Every Generation Has Their Volcker Recession

The Boomers had their recession from 1979-1982. I thought Gen X would have theirs during the DotcomMania days, but it was too weak. This up coming recession will not be and thus will be the “Gen X’ers” recession.

I have a theory about recessions and it basically goes like this. Every generation has to grow up. The more successful an economy is, the longer this takes as mommy and daddy can support their children for longer periods of time allowing their children to avoid the hard reality of economics; that you have to work in order to eat. This happened with the Baby Boomers in the late 1970’sand early 1980’s. One can contribute the recession of that time to the oil crises, but if you look at labor productivity, I’m more inclined to say it was the hippie commie attitude that everything should be free and why should we work (maaaan!) Well because if nobody works, then there is no food to eat. And if nobody works there aren’t any Jim Morrison 8 tracks to listen to.

Bar the horrible fashions of the late 1970’s (though my generation went through that earlier in the“grunge” phase – remember that? Where we’d pierce everything and make ourselves look revolting?) Gen X is repeating the same thing today. Everything should be free, why should we work, dude? I’ll just buy a house and take the equity out of it and avoid working to pay for my stuff. And then I can listen to my Kirk Cobain album, dude. This attitude caused debt to skyrocket during our coming of age and brought even more shame to my generation. Household debt as a percent of GDP is nearly 100%, up from a boomer average of about 60%.

And so now I think it’s time for another generational recession. Where unemployment and hard times befall us, and my generation is starkly reminded of why communist countries fail. Cause nobody works and our parents weren’t just saying it for S’s and G’s when we were kids in that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Just Fed induced inflation. Get ready to grow up, dude.

PS-Kirk Cobain sucked. No really, he did. And he was a loser on top of it too. Yeah, sorry, didn't mean to hit all the emo kids upside the head with that one. Yeah, apparently he did indeed suck. Some scientists over in Russia proved it, something to do with cosines and newtonian physics I believe.