Note: All the material on this page was published by Strauss and Howe in 1991, before any Boomers had taken the Presidency, before the Gingrich "mandate" in Congress, before the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal became public, before Clinton's impeachment and acquittal, before the contested election of 2000 and the ascendency of President George W. Bush [43] and his neoconservative administration, before the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, before the military operations in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003)--and before the pervasiveness of the World Wide Web. The text that follows, the authors' description of Generation X elderhood, entitled "Entering Elderhood in an Outer-Driven Era (2026-2047)," is predictive, and possibly perceptive. I have retained the authors' future tense (even when referring to a future now in the past). What the authors then referred to as an "outer-driven era" they would later refer to as a "High" (First Turning) of a new saeculum.
The end of the Crisis era will hit this generation on the opening cusp of its era of national leadership--and the beginning of its physical decline. In 2025, the oldest Generation Xers will be 64, the youngest 44. The Crisis will have interrupted their peak earning years. Many will be a bit too young to be spared personal sacrifice, a bit too old to start life over again.41
History suggests Xers will suffer a rough and neglected old age. Those who fail to provide for themselves will end up poor, by the standard of the era. When Boom leaders introduce a new youth focus into public benefits programs, Xers can expect to find themselves passed over in the transition. Those who were counting on large inheritances from affluent Silent parents may find them substantially taxed away by Boom-run legislatures. Older generations will take little interest (and may indeed see waste) in letting Xers get something for nothing. Even self-earned, private investments may prove hazardous, thanks to some Twenty-first Century equivalent of the Liberty Generation's Continental dollars and the Gilded Generation's Confederate dollars. Old Boom leaders eager to reward young Millennials for their public service may resort to huge doses of inflation--in effect, wiping out the accumulated private wealth claims of midlife Xers.
Unlike Boomers, Xers will not have spent a lifetime preparing themselves psychologically for an ascetic old age. Material well-being will matter deeply to them, and they will cherish whatever remains of their economic and social independence. Yet, as they age, they will feel warmly toward younger generations they will mostly admire--and will not seek to improve their own standard of living at the expense of youth. Rather, like the elder Gilded and Lost, Xers will take a wistful pleasure in seeing their children shoot past them economically.
The men and women who were once such wild risk-takers will settle into a reclusive old age, engaging in pursuits that will be seen at the time as conventional, even fogyish. As has been true for all their Nomadic predecessors, Generation X will be the last generation to have fully come of age before a history-bending Crisis. Thus, they will be perceived as (and feel like) relics from the past, with habits and values still rooted in some repudiated "old regime." They will be crusty old conservatives, restraining the young from misjudging human nature through naive overconfidence.
Sometime around the mid-2020s, Xer candidates will win a clear majority of national leadership posts. Their post-Crisis Presidents might well be jockish heroes like Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower--admired more for personality than for vision. Like the Gilded and Lost, Xer leaders will distrust debt and inflation as instruments of public policy. Indeed, they may be inclined to keep tax rates high to force the nation to produce more than it consumes--exactly the opposite of the national choices they will remember from their own youth. Under their leadership, America will turn its energy toward building the outer world, not toward cultural depth or spiritual fervor. But that won't be held against Xers. In time,the maturing Millennials will fault them for a very different reason: for being do-nothing obstructionists, barriers to the execution of the unfinished moral agenda of the now-lionized Boomers.
Like Increase Mather, Patrick Henry, and Mark Twain, the most popular Generation X elders will warn against the danger of pushing too far and too fast in a cruel world rigged with pitfalls. But younger generations will not listen. In a High era of a saeculum, the can-do Millennials will be too busy coaxing smiles out of their oh-so-adorable idealistic Prophet babies.
This page was last modified on 10/13/2025 04:08:33