Why Global Crises Repeat Every 100 Years
There are always claims that the study of history is futile, until crises occur that have happened before. It is then that these comments are retracted. Those that have claimed that the advances in the sciences (ones to a certain extent I do not deny) have set unprecedented times are quickly brought back down to earth when one of the apocalyptic forces on humanity reemerge: war, famine and pestilence. With the quarantines and the shutdowns of public areas and businesses leading to massive unemployment, it is safe to say that we are in a crisis which has happened before. Pandemics, regardless of scientific advances, can and will occur. An underlining question emerges from this pandemic: if history is not some random walk then is it truly cyclical? And if history does repeat itself, then could the outbreak have been predicted and can its aftermath be anticipated?
Unlike wars and famines, it was well known that we are never truly immune to pandemics. From academia to governments alike, possible outbreaks were well known. Even within the sphere of philanthropy, the Bill and Melinda Foundation’s efforts on tackling the spread of infectious diseases such as malaria were of high priority for the organization. In theory then, this was no black swan — it was more like an abnormally white swan we knew was lurking on the pond that finally flew towards us in a fury. Perhaps then, due to the nature of viruses and potentially deadly spread of viruses, these are constant unpredictable threats. Thus, the concerns of pandemics are immune to the cycles of history. This is where I would like to diverge on the subject.
Yes, this pandemic has sparked in some ways an unprecedented crisis and was unpredictable, but I will argue that the response to the pandemic was predictable and is itself not the crisis, but part of an era marked by crises. This crisis did not begin in 2020, but was part of a chain reaction of events beginning in 2001 and will end around the year 2025. The end of crisis will change the world in somewhat predictable fashion which I intend to outline in the following. To accomplish this task, I will draw a historical cycles framework that will be used to explain this crisis era and how it may likely end.
The Cycles of History
In the mid-1990’s, two researchers William Strauss and Neil Howe developed a highly comprehensive and successful framework for cyclical patterns of history — where many such as Arthur Schlesinger have failed — and presented its revelatory capabilities in their groundbreaking book the Fourth Turning, a Prophecy for America. Using their framework, they prophesized of a forthcoming crisis:
“The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empire. Yet this time of trouble will bring seeds of social rebirth. Americans will share regret about recent mistakes — and a resolute new consensus about what to do. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake, sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history.”[1]
Strauss and Howe go on to then write about the aftermath of this crisis:
“The next [crisis] could end in apocalypse — or glory. The nation could be ruined, its democracy destroyed, and millions of people scattered or killed. Or America could enter a new golden age, triumphantly applying shared values to improve the human condition. The rhythms of history do not reveal the outcome of the coming Crisis; all they suggest is the timing and dimension.”[2]
From this, they a few events they postulated could occur during the next Crisis Era around the year 2020:
- Cyberterrorists destroy IRS databases and cause a deep financial crisis;
- Global terrorist group blows up an aircraft and announces it possesses portable nuclear weapons;
- Center for Disease Control and Prevention announce the spread of a new communicable virus.[3]
There is a lot to digest in these paragraphs. Most strikingly, how were they able to predict more or less the timeframes for the crises, even predicting almost the exact crises, all while they were only in the mid-1990s?
Answer: Through years of rigorous research and study of the cycles of history.
Through their study of history, Strauss and Howe were able to uncover some recurring patterns throughout. They found that by breaking down history into roughly 100-year timeframes and with four distinct quarters, they found a recurring pattern (as we normally do with centuries and quarter century frames). They uncovered that not only do these generally centuries resemble each other, quarters centuries strongly mirrored other quarters of previous centuries. It can be thought as the first quarter of x century will resemble the first quarter the second century. This holds similarly with the other quarters. Strauss and Howe compare this timeframe patten much like the timing and dimensions of seasons; winter occurs always more or less during the same months as does spring, summer and autumn. You can have a good idea of how the seasons will play out by-large. Specific events within seasons are hence like the weather; you can predict the oncoming season but knowing the exact temperatures or for instance, when a snow storm will hit this winter is wholly unpredictable. Yet you know there will be no snowstorms during the month of July or no blooming of flowers in winter. The history is like seasons : both repeat themselves in a cyclical fashion.
Just like winter represents the harsh months and summer the one of joy and excitement, there are turnings (which I have referred to as quarters and seasons) that reflect the general outlines of the solstices. Spring in the cycle of history can be represented as the 1st Turning or the High it where is it a great joy of seeing the snow melt away and sprouts in the trees. Summer arrives with the 2nd Turning where people rejoice of the hot times but eventually, the leaves start falling in the 3rd Turning called the Unravelling where it sets in motion the cold and inhospitable months of winter. This is when all hell breaks loose and is called the Crisis Era or the 4th Turning. This is a strong — albeit not identical — analogy to draw in understanding the cycle of history Strauss and Howe found. Yet the predictive power of their framework is still incomplete as there is missing piece to this puzzle historical cycles. Strikingly, there is another cyclical pattern in play within the cycle of history: that of generations. Just like the centuries and its quarters, there are 4 distinct generation archetypes that follow the rhythms of the cycle of history: a specific generation will be born in a certain Turning and will leave the cycle of history in another turning, yet it never truly disappears for its zeitgeist re-emerges under another generation that will exhibit the same characteristics. Depending on where they age in the cycles of history — the Turnings they are born and raised in — they will also have an impact on history. In sum, there is not just a cycle of history, but cycles of history.
Here are the Strauss and Howe in their words summarizing both these cycles of history and the interplay between each:
“America has always had the same generational constellation during every crisis or Awakening — the same archetypal lineup entering the four phases of life. During a crisis era, Prophets enter elderhood, Nomads midlife, Heroes young adulthood, Artists childhood. During an Awakening era, Heroes enter elderhood, Artists mid-life, Prophets young adulthood and Nomads childhood. Push the saeculum forward, since generations that are predictably shaped by history become, as they age, the generations that predictably shape history. The seasons of history and generational archetypes govern time’s great wheel.”[4]
For visual and comprehension purposes, here are the general outlines of history along with each generational archetype:
- High (1st turning): First upbeat era with strong institutions and weak individualism where Prophets are born.
- Awakening (2nd turning): It is about passionate attacks on the established morality and culture where Nomads are born.
- Unraveling (3rd turning): downcast era of strong individualism and weak institutions where Heroes are born.
- Crisis (4th turning): Secular upheaval which replaces the old civic order (and possibly more) where Artists are born.[5]
Who are these Prophets, Nomads, Heroes and Artists zeitgeists? These terms may sound confusing, but we are all familiar with them. These so-called Prophets, Nomads, Heroes and Artists are all generations everyone has heard of: Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z respectively. Here is our current generational archetypal structure:
- Prophets in elderhood: Boomers
- Nomads in Midlife: Gen X
- Heroes in young adulthood: Millennials
- Artists in childhood: Gen Z
How many times have we heard these generations before (quite a few, especially with the baby boomer and the not too distant ‘Ok Boomer’ meme)? Yet what we fail to do with these generations is truly understand that their archetypes have been found many times before in history and their cradle-to-grave patterns and behaviours in each Turning. You will never get a Hero generation born in the 2nd Turning and one that will fundamentally self-centered for instance. Here are a few of the past generational archetypes for each in American history but could be found in other countries that follow the United States’ cycles as well:
- Prophets: Missionary Generation, Transcendental generation
- Nomads: Lost Generation, Gilded Generation
- Heroes: G.I Generation, Republican generation
- Artists: Silent generation, Progressive generation
Some reading may start to object to this framework, especially that crises are inherently unpredictable and are not dictated or impacted by the generational constellations at the time, and they are partly right. There were crises in the 1970s like the Vietnam War and the Oil crisis when the 2nd Turning was taking place. A recession like the dotcom bubble occurred during the 3rd Turning in the 1990s and predicting them at the time may have been playing a game of pin the tail on the donkey. Strauss and Howe were acutely aware of this criticism, yet by uncovering the patterns of history, they also discovered two types of crises: secular crises and spiritual awakenings.[6] A secular crisis is defined: “when society focuses on reordering the outer world of institutions and public behavior” and spiritual awakenings: “when society focuses on changing the inner world of values and private behavior.” These forms of crises are dictated by the generational constellations at the time of a crisis. The Conscious Revolution of the 1970s is a great example of the last spiritual crisis America encountered. This was a crisis, but a spiritual awakening where young adults challenged the establishment and brought new values of peace and love. The distinction of different crises highlights that events are unpredictable throughout history, but they are not deterministic: they are a product of our responses.[7] These responses are affected by generational archetypes and where they are along their life cycle.
A brilliant case of the outcome of historical events being determined partly by the generational archetypal alignments are the two world wars. When the First World War broke out, America’s isolationists mood did not react urge to participate in the war as it was focused on itself with an Unravelling taking place. Some may claim that this war was not one as dire consequence as the Second World War with the attack of Pearl Harbor and the possible onslaught of the Japanese war machine, but had the British not intercepted the Zimmerman telegram, America could of underwent another armed conflict with Mexico. At the end of World War I, Woodrow Wilson tried to establish the League of Nations to harmonize the international relations between countries, especially European ones, but it fell on deaf ears given America’s historical and generational archetypes. However, when World War II occurred and the subsequent attack on Pearl Harbor, the American experience was radically different. The Crisis Era mobilized all generations to act to save society and in doing so, America played a leading role on the international arena with the setting up the United Nations, the IMF, the Bretton Woods monetary system — a world Woodrow Wilson strove so hard to accomplish in his life time. Similar crises but different general archetypes and positions along the life cycle yields different outcomes.
Putting their framework to use, Strauss and Howe made assessments about the Unravelling that was taking place (late 1980s mid-1990s) during their time of writing and made a series of predictions about the oncoming Crisis Era based on the Unravelling — as the seasons have a cause and effect relationship. In the following, I put their framework under scrutiny in evaluating their assessment of the Unravelling sowing the seeds for the Crisis Era would unfold.
Setting the stage to our Crisis Era: The Unravelling 1980s & 1990s
This period may seem to most as a period of great prosperity globally, but there were forces set in motion in the Unravelling, specifically in 1984, that would serve as a watershed to the 4th Turning. In 1984, economic policy went amuck with large deficits, growth of entitlement spending, heavy borrowing from foreigners with by the end of the year, fiscal excess became a political way of life.[8] Mario Cuomo’s Two Americas and Charles Murray’s Lost Ground showed that there wasn’t only a wealth gap; there was a growing divide in wealth rapidly unfolding.[9] Americans realised the nuclear family was no longer the norm and Hollywood was making unprecedented violent action movies like displaying the use of automatic weapons.[10] Capital was flowing in unprecedented amounts across country borders (leading to billion dollar leveraged buyouts a decade later laying offs many workers), investment bankers was the hot new career path and the crack cocaine epidemic had begun.[11]
Spurring the Unraveling, they argue that 1984 set the stage for the culture wars, institutional decay and the ‘whiney nineties’ with each generation at a time playing a role. With Reagan coming into the office, people felt comfy but still didn’t trust the government, only themselves.[12] Self-help groups and movements emerged in this era as people began to view institutions as slowly decaying and thus incapable of serving the individual.[13] Tribalism took form as Americans started to feel they were becoming a minority in their country (do keep in mind that all these examples were also reflected in other social democracies at the time). There was a recession in 1987, but the economy recovered quickly and gave way to the booming 1990’s, but even then, there was an air of pessimism was felt throughout the decade.[14] So, what gives?
Understanding the 3rd Turning or Unravelling and its catalysts requires an important piece of knowledge between the interactions of generations. In fact, the Prophet and Hero generations exert a dominant presence when older over the other generations. As a result, given that Boomers were the dominant generation at the time, they exerted in this period a disproportional influence over the other generations. Boomers, with their dominance as an archetype, infused America and its institutions with weak civic virtues, self-immersion, cultural lackluster and polarising rhetoric even if they were not the elder generation that normally held society together and controlled institutions.[15] Prophets stormed the castle and take hold of it — having been unable to do so in their young adulthood through the Conscious Revolution — and once in it, they slowly would cause the castle to crumble under the weight of their mismanagement and behaviours.[16] Similarly, due to the self-immersion of Boomers, 13ers or Gen X felt lost and become highly individualistic — not purely out of their selfishness but because of their upbringing by Boomers who were too busy with their cultural movements. Gen X were also disillusioned by their parents as it was the first generation to be ‘unwanted’ through abortions due to the advent of birth control pills, inevitably causing them to be emotionally disconnected from their Boomer parents.
With the interplay of generations and the events that were taking place in 1984 when the Strauss and Howe wrote their book, they provided a synthesis of the Unravelling with some benefit of hindsight:
“The Unraveling mood shift is a natural consequence of the life-cycle transitions taking place among today’s generations. The confident, team-playing G.I.s are weakening (Hero generation). The other-focused, compromised-minded Silent are vacating midlife. Boomers are exiting young adulthood after having embroiled it in self-discovery, argument, and new social pathologies. The departure of 13ers from childhood leaves people of all ages, themselves included, wondering what went wrong there. New Millennial babies are being born. America is moving into an archetypal constellation that is reaching an apogee of inner [private] power and a nadir of outer [public] power.”
They had also written a book on the same subject in 1987 (the initial installment to their Fourth Turning book) and strikingly affirming the events emanating from the Unravelling would be the causal factor to the Crisis Era:
“Boomers, 13ers, and Millennials are just now beginning to build a generational drama that will continue to unwind for decades to come. To date, this has been a cycle of relative peace and affluence, mixed with growing individualism, cultural fragmentation, moral zealotry, and a sense of political drift and institutional failure. That is to be expected. A sense that the public world is spinning slowly “out of control” is normal for a society moving from an Awakening to an Unraveling era.”[17]
If they posited that individualism, cultural fragmentation, moral zealotry, political drift and institutional failure were the defining factors of Unravelling and the causes to the Crisis Era, then can we with the benefit of hindsight (and some research) prove their claims? Let’s examine validity of these claims while keeping a watchful eye on hindsight bias.
Moving towards the 4th Turning: The Causes of the Crisis Era
As Strauss and Howe note, the Crisis Era begins with a crisis event, a catalyst, yet is usually marked with numerous crises with one prominent event, the climax. It is where societal existence is perceived — and may well be — under threat. I have identified the events of 9/11, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and finally the Covid-19 Pandemic as the crises with the latter being the climax.
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 can be described as the spark to the 4th Turning. These attacks occurred in the United States and would have implications for the entire world. The motivations for the attacks originated in 1996 when the Taliban welcomed a Saudi named Osama Bin Laden back to Afghanistan.[18] This man was recruited by the Taliban given his fervor of driving the United States out of the Muslim world and the Middle East.[19] Bin Laden was a well-known name and gained notoriety and fame amongst the Taliban when he led the Afghan peoples in the war against Russia in the 1980’s.[20] It may be tempting to immediately attribute blame the US for poor policy of arming the Afghans against the USSR in the 80’s due to the USSR threat and the unpredictable consequences that this terrorist group would turn against America. Putting their vengeful zeal into action, the Taliban planned two attacks in 1995 in Saudi Arabia that cost the lives of Americans stationed there.[21] In 1996, the CIA took notice of this potential growing threat of the Taliban with developing a new branch in the Counterterrorist Center with the sole purpose of tracking Osama Bin Laden.[22] However, the Clinton and Bush administrations did not take the threat as a formidable one.[23]
The threat of an attack became very real in 2001. On July 10th, the Central Intelligence Agency received information of a major attack the al-Qaeda were planning on US soil. Upon receiving this intelligence, the director of the CIA did not report directly to the president, he went to the National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice rather to George Bush.[24] With hindsight, it is too tempting to scream out the dysfunctional bureaucracy of government. This is why Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, refers to this situation as a classical example of hindsight bias.[25] Decision-makers are incentivized to be risk averse given that their decisions will be heavily scrutinized. Thus, this displays that rather than institutions failing to operate, it may more of structural flaws to the foundations of government bureaucracy — not a topic of this article.
Due to the destabilising of the markets on 9/11, it contributed to the Fed’s decision to lower interest rates, adding a vital ingredient for a recipe of financial disaster in 2008. Yet there was a confluence of factors — not just the change in interest rates — that led to the Great Recession. This recipe was a product of a mix of financial and political factors which are detailed and explained in Niall Ferguson’s the Ascent of Money. The causes of the crisis were the following:
1. The excessive leverage or inadequate capitalization of the banks of the Western world;
2. The contamination of short-term debt market with toxic securities of the sort depicted in ‘The Subprime Primer’;
3. Errors of monetary policy by the Federal Reserve System, which turned a blind eye to signs of overheating in the American real estate market;
4. The emergence of the new forms of financial life known as derivatives, which added an opaque layer of complexity to the system;
5. The politically motivated campaign to increase homeownership rate in the United States (and some other countries that also experienced housing bubbles); and
6. The unbalanced relationship that had developed between the United States and China.[26]
The second factor, the contamination of the financial system with toxic assets and poor Fed policy, originated well before 2008. In 1983, the Savings and Loans — a vital player in handling mortgages across the United States — was on the verge of bankruptcy and could not be led to fail.[27] This is when the profit-starving ‘Big Swinging Dicks’ of Salomon Brothers (as they were called) had an idea to ‘help’ the S&L to offload mortgages.[28] With interest rates on these mortgages at all time lows, one of these swingers, Lewis Ranieri, bought them with an idea in mind.[29] He decided to repackage these mortgages by grouping thousands of them together to create a new security that could be sold alternative to government and corporate bonds.[30] These new securities had different interest rates and different maturities with varying degrees of credit risk.[31] They were called a collateralized debt obligation (rings a bell anybody?) and were created in June 1983.[32]
Individual greed was to compound with institutional failures to drive this market to reach unprecedented heights, only to balloon and burst in 2008. Dating back to the Great Depression era with the Federal Housing Administration, mortgages still had an implicit backing from the government’s Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack, meaning “that bonds that used those mortgages as collateral could be represented as virtually government bonds, and hence investment grade”.[33] There were government-sponsored enterprises ensuring that what Salomon did with these securities guaranteed they had a margin for maneuver and hence, the market skyrocketed from 200 million in the 80s’ to 4 trillion in 2007.[34] In addition, private bond insurers like Salomon could securitize non-conforming loans that would not fall under the requirements of the GSEs.[35] As a result, these loans amounted to 2 trillion$ in residential mortgage debt, with both type of financial assets leading homes to being securitized from 10% to 56% of the mortgage market from 1980 to 2007.[36] It was a ticking time bomb ready to explode.
The growth of this market was further propelled by rampant individualism and unintended policy consequences for lack of better foresight to the second order consequences of this market. In the early 2000’s, there had been a push to expand homeownership and to do so, brokers looked to the underserved segment of the market of subprime borrowers. The trick to make these loans affordable for subprime borrowers was to make these loans with adjustable-rates — where the interest rate is not fixed but varies — and would have teaser periods with the first 2 years with low to near zero interest rates making affordable for anyone.[37] These subprime loans were even championed by Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, in a 2004 speech.[38] By lowing interest rates, this caused these loans to maintain low interest and low variability (and hence low interest payments) while house prices soared.[39]It gave this market wind in its sails, yet these sails were first hoisted by help of the US government. Starting with the Clinton’s administration, it pursued the National Homeownership Strategy to attempt to make house ownership universal in the US. [40] And turning this strategy into policy, the Bush administration’s enactment of American Dream Downpayment Act in 2003 which subsided first-time house purchases among low-income Americans.[41] As a result, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were now fully fledged into subprime market.
Following the trailblazing path of the ‘Big Swinging Dicks’ at Salomon Brothers, the brokers responsible for the subprime loans issuance did so without baring the risks associated with subprime loans: they sold them off for large commissions. The buyers of the loans happened to be Wall Street Banks which with the new securitization methods developed in the 80s’, repackaged them in the already obscure and non-transparent CDOs to investors across the world. The beauty — for lack of a better word — was that given the nature of CDOs, the Wall Street bankers could blend in the subprime mortgages into securities that were rated as extremely safe. This attracted investors across the world from pensions funds to public health networks in Australia to small municipalities in Norway (the latter of which invested 120 million in these ‘safe’ CDOs).[42] It must be noted that these securities were rated safe because they were opaque and hard to see through, but financial rating agencies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poors could of seen through these instruments — it was possible and one needs only to read Michael Lewis’ The Big Short. And as the story goes, all of these factors led to the financial collapse of 2008, a massive crisis exemplifying the Crisis Era.
It is safe to say that aggressive individualism and massive institutional failures from various institutions were to blame. What about cultural fragmentation, political drift and moral zealotry? Can we attribute the start of the phenomena during the Unravelling? To answer these questions, we must turn our attention to the game of bowling — I am not joking.
If you wanted to join a bowling league in the mid-1990s’ comparatively to previous decades, you would have undergone a different experience. There would have been a much higher likelihood you would have had a difficulty finding a team and a league to compete in. In fact, Robert Putnam in his groundbreaking 2000 book Bowling Alone, found that in the 1990s there was a 73% decline in membership rates for men’s bowling games from the 1960s.[43] This significant difference isn’t that the game of bowling was found less enjoyable (who doesn’t like bowling?), but that it reflected a phenomena sweeping across American life and arguably of all other liberal democracies. Bowling was representative of a widespread trend of civic and social rate of disengagement throughout America. Here are a few other statistics on the matter Putnam shows:
- Attendance at public town and school meetings down 35%;
- Serving as an officer of a club or organization down 42%;
- Serving in a committee of a local organization down 39%;
- Membership rate for thirty-two national chapter-based associations: down 50% and more; finally
- Membership of parent — teacher associations: down 61%[44]
Not to mention a large decrease in dinner parties, church gatherings, volunteering and etc. that Putnam also observed. The reason our attention is drawn to the game of bowling is that is was representative of a massive decrease in civic and social. These in turn, lead to a loss in social capital: the social ties among individuals and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from those ties.[45] In other words, civil society; the tangible and intangible linkages between citizens that hold societies together. And since social capital depletes from less engagements, this has caused the cultural fragmentation, the consequences of which we are still experiencing to this day. However, what caused this massive loss of social capital (it can’t be just because of bowlers)? And when did this first occur, during the Unravelling as Strauss and Howe’s would predict?
In Bowling Alone, Putnam sets out on an investigation to uncover the causes of these social and civic disengagements causing a loss of social capital. He finds that some of this can be attributed to pressures of time and money and suburbanization, the latter of which caused longer commutes leading to more isolation.[46] Yet these Putnam shows can only accounts for 10% each. He highlights that about 25% can be allocated by the effects of electronic entertain as the television caused people to spend their leisure in private rather than a public sphere.[47] What about the rest of the puzzle, roughly the 60% remaining as the causal trigger to disengagement? This Putnam found is mostly due to generational change, “the slow, steady, and ineluctable replacement of the long civic generations by less involved children and grandchildren.”[48] And when does this trigger occur in time? It happens to start, with the data on the above statistics, pointing towards a trend decline around the 1960s, right about when the Boomers enter young adulthood.
Around this time Boomers enter young adulthood, it is a spiritual awakening — the other type of crisis described above — that occurs. As a result, cultural fragmentation has its origins in the 2nd, not 3rd Turning. Although as shown by Robert Putnam, it continues well into the 20th century with Xers also being just as disengaged as their parents. Thus, Strauss and Howe were right of cultural fragmentation, yet off on the timing of its beginnings.
It is with these insights that we can turn towards the missing two phenomenon.
Moral zealotry and political drift, just like cultural fragmentation, all stem from a loss of social capital. Drawing on the notion of social capital, Jonathan Haidt in Righteous Minds conceives of a new type of capital, a moral capital, which is the extent to that a community has an “interlocking set of values, virtues, norms practices identities, institutions and technologies […] that regulates selfishness and facilitates cooperation, essentially sustaining a moral community.”[49] To comprehend moral capital, Haidt refers to a community where it is absent: “corrupt nations where dictators and elites run the country to their benefit.”[50] He further adds: “If you don’t value moral capital, then you won’t foster values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, and technologies that increase it.”[51] As a result, it is both social and moral capital that underpins civil societies and without these forms of capital, there is no harmonious civil society, no liberal democracies. Authoritarian states thrive and the demagogue rules. Moral capital can also be explained in terms of politics. Where it differs from social capital is expressed in the tendency of individuals to cluster those of similar political affiliations: it binds us to our team (either conservative or liberal) while it blinds us to the good players on the other team and consequently, this has led to moral zealotry that has permeated our societies today and caused much severer political drift, that of political polarization.[52]
This political polarization, as Jonathan Haidt shows in Righteous Minds, was exacerbated by an important yet underappreciated policy change in the 1990s in the United States. In 1995, Newt Gingrich, the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, encouraged the Republicans coming to Washington DC to leave their families behind rather than have their families moved to the capital — a shift from the convention of bringing ones family along with them.[53] As families from both parties living in the capital would attend the same social events, this created friendships that would transcend political lines and had an act of humanizing your political rivals — or in other words, it would strengthen the social and moral capital between them. This change in policy, adopted by both parties, undoubtedly served to set the stage for the level of polarization we find today, and this phenomenon is most likely can be asserted for other democracies where politicians do not reside where they conduct politics.
To conclude, individualism, institutional failures, cultural fragmentation, moral zealotry and political drift brought on mostly by Boomers and their disenchanted Gen X children are strong contributing factors to this Crisis Era. It seems the historical framework by Strauss and Howe has been accurate — although somewhat off in the inception of certain events. What about the climax of this Crisis Era, the Covid-19 pandemic? Can the causes to the pandemic also be traced to the Unravelling as part of the workings of Boomers and Gen Xers?
Causes of Covid-19 Pandemic
No, they are not. The pandemic that put the economic machine to a grinding halt to our every day lives did not stem from the other causes of the Crisis Era. Judge Glock, writing on Medium, details that in fact governments were quite ready for a pandemic — or were supposed to be in theory. He writes:
“Just six months before the current outbreak, Congress passed the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act of 2019, which offered funds and planning authority for just such a crisis as we now face.² This act was a reauthorization and an extension of half a dozen similar acts passed over the previous two decades, which acts were themselves extended in countless congressional spending bills, all of which resulted in countless plans.”[54]
What was the cause if the government was ready for a pandemic? The answer Judge Glock provides:
“The failure of the United States government to respond to the coronavirus was not a failure of foresight. It was a failure to create a coherent strategy and to provide clear lines of authority to implement it.”[55]
As this is a global pandemic, one must ask if other nations were ready in theory but deniably so in practice. Yet again, Judge Glock answers:
“The United States has also made league with international organizations in creating new plans. In 2005, the U.S. and the World Health Organization encouraged all WHO member nations to create their own pandemic response plans.”[56]
On the WHO website, they have kept a scoring system from the 2005 demand to publish health emergency frameworks. Most regions around the world have a rating above 50% which is based on the WHO assessments of their pandemic preparation frameworks, demonstrating that most countries were prepared for not a worldwide health hazard, then a national response at least.[57] These, like the causes of the other crises in the 4th Turning, are policy and institutional failures that have occurred during the Crisis Era rather than the Unravelling.
With a strong understanding of the causes of not just this pandemic, but other crises beforehand that we have found can be characterized as an era of crises, a question comes to mind. Is this Crisis Era about to end and if so, what will its future hold. Our answer lies in the 4th Turning and its dynamic.
The Crisis Era Dynamic: the 4th Turning Prophecy
All 4th Turnings throughout history have followed more or less the same general outline. And as I have eluded to with the description of multiple crises, the outline follows a morphology of events summarized below:
- Crisis starts with a catalyst;
- Once catalyzed, it achieves regeneracy;
- Regeneracy propels society to the climax where the old civic orders die;
- Climax culminates into a resolution. [58]
The catalyst and climax of the Crisis Era are characterized by the list of general outlines below, with climaxes possibly containing multiple distress indicators simultaneously:
- Economic distress
- Social distress
- Cultural distress
- Technological distress
- Ecological distress
- Political distress
- Military distress[59]
Between the catalyst and climax, there’s a calm before the definitive storm — the Crisis Era does not have a crisis every year rather it sets a crisis like mood. Once the climax hits, it eclipses all previous crises events. All the problems from the Unravelling will emerge and converge in unforeseeable intricacies that were neglected and possibly tear the fabric of society at its extreme points of vulnerability.[60] From these problems will come one unifying and overarching problem with its weight baring down on the country and may cause it to rip, crumble and collapse. An immediate response is then triggered with an ‘all hands-on deck’ mentality to every generational archetype in the crisis to achieve one goal: make sure society prevails. In these times, there’s suddenly a reversal of Unravelling trends where solid public consensus, aggressive institutions and personal sacrifice emerge to save society.[61] This is marked by a public actually wielding to government who governs, and communities are harmonized for collective action.[62]
In order for the society and nation to triumph over the problem, there’s a call for a resolution. The aim is to solve what the Unravelling has caused which as we have seen, the Unravelling did set the stage for the Crisis Era. Every Crisis Era served as a purpose to settle the issue of the Unravelling — and possibly other underlining problems yet exacerbated by the 3rd Turning. This is the marking trait of all 4th Turnings. Just as the American Revolution solved the struggle of commerce and citizenship with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Civil War on dreadful double standard of liberty and equality with Emancipation Proclamation, the New Deal and WWII with the conflict between capitalism and socialism (and their extremes of fascism and communism), so too, will our current Crisis Era end in a resolution.[63] We must then ask ourselves: what will be the overarching problem that will grip America (and some social democracies) to its core that will require a national resolution to solve it? Is Strauss and Howe’s historical cycles framework, which has mostly faired well to explain history and our era to this point, any use to provide guidance and insight with any predictive potential of our Crisis Era?
Just as the American Revolution solved the struggle of commerce and citizenship with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Civil War on dreadful double standard of liberty and equality with Emancipation Proclamation, the New Deal and WWII with the conflict between capitalism and socialism (and their extremes of fascism and communism), so too, will our current Crisis Era end in a resolution.
Our Crisis Era: the 2001–2020 (and beyond?)
As we have seen, the morphology of the Crisis Era has followed the trajectory which Strauss and Howe predicted with multiple crises (9/11 as the catalyst) and the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. More than a decade later — with the time elapsing as the predicted calm by Strauss and Howe — the pandemic outbreak has brought America to the climax of the crisis with nationwide business shutdowns, leading to wide scale unemployment hitting double digits in record timeframes. We can also add massive protests of the Black Lives Matter movement over the death of Michael Floyd. The catalyst and climax possessed the distress indicators of 4th Turnings with the latter displaying numerous distresses. Arguably, the decade gap between the recession and pandemic may be not so much seemed as a calm, but rather a period with the culmination of multiple compounding problems reaching critical mass to set off a nuclear reaction of a climacteric force that would shake the nation’s core — just as Strauss and Howe had predicted.
The 2008 Global Financial Crisis brought about a reversal from decay to flourishment with institutions adopting necessary actions of monetary and fiscal polices to prevent a depression. As the Bush administration was heading out the door and Obama’s entering, the former had enacted a fiscal relief package called Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) with the Obama administration following suit with its 800 billion fiscal stimulus package. Both administrations helped achieve economic recovery and brought about into Congress important legislation such as the Affordable Care Act to improve access to healthcare. Deemed by most Americans as a first successful term, Obama was re-elected for a second term to which he proceeded with strong national and international action such as the Paris Climate Accord in 2015. However, the following year, the US Federal election of 2016 dictated the success of this Democratic administration otherwise.
It was the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, who was elected president and brought about a massive political realignment with a campaign advocating not for a conventional republican agenda, but that a right-wing populism — an anti-thesis to the previous 8 years under the Obama administration. It was his fiery rhetoric and notably promises to curb immigration, be ‘tough’ on China that fueled his campaign and led to his victory. Similarly, just a few months prior to the election in November, the UK held a referendum on its membership in the EU and decided to leave the European Union with promises echoing those of the Trump campaign. Other elections in Europe also saw the rise of populism with fringe right and left-wing parties gaining votes in national and European parliamentary elections.
Why was that? Why was there a massive political realignment towards populism when things seem to be going well? Why were the calm waters of the decade gap in crises start suddenly stirred up and shook the business as usual?
These changes swept across liberal democracies because contrary to held beliefs, things were not going well. All the problems covered in this article in addition to other problems such globalization and technology advancements had coalesced and morphed into a behemoth that drove the shift in politics globally: wealth inequality. Recall the Two Americas (if you have not done so, I urge you to listen to this video) and Lost Ground speech and works respectively that identified wealth inequality and demonstrated its growing divide in 1984 — this divide as we have seen was due to the dynamics of the Unravelling and its underlining driving forces. The surge of populism has been the response to this problem of wealth inequality that had remained poorly addressed since the 1980s’ — a situation that is now in dire need to be dealt with. As Ray Dalio has shown in this article comparing the wealth gap between the Top 40% and Bottom 60% in the US — terminology to categorize the income distribution quartiles I will use throughout this paper — the Bottom 60% real incomes — where most of their wealth stems from — has seen no growth since the 1980s’.[64] Among them, only one third have savings.[65] Within this Bottom 60% where the majority middle class is found, their total income (when transfers are included) have noticeably gone down, in line with the overall Bottom 60% grouping.[66]Since the 1980s’, there’s been 30 percent decrease in manufacturing jobs in the US with 14% of the decrease accounted for in the years 2008 and 2009 ( recall when the financial crisis occurred). [67]
Although the Global Financial Crisis exemplified bipartisan action e of great effect to avoid a depression, it inadvertently caused greater wealth inequality. The financial meltdown of 2008 was solved by the Fed’s action of quantitative easing (QE). This consists of the creation of liquidity by the Federal Reserve’s of buying financial assets from commercial banks which creates excess reserves for the former — essentially cash the Fed had in hand that was not in circulation that was injected into the economy with their purchases. In 2008, the Fed bought for 1.4 trillion of financial assets raising their balance sheet tot 2.2. trillion, doubling their levels in 1 year alone.[68] In 2010, they implemented QE2 adding another 600 billion of assets on their balance sheet and then followed in 2012 with QE3, committing to buy 40 billion per year of mortgage backed securities.[69] Given that QE is the injection of liquidity in financial markets, it benefits solely those with financial assets, mostly the Top 40%.[70] This segment of the economy and society holds 41% of their wealth in financial assets with 27 % of it in stocks while the Bottom 60% retain only 25% of their wealth in financial assets with merely 12% in stocks.[71] QE has thus inadvertently added to wealth inequality.
The political realignment of populism was also a direct response of the previous years of institutional failures to reduce inequality. The first major legislation from the Obama administration, other than fiscal relief to the economy, was to sign the Affordable Care Act or Obama Care. Although mostly targeted to improve healthcare, its main goal was to get the uninsured, seldom with the financial means, insured. This as a result benefited the Bottom 60% which were insured due to the cost of coverage. Although helping to some effect, Obama Care’s impact on curbing inequality was only a minor scratch to the growing behemoth of inequality; it could not be stopped with QE working against efforts to narrow the gap. In addition, one of the main areas government have an impact on wealth inequality is through education policy. Education is key in increasing social mobility — one’s ability to move from lower levels of wealth to higher ones — and when education is lacking or ineffective, wealth disparities between social strata increases. This is what has occurred most prominently in the US. Amongst the OECD countries, the United States suffers from the largest lost of social mobility where 40% of Americans born in the bottom social strata (essentially the poor) remained in poverty — some other OECD countries did not fair well but markedly better than the United States. With the Top 40% spending 5 times more than the Bottom 60% on their children’s education — and the top 20% spend 6 times more than the bottom 20% — no doubt education is a large contributor to loss of social mobility and hence, a loss to gain wealth.[72]
Although a long-standing decline in rate in investing in education through government policy, the Bush and Obama administrations failed to improve education despite their efforts. The Bush administration had enacted in 2002 the ESEA, a policy aimed at better educational outcomes for all children.[73] Beneficial, the ESEA did have weaknesses such as states having full discretionary power to divert federal funds — given that education is constitutionally a state right but nevertheless involves the Federal government. Consequently, some states allowed for schools to invest the federal funds in improving facilities rather than providing direct help to students such as textbooks.[74] In turn, the Obama administration implemented the Race To The Top (RTTT) federal policy to set educational standards nation wide for states.[75] The rational was under the principle that learning math in Massachusetts should be no different for a child in Arizona.[76] Teacher compensation under the RTTT was tied to academic performances and incentivized schools for college and career preparation.[77] However, there was a new federal legislation during the Obama administration, the ESSA, which was a direct backlash to the federal education policies and scaled back both of these initiatives, notably dismantling state standards or evaluate teacher performance.[78] State were now free to act on education to their liking and the Federal government had only the right to intervene more directly (other than providing some level of funds) when school performance reaches the bottom 5% — leading almost to a race to the bottom.
With wealth inequality accelerating due to the financial crisis and policy failures to properly address it, added on the political gridlock to implement effective policies in any areas, populism took root. With Trump campaigning on protectionism and using xenophobic rhetoric (like the Brexit), it appealed directly to those of the Bottom 60%. The reason lay in another tectonic like force driving inequality, one not explicitely mentioned in this article but implicit in many ways: the problem of globalization. What the Obama administration and others before it failed to acknowledge was that globalization benefited the world unevenly, with winners and losers in economic terms unevenly distributed. China, upon entering in through the WTO in 2000, benefitted immensely with help depressed wages and labour standards as well as currency depreciation which allowed it to rise as the number one manufacturer in the world within two decades. As the overall wealth of China rose, creating Chinese billionaires and a Chinese middle-class, workers globally saw layoffs due to the outsourcing to China. Recall that the loss of manufacturing jobs — a decline by 30% with the most accelerated decline in the past decade — was in part a function of the rise of China. Both populism of the left and right arose as a backlash to globalization, with populism from the right having a slight competitive edge over the left. Comparatively to policies from left-wing populism, the right-wing populism offers more direct responses to globalization through protectionism, resounding deeply with the middle class who suffered jobs loss from globalization. With isolationist policies, Trump captured the Rust Belt states that had been democrat for decades as the Rust Belt was once a manufacturing hub of America. It was also by championing an isolationist stance with respects to ‘tougher’ immigration policy — with immigrants seen as taking American jobs as well — that Trump’s right-wing populism took hold.
Trump was also seen as someone that would cut through the political gridlock that had crippled America due to the loss of moral capital, a fact the Obama administration had to cope with. It should be noted, that the Obama administration did attempt to reduce wealth inequality as it intended a massive fiscal spending on infrastructure. It may had put many Americans, the Bottom 60%, back to work and created many jobs. Unfortunately, with social and moral capital reserves depleted, his attempts to get this legislation through was rejected not once, but five times. Hence, with gridlock unlike anything before in both houses of government, this was the ideal opportunity for a political outsider to the establishment that would ‘get things done’. And surprisingly, the Trump administration did to some extent. He delivered on tax reform — which attempts under the Obama administration had been blocked — and imposed tariffs on China. Yet the tax reform, enacted in 2019, may have rather accentuated the wealth inequality.
With corporate tax rate cut, companies set about doing share buybacks, which just as QE, enriches those with financial assets in possession. And with the Top 40% with more stocks in their portfolios than of the Bottom 60%, this benefited the former much more. Although the economy was performing well in the absence of a fiscal stimulus, such act helped the economy gain further headwinds. Once the pandemic hit, it proved to show the true underlining weakness of the economy with the strong likelihood of the Great Recession Part 2 or depression (link Ray Dalio) and now brings wealth inequality to light now more than ever. Trump just as his predecessors, failed to effective tackle wealth inequality — and may have made matters worse for when the pandemic broke out. Wealth inequality is still an issue as of this time of writing.
Although this administration, and governments globally have reacted well through good monetary and fiscal stimuli through helicopter money to avoid the deflationary pressures of the shutdowns of practically all businesses, we must ask ourselves: will wealth inequality be solved? Alternatively, can America forgo a resolution to redistribute wealth and what will be the outcomes with or without it? Does a resolution imply a bright future for America or the beginning of the end without a resolution?
Conclusion: Ending the Crisis Era — The Resolution
Strauss and Howe had found that during the climax of the 4th Turning, the generations change in reaction to them. The Prophet generation leaves institutions and come to grips to the inevitable loss of benefits for their retirements after the climax ends with the resolution. Nomads would shift gears from the more individualistic behaviours to rallying society for the response to the climacteric crisis with a focus on the community. The young adults, the Hero generation, is a highly collaborative generational archetype geared towards collective action which they happily abide by the new found sense of community. After the climax, they pursue to change society from the outside in.[79] This is for the most part what the Covid-19 pandemic brought forth: the massive coordination of society to shutdown and stop the spread of the virus. The all hands-on deck mentality that the virus triggered ushered in unparalleled cooperation and coordination in recent decades. Boomers and Gen Xers leaders demanded to halt economic activity; their generations obeyed and the Millennials followed orders in solidarity with ease.
This collective action has extended beyond the fight of against the virus. The death of Michael Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police triggered nation wide protests with the Black Lives Matter movement. An issue dating back decades (if not centuries), the BLM protests have been unprecedented in size to their previous protests. A sense of community and collective action has flowed over into politics with local and state governments enacting police reforms and the democrats introducing police reform bill in the House of Representatives. Still experiencing gridlock, the Trump administration itself is set to implement an executive order for police reform. Corporations have also vowed for more diverse companies and curb discriminatory actions. Hence perhaps the assessment above of the necessary resolution to sow the American societal fabric back together was too narrowly defined with populism and wealth inequality. The United States may need resolutions. Remember the climate change marches? What about the Boomer entitlements? With IOUs such as Medicare and Social Security (which is an unfunded liability), these may reach 1000% of GDP within just a few years and similar figures may arise from climate change with estimated loss to global GDP within in a decade of up to 13%.[80] Both of these issues can be described under the umbrella of what I will term ‘generational inequality’. The frugal spending of Boomers and consumption of fossil fuels and neglect of environmental externalities are robbing the future of Millennials, Gen Z and all future generations. Hence, this may not just be a resolution for wealth inequality, but a demand for a war on inequalities to restore generational equality.
I would like to emphasize of the usage war. Strauss and Howe provide a fair warning about the resolution: is not guaranteed nor does it hold any positive connotation for the entire society. Certainly, the American South in the 19th Century did not accept the notion of liberty for all peoples and hence, created tensions that triggered the American Civil War. They mention that wars of various nature could emerge such as class, race, terrorist, superpower and even nuclear war leading to mutually assured destruction. The wars — they posit — could either result in great civic achievements or disintegration.[81] The disintegration can take many forms. It may not necessarily arise from factions within society leading to a Civil War, but from a society ripe for demagogues to seize power and lead wars against other nations. The fear is that Hero generations who embrace collective action gleefully, could easily accept the embrace of a leader on par with FDR as much as a demagogue.
Arguably, we are already in numerous wars and demagogues are slowly approaching the realm of politics or already within it and erode democracies. The virus has governments globally spending in levels that have never attainted such heights in peacetime — with only World War II achieving the same levels of government stimulus. With the BLM protests, it has definitely reignited the culture wars with Trump literally ramping up attacks to sow division. The tearing down of statues of Civil War figures of the South may aggravated tensions within society for those who’ve held these figures as memories of their collective history — however egregious and wrong these historical figures were. As we have recently seen, the rise of populism brings with it the demagogues with authoritarians’ zealous ambitions. With the acts of the Trump administration evoking an obscure 17th Century law to allow military use against ‘unrest ’in Washington DC a few weeks ago and his continual attacks on the press, it could invite further demagogic acts that may encroach the rights of Americans. The country is as divided as ever. And there are reasons that the likelihood of a Civil War or a foreign war have risen greatly, with the former more likely. We must return to history to comprehend the likelihood of hot war in both cases.
Americans like to point the separation of the branches of government as the strength and core of the United States democracy — and certainly it is. However, this was not the assessment by of one of the keenest and most succinct observers of American democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville. When the Frenchman traveled to America to understand this democracy success story in 19th century, Tocqueville saw civil society, the bonds and associations between all Americans, as the focal point that makes democracies flourish. Here is Tocqueville in his own words on the indispensability of a vibrant civil society and how tightly knit together it was:
“Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small; Americans use associations to give fêtes. To found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in the manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools. Finally, if it is a question of bringing to light a truth or developing a sentiment with the support of a great example, they associate.”[83]
It was these associations that Tocqueville saw as the strength to the individual wills and could act to collectively defeat tyranny whenever the threat presented itself. Today, however, the situation is different. With people bowling alone (or if bowling at all), the social and moral capital reserves are at all time lows. Civil society is very weak, certainly if one also accounts for the discredited media — a key civil society player — along with social media exacerbating culture wars. There are encouraging signs that this trend may be reversed. There are promising hopes of a resolution on inequalities that avoids an internal or external hot war of any type with the demonstrations of collective actions of the Covid-19 quarantine and BLM protests we have seen. For the latter and for the generational inequality, there must be organized collective actions that moves beyond protests. Protests must shift to structured movements. Movements into civic and political organization for pressures to resolutions. In order for Gen X and millennials to reclaim generational equality, they will have to do what their ancestors used to do roughly two centuries ago, associate. They will have to come together for all other issues, especially wealth inequality and if not for the latter, it could spell war.
An American civil war may be more likely than a foreign war, but within other liberal democracies across the globe, the risk of the latter is much higher. With helicopter money governments have to drawn upon given a low interest rate and a maxed-out QE world, this fortunately reversed the potentially massive deflationary effects from the shutdown of businesses and collapse of supply chains. For the moment, these money handouts work to great effect but caution must be warranted. There may be temptations for governments to continue this policy well after this Great Recession Part 2 will be over, then there will be the dangers of inflation. America may not find itself in such a position given it is the reserve currency of the world, but for other democracies where debt is denominated in foreign currencies, they will have to print money galore. This is what happened in Germany in the 1920s: the debts from war reparations it had to pay forced them to print money and inflate their way out of debt. Similar events could occur globally, which then makes populism ever more appealing and invites its extremes from both sides of the political spectrum. Remember: you cannot have a Hitler without the hyperinflation of the Weimar regime in the 1920s. This scenario is of lesser risk to America, but the fact remains that they could get dragged into a hot war, just as they did in WWII.
Whether new civic and societal triumph or disintegration of America (whether through internal or external wars), we cannot truly know the outcome, nor does the historical cycles framework from Strauss and Howe intended for such purpose, it suggests only the timing and dimensions of events.[82] Armed with the understanding of the Unravelling and generational archetypes, we can determine and narrow the possible futures. Only two things are certain:
1. We will look back at the Unravelling as either the source of all our problems or an era setting the stage for a great restructuring of society. Just as the 1930s’ depression era and WWII were blamed as consequences of the 1920s, the post war Americans looked back with a sense of near nostalgia to the same decade. It was coined the Roaring rather than the Deploring Twenties.[84] Without the 1930s’ chaos and WWII, there could not have been the America of today with international order and peace, the Pax Americana.
2. This Crisis Era will and has reversed the ills and problems of society by shifting the focus from the private to the public sphere. There one thing to retain from the cycles and changes in history and generational archetypes presented in this article: secular crises and spiritual crises stem from the swinging pendulum of private concerns to public ones, ad infinitum.
Remember: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” — Mark Twain
References & Footnotes
[1] Strauss, William, and Neil Howe. The Fourth Turning: an American Prophecy. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998. 7
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid. 71
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid. 76
[8] Ibid. 204–205
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid. 208
[16] Ibid.
[17] Strauss, William, and Neil Howe. Generations: The History of Americas Future, 1584 to 2069. New York: William Morrow, 1991. 278
[18] Stone, Oliver, and Peter J. Kuznick. The Untold History of the United States. New York: Gallery Books, 2012.488
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. London: Penguin, 2012. 204
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ferguson, Niall. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World: 10th Year Anniversary. 2nd ed. London etc.: Penguin Books, 2019.
[27] Ibid. 266
[28] Ibid. 238
[29] Ibid.
[30] Ibid
[31] Ibid.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid. 239
[37] Ibid. 242–243
[38] Ibid. 246
[39] Ibid.
[40] https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/textonly/WH/Accomplishments/housing_accomps.html
[41] https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/textonly/WH/Accomplishments/housing_accomps.html & Ferguson, Niall. 246
[42] Ferguson, Niall. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World: 10th Year Anniversary. 2nd ed. London etc.: Penguin Books, 2019. 247
[43] Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. S.l.: Simon & Schuster, 1999.
[44] Ibid.
[45] Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Penguin Books, 2012. 339
[46] Putnam, Robert. 380
[47] Ibid.
[48] Ibid.
[49] Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Penguin Books, 2012. 341
[50] Ibid.
[51] Ibid.
[52] Ibid. 366
[53] Ibid. 363
[54] Glock, Judge, Why Two Decades of Pandemic Planning Failed. https://medium.com/cicero-news/why-two-decades-of-pandemic-planning-failed-a20608d05800
[55] Ibid.
[56] Ibid.
[57] https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/major-themes/health-emergencies/GHO/health-emergencies
[58] Strauss, William, and Neil Howe. The Fourth Turning: an American Prophecy. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998. 277
[59] Ibid.
[60] Ibid.
[61] Ibid. 275
[62] Ibid.
[63] Ibid. 300
[64] Dalio, Ray. “Why and How Capitalism Needs to Be Reformed (Parts 1 & 2).” LinkedIn. Birdgewater & Associates, April 5, 2019. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-reformed-parts-1-2-ray-dalio/.
[65] Ibid.
[66] Ibid.
[67] Ibid.
[68] Ferguson, Niall. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World: 10th Year Anniversary. 2nd ed. London etc.: Penguin Books, 2019. 355
[69] Ibid. 356
[70] Dalio, Ray. “Why and How Capitalism Needs to Be Reformed (Parts 1 & 2).” LinkedIn. Birdgewater & Associates, April 5, 2019. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-reformed-parts-1-2-ray-dalio/.
[71] Ibid.
[72] Ibid.
[73] Zelizer, Julian E. The Presidency of Barack Obama: A First Historical Assessment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. 91
[74] Ibid.
[75] Ibid.
[76] Ibid.
[77] Ibid.
[78] Ibid.
[79] Strauss, Howe. 301
[80] Jensen, Greg, and Jason Rogers. “The Crisis Is Accelerating the New Paradigm.” Bridgewater & Associates. Bridgewater & Associates, May 18, 2020. https://www.bridgewater.com/research-and-insights/the-crisis-is-accelerating-the-new-paradigm.
[81] Strauss, Howe. 278
[82] Ibid.
[83] De Tocqueville, Alexis Democracy in America, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chiacago, 2000), book I, part 2, ch. 4.
[84] Strauss, Howe. 299.
