Shapiro - Round One

Andrew Shapiro
Round One - August 11, 1999

I'll start with a confession. I was once a promoter of the Gen X meme -- the idea that the post-Baby Boom generation has some distinct politics. Back in 1992, when I was in my early twenties, I wrote a book called We're Number One! about the ironies of American triumphalism. The book didn't have any explicit generational slant, but my publishers saw a marketing opportunity in my youth and encouraged me to play up the Gen X angle. I did so -- talking about how globally oriented twentysomethings wouldn't stand for the shallow me-firstism of the Cold War era -- and soon found myself writing for hip magazines and appearing on national radio and TV. I was even invited to represent young people at President Clinton's post-election economic summit in Little Rock.

From Post & Riposte:
"Generation X is gone, why try and re-separate it from society except to remake it into another boomer scapegoat? Gen X has become assimilated with every other generation through mass consumerism, classification, boxification, and journalistic pigeonholification. What's left is a bunch of 13-year-olds who buy into the media echo of what was an anti-media filter, the establishment of what was once an anti-establishment genre.... Political involvement by Xers was considered unwanted, criticism was labeled as whining, not conforming to outdated habits was slacking, and pursuit of paths that boomers didn't understand was labeled apathy."
--Gregory Alan Bolcer, "Gen X Politics?" (08/03)

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In these venues I dutifully tried to speak for my fellow Xers -- by somehow divining what they were thinking about the economy, politics, social life, and so on. But in retrospect, I must admit that my analysis was pretty unscientific (and skewed, in all likelihood, to my own experience). Soon enough, I grew tired of answering Gen X questions. Not because I couldn't come up with plausible answers, but because I came to doubt that the category really meant anything. "Generation X" was an empty vessel in which one could mix any type of ideological cocktail.

My doubts about the Gen X category resurfaced when I read Halstead's article. Personally, I think many of his prescriptions are quite sensible and most of his research seems unimpeachable. But some of the article's most provocative conclusions about the beliefs of Xers seem strained. In fact, they may well illustrate the danger of trying too hard to define the politics of a group as broad and diverse as the so-called Generation X.

Take one of Halstead's central arguments -- that Xers believe in what he calls "balanced-budget populism." How do we know that they support this odd hybrid of right and left? Where's the proof?

"One the one hand," Halstead writes, "many Xers are worried about the debts being loaded on their future, and therefore support fiscal prudence, balanced budgets, and a pay-as-you-go philosophy. On the other hand, Xers are more concerned than other generations about rising income inequality, and are the most likely to support government intervention to reverse it. The majority believe that the state should do more to help Americans get ahead." He therefore concludes that Xers are calling for "a new economic synthesis" between fiscal constraint and public assistance for the little guy.

Let's unpack these claims a bit:

1. "Many Xers ... support ... balanced budgets." Does "many" mean something in the range of 40 percent, 60 percent, 80 percent, or what? According to which polls? How was the question asked (i.e., do Xers want balanced budgets in the abstract, or are they willing to pay for them somehow)? And is support higher among Xers than other age groups? (Who, after all, doesn't want balanced budgets?)

2. "Xers ... are the most likely to support government intervention [to reverse income inequality]." Good news! Yet just because Xers are more likely than other generations to be pro-intervention-for-equality doesn't tell us that most of them actually are. Halstead does say that a "majority [of Xers] believe that the state should do more to help Americans get ahead." But it's not at all clear that helping "Americans get ahead" is the same as, say, having the IRS raise the capital gains tax to reverse income inequality.

3. "Xers appear to be calling for a new economic synthesis." Are they? Even if Halstead's two claims above are statistically supportable, this conclusion does not necessarily follow. Say, for example, that surveys show that 60 percent of Xers advocate balanced budgets and 60 percent believe government should take action to promote economic equality; the number who support both positions could be as low as 20 percent. In other words, conservatives may support the former position, liberals may support the latter, and only a small group of centrists may support both. For some reason, though, Halstead assumes the opposite: namely, that the same Xers who believe in fiscal conservatism also believe in government-sponsored redistribution of wealth. Given the clash of these positions, it's an odd presumption.

In short, I don't think Halstead has proven his thesis that most Xers subscribe to a politics that mixes -- or transcends -- left and right. Instead, he has simply shown that, like Americans generally, some Xers veer left, some tack right, and some go down the middle. Halstead's hybrid thesis may in the end be correct, but in this article it is stated rather than demonstrated. And why? Jack Beatty asks whether Halstead is projecting his own political agenda onto his fellow Xers. A more innocent explanation is that he is trying to connect the dots among 50 million Americans who may actually have little in common.

Next page: Scott Stossel

What do you think?

Join the debate in Post & Riposte. We'll highlight selected readers' remarks as the Roundtable progresses.

Andrew Shapiro is the author most recently of The Control Revolution: How the Internet is Putting Individuals in Charge and Changing the World We Know. A contributing editor at The Nation, he has written for diverse publications including The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Yale Law Journal, Wired, and Spin.