Reminds me that the whole concept of generations is something manufactured of whole cloth and meant to divide us, but more than that, that real people are compassionate and understanding. All that stuff is just fake.

It gives me hope for unity.

words-writ-in-starlight

The most lingering comment I ever heard someone make about Millennials was an older man I was talking to about the way we think about finances - when he dreamed about being a millionaire as a young man, he talked about yachts and mansions and trips to the Bahamas; when I did, I talked about living debt-free and being able to buy dinner out without looking at my monthly budget. He heard me out, took me seriously.

And at the end of it all, he nodded and looked at me and asked, "Do you know who you remind me of?"

And I said no, no I didn't, and he nodded some more.

"My mother. She grew up just before the Depression hit, and she saw people lose everything left and right. And whenever she talked about finances, she sounded just like you." He paused for a moment, and said, "I never really thought about what growing up like that would do to a generation."

He still brings that conversation up, years later. He hasn't made a single derisive comment about Millennials since.

Source: redcharade
#capitalism
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[–] 15 points 2 years ago (11 children)

I never understood the generation's gap. Are there people of a certain age more frequent? Instead, I believe humans reproduce more or less at a yearly constant rate. I understand that having the categories are meaningful for many but to me it's a 'double-dipping' statistical flaw.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

    There's definitely differences in birth rates -- it's where Baby Boomer got the name. Here are the CDC numbers below, but in brief, the birth rate in 1950 across all races was 24.1, while in 2019, it was 11.4, meaning people in 1950 were squirting them out at over twice the rate as those just a few years ago.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2020-2021/brth.pdf

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Ah. I was speaking of planet earth, the world is big. Americans may have their trends. Similarly, between the different states you might see trends that are masked over when taking numbers "globally".

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    Fair enough. Looks like "According to World Bank data, the global fertility rate was 2.4 children per woman in 2019. This rate is approximately half of what it was in 1950 (4.7), and more economically developed countries such as Australia, most of Europe, and South Korea, tend to have lower rates than do less-developed or low-income countries."

    https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fertility-rate#:~:text=According%20to%20World%20Bank%20data%2C%20the%20global%20fertility,lower%20rates%20than%20do%20less-developed%20or%20low-income%20countries.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago

    Sort of. The second world war had a profound impact on demographics in Europe and North America. During the war birthrates were lower than average but during the postwar period there was a surge of births - the baby boom. Once everybody had a houseful if kids birthrates dropped off again - Generation X (that's me).

    You're right in that every "generation" since then has gotten fuzzier - for exactly the reasons you mention - and is defined more by cultural events than demographics. But it's also true that the baby boom and bust has had a profound impact on our society, including the invention of "teenager" as a distinct phase of life.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Other than baby boomers, people were reproducing at a near constant rate. There's no "gap" between generations, just some arbitrary year where non-scientists decided to say "group A" is different from "group B".

    https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2016/06/americas-age-profile-told-through-population-pyramids.html

    It's basically astrology.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Not only did baby boomers get their name from how their parents popped out babys twice as often as the generation before them but gen z has been populating way less often than their generation but it's getting to a point that it's becoming a world wide crisis I honestly hope people start having tons of kids pretty soon or else we might be facing extinction eventually

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