Is there a Generation Jones?
I would define this generation as people too young to have fought in the Vietnam War, but too old to be Generation X. So people born between 1956 and 1964. It is named after the consumerism of “keeping up with the Joneses.” I’m not so sure about the name, but the Vietnam War was definitely an important marker.
Barack Obama, born in 1961, would be from Generation Jones.
* * *
1970 is a turning point when it was clear that the country’s economy was no longer growing in leaps and bounds. As a Gen Xer, I have no childhood memories of a time of economic optimism. Optimism returned in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan. A President who is not fully appreciated by those not old enough to remember him.
Lion of the Blogosphere 
During his time, I give Reagan an A. An utterly towering and benevolent figure. (HATED , mocked , and villified by the press and media)
In retrospect, he goes down to a C (or lower) SOLELY because of 86 amnesty.
Anything good accomplished by him pales in comparison to the effects of Simpson-Mazoli. If he had his druthers and stopped this and deported the then only 2 million or so illegals, it’d be a different country.
All though I’m sure HW Bush would’ve reversed it back to open borders anyway. . .
fakeemail
October 17, 2019 at 11:49 AM
During Reagan’s time, we were still trying to score points against communism. That people wanted to move to our capitalist country, while people only wanted to escape from communism, was the best propaganda. But yeah, in hindsight, the 86 amnesty was a complete failure, it just encouraged more illegal immigration, a LOT more.
Lion of the Blogosphere
October 17, 2019 at 12:47 PM
1970 wasn’t any kind of turning point, except for Kent State. For decades we’ve been told that 1973 is the year at which real wages flatlined. That also was the year of the first Arab oil embargo. Also not true that optimism was absent ‘till Reagan in 1980. For young people, who aren’t yet borrowing and so don’t experience inflation, the late 1970’s were full of optimism, even though objectively stagflation needed to be addressed. What were all those Day on the Green concerts in the ‘70’s but concentrated youthful optimism? If you really want to draw a distinction between the lives of late Boomers and Gen-X, why not use race? Gen-X would be the first group of high-schoolers to need security guards because Schvarz were getting out of control.
Marty
October 17, 2019 at 12:08 PM
I don’t remember any optimism in the 1970s. Massive inflation, feeling sorry for ourselves about the Vietnam War, the Iran Hostage Crisis capping off the decade. And locally, New York City was perceived to be going to hell, taken over by soaring crime.
Lion of the Blogosphere
October 17, 2019 at 12:49 PM
Also, in the 1970s, there was the first wave of the environmentalist movement, although the big concerns then weren’t global warming/climate change, in the 1970s, environmentalists were focused on curbing overpopulation and pollution.
Oswald Spengler
October 17, 2019 at 12:58 PM
I remember acid rain being a big concern. And dust particles from smokestack factories causing global cooling.
Lion of the Blogosphere
October 17, 2019 at 1:21 PM
Speaking of New York, the 1970s were extremely bad for Upstate new York. Most of the decline in manufacturing employment and in population happened during that decade.
WRB
October 17, 2019 at 1:22 PM
Watergate, Iran, Three Mile Island, Jonestown, Patty Hearst, energy crisis/gas lines, hyperinflation, soaring unemployment, Carter’s “malaise” speech, etc. Reagan’s election and the “Miracle on Ice” signaled a turnaround.
Brendan
October 17, 2019 at 2:08 PM
The 70s were bad for crime and urban decay.
But economic inequality was low, and it was the peak of blue collar male real wages. The deficit and immigration were also low.
Lot
October 17, 2019 at 3:25 PM
Their were long lines for gasoline. Practically rationing the stuff. The 70s had massive negativity, very little optimism as I recall it. Sci Fi stories, films, tv, etc. were all negative. Nuclear war was just around the corner (yes, this was before Reagan). Vietnam loss, assassinations, urban riots still popping up here and there after ’68. Graffiti everywhere in major cities, crime through the roof.
Yes, the left was responsible for most of it, but as they controlled the bullhorn (and still do), they were never held responsible. It’s good to be the king.
Sam Lowry
October 17, 2019 at 2:01 PM
Sam Lowry describes the 1970s that I remember.
Lion of the Blogosphere
October 17, 2019 at 2:10 PM
That describes the 70’s of my youth as well. Decline, oil shortages, and going off the gold standard and massive inflation, which seemed an intractable problem. There was definitely a sense that we were on the retreat and the Soviets were on the rise.
Mike Street Station
October 19, 2019 at 10:13 AM
The only meaningful “generation” is the early boomers, born 1945-1955 or so. It’s meaningful because there was huge obvious spike in births at that time, so a lot of people were born all at once, and society was changing really fast (TV, cars, suburbs, feminism, etc) so they were obviously different in a lot of ways from anyone born earlier.
Since then, it’s just been slow and steady change, with no meaningful dividing lines. There’s not much difference between 1965 and 1975, or 75 and 85, or whatever. Pop culture changed, Computers got better, but it’s still basically the same society, so the generational markers are just marketing hype (this car is for boomers, but THIS car is for YOUR generation!). Of course there are differences between old and young people, but a 20 year old today isn’t that different from someone who was 20 in the 80s, 90s, or 2000s. I don’t think the history books are going to care much whether people were playing Atari, Super Nintendo, or Fortnight.
ack-acking
October 17, 2019 at 12:23 PM
That is definitely true for music. Back in the 70s, no kids would have sung along to 40 or 50 year old tunes. In contrast, my sons like the Beatles, the Who, and Queen better than most modern pop bands. And lots of young professionals think Journey hits are great for karaoke. The boomers and rock totally displaced all of previous pop music. And the things that have endured in one form or another, whether Sinatra or Jazz have morphed into an American classical music for the postwar era when classical music ceased to produce works that people actually wanted to hear. (By my reckoning the last vestiges of even vaguely popular classical music were Sibelius and Prokofiev on the continent and Gershwin and Copland in the US).
The fact that a reissued Beatles album can be a giant hit today speaks to the lack of a transcendent new music that redefined generations since.
Ivar
October 17, 2019 at 1:33 PM
Are the people buying the re-issued Beatles album Millenials, or older people like me (nostalgic for their childhood when they had records).
Lion of the Blogosphere
October 17, 2019 at 1:51 PM
What changed in the 60s is that people were able to buy records and the music has been preserved. Original music from before the late 1950s is lost forever.
Lion of the Blogosphere
October 17, 2019 at 1:53 PM
Yeah, pop/rock music is one of those things that’s massively different between the boomer era and anything earlier. But since then it hasn’t changed much, it’s still a small group of young people led by a singer with some catchy lyrics, backed by guitar, drum, bass, and keyboard. There’s been so many similar bands since the Beatles that it’s hard for any one in particular to really stand out as a megahit, just like TV nowadays.
I think it’s pretty silly when people define themselves by the popular bands of their teenage years and ONLY listen to those bands, refusing to listen to anything earlier or later. People should broaden their horizons and listen to good music of all eras.
ack-acking
October 17, 2019 at 2:10 PM
Actually, the basic rock combo you described while still existing has been to a large degree supplanted by digitally-produced and performed music. Rap/Hip-Hop and EDM have been all the rage for youngsters for quite some time now. Rather than an actual band playing musical instruments you have one guy with a laptop.
Ripple Earthdevil
October 17, 2019 at 3:38 PM
I can’t stand the Beatles anymore.
Hearing them is like nails on a chalkboard. Boomer immaturity, self-reverance, and self-indulgence itself.
fakeemail
October 18, 2019 at 11:34 AM
People will long remember Reagan for the debt he bestowed on future generations. Boomers got to run up the credit card, and the Millennials of today will try their damndest to pass it on to their grandchildren. Intergenerational fiscal child abuse.
Vince
October 17, 2019 at 1:37 PM
People had electric typewriters with erasers and even word processors with primitive screens in the 70s.
My late boomer parents’ early childhood in the 60s was boring and wholesome like early boomers. But their HS and college years in the mid 70s seems very different than those 5-10 years older. One of my grandfathers was also too young to serve in WWII but did serve in Korea.
Lot
October 17, 2019 at 3:06 PM
“People had electric typewriters with erasers and even word processors with primitive screens in the 70s.”
Wang word processors were only used in offices, and there were typists who transcribed what the creative people wrote out by hand.
Regular people didn’t start using computer word processors until the 1980s.
Lion of the Blogosphere
October 17, 2019 at 3:09 PM
Wang word processors were only used in offices, and there were typists who transcribed what the creative people wrote out by hand.
Or dictated into a hand-held tape recorder.
And office workers still smoked at their desks until the early ’90s.
E. Rekshun
October 17, 2019 at 5:23 PM
After a 3-year enlisted hitch in the US Army, my father walked into a GE plant in 1962 at age 23 and got hired as a draftsman at $1.50/hr. Earned his engineering degree at night using GI and corporate benefits and retired 30 years later as a millionaire. He did get laid of three times during the ’70s, but got called back to work each time and enjoyed the time off.
Subsequent generations couldn’t do that and never will be able to again.
Graduating high school in the mid to late ’50s in the US was the ideal time to start one’s career.
Deplorable Prole
October 17, 2019 at 5:19 PM
On the topic of Ronald Reagan, and in connection with the idea that you’re not really politically aware as a young child, one topic I’d like to see discussed more is whether the current left’s Reagan hatred is a new thing. Though I was born during Carter’s presidency, Reagan is the first President I remember being President. And while I remember some grown-ups being pro-Reagan while others would sometimes grumbe about him, it didn’t seem to be any different from the usual grumbling you might do about any elected official you didn’t think was doing a good job, or had some policies you disagreed with. But in more recent years, I’ve seen two major complaints about Reagan being made on the left:
The first is narrow in scope. It’s the idea that Reagan has blood on his hands because he should have Done Something about the “AIDS epidemic” by increasing funding for AIDS research, but he didn’t because he was homophobic and wanted gays to die. Of course, nobody thought this in the 1980’s.
The second, though, which I’ve been seeing a lot of, is this idea that Reagan was stupid, incompetent, an empty suit, just a male bimbo dumb Hollywood actor who was incompetent, unqualified to be President, and way out of his depth. While we’re not politically savvy as kids, that’s not how I recall what Reagan-dislike I did pick up on in the 80s. Of course, there’s the famous Saturday Night Live skit from 1986 in which the gag was that Reagan was a mastermind in private with his cabinet while putting on the face of a pleasant buffoon to the public, so it’s possible the idea was there all along. Can anyone who was older than I in the 80s comment on whether this was a common viewpoint at the time?
Hermes
October 17, 2019 at 5:25 PM
There’s a great story about Reagan’s re-election in 1984. The campaign director was a guy named Ed Rollins, a tough former boxer from Vallejo, CA. Rollins wanted to get the AFL-CIO to endorse Reagan. They had never endorsed a Republican candidate for President. So he goes to to meet with Lane Kirkland, the union chief, at Kirkland’s top-floor suite in a hotel in Cleveland. Kirkland asks what he gets for his endorsement, and Rollins answers nothing – that would be illegal. And Kirkland says, “All right Rollins, let me tell you one thing. If word ever gets out that I endorsed your man without getting anything back – you think they had a hard time finding Jimmy Hoffa?
Marty
October 17, 2019 at 6:35 PM
In the early ’80s, wasn’t the big leftist complaint about Reagan that he was a warmonger who wanted to start World War III?
The anti-nuke movement peaked during his first term. Then Gorbachev took power and the Cold War started winding down.
Stan Adams
October 17, 2019 at 6:48 PM
Yes they said he was a warmonger. And he was a stupid cowboy.
Lion of the Blogosphere
October 17, 2019 at 8:27 PM
Right, the left referred to Reagan as “Ray-Gun” as a reference to his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which the left called “Star Wars.”
Since GWB, all republican presidents are Nazis.
E. Rekshun
October 18, 2019 at 10:49 AM
All of those complaints were made during Reagan’s presidency big time.
Ripple Earthdevil
October 17, 2019 at 9:43 PM
Gen Jones is the sandwich generation between the Boomers and Gen X, born after 1962 to about 1969.
Lion must be a Gen Jones. I know MaryK is a Gen Jones. They tend to be pessimistic,cynical and boring. Their generation planets in astrology starts with Uranus in Virgo and ends with Pluto in Virgo. Virgos are fussy, boring (conservative), and cynical. They also don’t care for status as much as other generations.
Ok, what, who's this again?
October 17, 2019 at 7:45 PM
No, I’m Generation X. Said so a zillion times.
Lion of the Blogosphere
October 17, 2019 at 8:30 PM
So you aren’t in that old. Gen Jones are in the prime of their middle age.
Ok, what, who's this again?
October 17, 2019 at 8:41 PM
Here’s a site that calls those born 1958-1968 Babybusters. It’s based on how the US birthrate peaked in 1957 and then declined for 11 straight years. I definitely agree that there are “mini-generations” which have combined traits of two others.
http://www.babybusters.org
njguy73
October 17, 2019 at 8:34 PM
1971-1973 was the turning-point in the economy. That is when the US got off the gold standard. It was downhill from there.
map
October 18, 2019 at 12:05 AM
There’s Xennials (born 1977-1983), at the other end of GenX. Analog childhood, digital adulthood.
Looking back, I can’t really say the Internet improved things.
SFG
October 20, 2019 at 4:59 PM