aging fast and with the skewed gender ratio is likely to suffer and the conception of chimerica may actually be given away to Indimerica considering the population growth in india.
look at middle east and many part of africa with significant population growth in the recent decades, i doubt very much that these societies are gonna be great any time soon for want of right policies.
it may be too simplistic to say that it is the policy that matters. But surely a successful society requires the right dose from the policy makers and the baby boomers generation thrive post-WWII, in large measure is arguably due to the FDR's retrusturing, Johnson's social, Nixon's foreign and Reagan's economic policies. In these are true, we are taking about almost half a century of policies coinciding one with the other. Assuming there is a few more carters and GWBs, it may have been different.
Just look at the Brits
My proposition is that demographics do not provide all the answers, but any answer should be forget demographics. Of all the tools for projection, few are more objective than demographics.
You are right and I mentioned in my essay, that the Baby Boomers are influential beyond the impact of their numbers because of the opportunities that were open to them from the New Deal (that expanded high school education far and wide), the GI Bill (which created a record number of college graduates) and from American wealth and power in the post-war era, all invested in this generation.
India, Africa and Middle-East may have the population growth but our's is no longer a feudal society where population equals power. Left with out adequete education and economic opportunities, they are an enormous source of instability - the classic competition for scarce resources. Here again, demographics plays an undeniable role, except the negative impact may outweighs the positive.
So I still place my bet more on Chinamerica than Indimerica. Although, my observation is that while China and America may be the twin engines of the world economy; Western multi-nationals will become more and more "Indian" either through management, ownership or operations. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of Indians, few will benefit from this development.
Many years from now, people may be talking about China's post-Cultural Revolution generation with similar fascination as the US Baby Boomers. This is the first generation to live through reletive peace, prosperity, accumulated personal wealth and are making their economic impact felt - university education, good jobs, mobile phones, cars, apartments, foreign vacations etc.
I read a book review yesterday in the FT on "When the lights went out" book about Britain in the 1970s. A fairly positive review about what it claimed to be a balanced account of a fascinating decade for Britain. I was left with the feeling that (i) changes are often in place before people realise (ii) timing is everything. Thatcher harnessed and reaped the power of changes in the national mood, although the national debate / policy changes that were gradually adopted by PM Heath, Wilson and Callaghan. But Thatcher was able to seize on this new paradigm and stood up for it.
Same goes for Carter. I believe he is on hindsight, one of the better Presidents in history but had bad timing. I also think that Reaganism was an emotional triumph but history will view his economic policies with ambivalence. I was a supporter of him in the 1980s and I felt the economic growth that followed was proof that he was right. Now I look around and I see the costs of Reaganism: that by trying to starve the federal Government into being smaller the result is US's poor infrastructure and deteriorating public services. And on hindsight, may be the economic boom of the 80s was none other than readjustment after a weak growth of the 1970s plus additional growth potential from the Baby Boomers.
talking about timing is everything - it is really everything because it had happened.
the way we see history is often associated with what has been accomplished and what has not both in the positive and the negative sense. Only now that it becomes more fashionable to offer revisionist view. however that remains rare and most often fail to reverse the orthodox view.
to my mind, the revisionist view if substantiated by newly discovered evidence ought to have a strong claim to contest the orthodox view. However if the argument is based solely on timing alone, my reply is the standard chinese reply - 英雄造时势, 时势造英雄.
This is a more balanced way of looking at history.
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