Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

For a growing number of Americans, 2026 hasn’t just been hard. It’s been disorienting. A Talker Research survey of 2,000 U.S. adults found that one in three people (32%) say they’re currently experiencing an existential crisis, with younger adults far more likely to feel that way than older generations. Nearly four in ten (37%) say their entire lives feel out of their control.

“Stressful” was the word most Americans reached for when asked to describe the year so far. More than a third (35%) used that exact word. Close behind: “challenging,” chosen by 32% of respondents. What’s driving all of it? Respondents said they’ve already absorbed an average of two major, unplanned life changes in 2026 alone.

The numbers paint a picture of a country seemingly buckling under the weight of financial pressure and a creeping sense that no one is steering the ship. And for a significant share of Americans, that weight has become existential.

A separate survey of 5,000 Americans, conducted by Talker Research for Current in December 2025, adds context to how raw the financial picture looks. In that study, 87% of respondents said the country is in a crisis because of how unaffordable life has become. More than half (52%) said they struggle to pay their bills on time each month, and 50% said they’ve had difficulty affording groceries.

The Epidemic of Lost Agency

Across age groups, the through line is clear: a loss of agency. When people feel unable to influence the things that matter most, their career, their finances, the broader sense of where the country is headed, the psychological fallout is predictable. Anxiety, helplessness, and that disquieting sense of watching your own life happen to you rather than being authored by you.

Most Americans Are Ready for a Reset

Despite the anxiety running through these numbers, the same survey captured something else: a stubborn current of optimism. Nearly a third of respondents (32%) said 2026 has actually gone better than expected so far. More than a quarter (27%) described the year as “hopeful.”

Rather than staying stuck, a large majority (79%) said they’re planning some kind of mid-year reset, whether focused on mental health (33%), physical health (33%), or finances (25%). That’s not a minor footnote. It suggests that even amid widespread instability, most Americans are looking for ways to take back control where they can.

Higgenbotham wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2011 12:02 am

Barbara Tuchman wrote:
If the sixty years seemed full of brilliance and adventure to a few at the top, to most they were a succession of wayward dangers; of the three galloping evils, pillage, plague, and taxes; of fierce and tragic conflicts, bizarre fates, capricious money, sorcery, betrayals, insurrections, murder, madness, and the downfall of princes; of dwindling labor for the fields, of cleared land reverting to waste; and always the recurring black shadow of pestilence carrying its message of guilt and sin and the hostility of God.

Mankind was not improved by the message. Consciousness of wickedness made behavior worse. Violence threw off restraints. It was a time of default. Rules crumbled, institutions failed in their functions. Knighthood did not protect; the Church, more worldly than spiritual, did not guide the way to God; the towns, once agents of progress and the commonweal, were absorbed in mutual hostilities and divided by class war; the population, depleted by the Black Death, did not recover. The war of England and France and the brigandage it spawned revealed the emptiness of chivalry's military pretensions and the falsity of its moral ones. The schism shook the foundations of the central institution, spreading a deep and pervasive uneasiness. People felt subject to events beyond their control, swept like flotsam at sea, hither and yon in a universe without reason or purpose. They lived through a period which suffered and struggled without visible advance. They longed for remedy, for a revival of faith, for stability and order that never came.

The times were not static. Loss of confidence in the guarantors of order opened the way to demands for change, and miseria gave force to the impulse. The oppressed were no longer enduring but rebelling, although, like the bourgeois who tried to compel reform, they were inadequate, unready, and unequipped for the task. Marcel could not impose good government, neither could the Good Parliament. The Jacques could not overthrow the nobles, the popolo minuto of Florence could not advance their status, the English peasants were betrayed by their King; every working-class insurrection was crushed.

Yet change, as always, was taking place. Wyclif and the protestant movement were the natural consequence of default by the church. Monarchy, centralized government, the national state gained in strength, whether for good or bad. Seaborne enterprise, liberated by the compass, was reaching toward the voyages of discovery that were to burst the confines of Europe and find the New World. Literature from Dante to Chaucer was expressing itself in national languages, ready for the great leap forward in print. In the year Enguerrand de Coucy died, Johan Gutenberg was born, although that in itself marked no turn of the tide. The ills and disorders of the 14th Centruy could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years, until at some imperceptible moment, by some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected.

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
1978

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Apr 16, 2026 5:47 pm As for what I am doing in the stock market. I have been in the S&P double inverse fund, SDS, for 4 years (approximately). With interest rates up, an SDS account with reinvested dividends has gained a little when the market is steady, about 4% (per year). That's based on the volatility that has actually been experienced; due to volatility it doesn't gain as much as the advertised dividend.

When the market was going down or sometimes even when it dipped hard, I would take profits and withdraw them. That hasn't happened much since late 2023. Since late 2023, I've been almost 100% in SDS and only traded it a little last year. In that time since late 2023, my account has lost about half.

Now for the reason I am talking about this today. In the past day, I have added to my account for the first time in 4 years. Tomorrow morning I will be adding again. In all, I will be adding about 25% to my account this week and all of it will go into SDS. If the market stays steady or rises, I will continue adding, but less than this week. 5-10% per month, something like that.

The 228% Reality Check: Why the Stock Market Is Demanding the Impossible from AI
Mikhail Fedorov - Barchart - Wed Apr 29, 9:33AM CDT Columnist

Math vs. Emotions: The Cold Figures of the Buffett Indicator

If psychology is a delicate and hard-to-measure matter, then math is limitlessly concrete. And today, this math screams that the market has detached itself from fundamental reality by a historically unprecedented magnitude.

The so-called "Buffett Indicator"—the ratio of the aggregate capitalization of the US stock market to the country's nominal GDP—serves as the main proof of this gap. In a healthy economy, this indicator traditionally fluctuates in the range of 100-120%. This means that the value of all public companies is approximately equal to what the economy produces in a year. In periods of strong overheating, the indicator goes up. For example, at the very peak of the famous dot-com bubble in 2000, when investors bought up everything with a ".com" suffix, this indicator reached 140-150%.

And now let's look at today.

Against the backdrop of the unrestrained artificial intelligence rally, the Buffett Indicator has punched through the historical ceiling and is currently located at a staggering mark of around 228%. The stock market is currently valued almost 2.3 times higher than the entire GDP of the United States.

What does this mean in practice?

This most likely means a mathematical dead end for current expectations. The stock market is a derivative of the economy, not vice versa. The nominal GDP of the U.S. physically cannot grow at double-digit rates from year to year. Even accounting for inflation, the base economy adds only a few percent. Investors, having bought shares at current peaks, expect a corresponding return from these investments. But the economy simply is not in a position to generate the volume of real money needed to "feed" these bloated trillion-dollar capitalizations.

You cannot fool math.

If corporate profits cannot occupy 100% of GDP, then sooner or later, the gravity of the real economy will likely pull stock prices back down to earth. If this doesn't happen in the current quarter against the backdrop of regular earnings reports, it will inevitably happen in the next, or in half a year. But this landing is unavoidable.

the basics of universal basic income

the worst idea in the world right now

and so, at the risk of being “that cat” i’m going to take the 10 minutes to really peel apart these 10 seconds because this is a deeply, astonishingly dangerous idea that makes CBDC or even full censorship of all media and individuals look tame. “high UBI” is an event horizon. you cross it, there is no out.

you will forevermore be chattel.

widespread “high income UBI” is complete dependence and complete dependence is abject slavery.

once most humans are completely reliant upon the state to house and feed them, to entertain them and educate their progeny, there can be no rights, only servitude.

you become children who can never move out of the house.

you won’t even know how.

what could such a state not demand from you?

how could liberty even exist in such a system of subjugation?

are you seriously going to depend for your daily bread and the roof over your head upon a state that can take those things away if you speak words they do not like?

well, it won’t matter! i can always go get a job!

yes it will. prices will be artificially high because everyone has lots of income and you’ll be seeking to compete in a free market with a vote buying leviathan that can print money and inflate away the value of yours by showering cash on voters. the highly skilled high value producers can keep up with this, but the middle class? no way. they’ll get buried. so they’ll stop working. and the burying will move to the upper middle class. who will stop working. so… eventually, as ever, you run out of other people’s money and even if one believes the “post scarcity world” doctrine it does nothing about the utter dependence.

and no, “democracy” does not fix this, it makes it worse, trading the dictatorship of the tyrant, which at least retains some accountability and perhaps sanity, for that most capricious and utterly deranged madness of crowds and the tyranny of the majority and of the demagogues who inflame it is the fire beneath the frying pan.

opt out all you want, you’re still at the mercy of those voting themselves largesse from the public purse, your purse. those on UBI will want more and if you labor, they’ll up your taxes to pay for it. majority rules. once eaters outnumber growers, all that is grown will be eaten. that will not work out well for the seed corn.

this basic truth cannot be changed or avoided:

any state powerful enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take everything you have and anyone who would rely upon “government” for such has forgotten what government actually is.

and folks like martin will assert that “you need more money to really see this effect” and hide behind “we have not tried it” but this is categorically false. we have tried it. we’ve tried it in large scale with free housing, free food, and piles of free money and healthcare and we’ve tried it for generations. and it has destroyed everything it has touched.

this sort of luxury communism has been a staple for whole groups in the US and UK and the EU for ages. they live on welfare, council housing, SNAP, medicaid, and NHS. immigrants have it piled on, largesse lavished upon all, free time aplenty. so where is all the creativity? has this group produced anything except for greater demand and need?

nope.

murrary wrote an entire (excellent) book on this entitled “losing ground” chronicling the manner in which the great society programs demolished the US black community, derailing its upward trajectory and casting it back down into poverty and dependence. you can see it visibly, it’s like someone flipped a switch. all progress stopped and reversed. and this works on everyone. it has ravaged europe and hamstrung economies that can no longer grow. even the swedes fell for this one wrecking themselves and then getting eaten alive by immigrants even more willing to abuse the system.

nobody gets out of this one and the pretense/affectation that “well, i would, i’m a serious creative whose potential is being suppressed by having to be a wage slave” is, please pardon mon français, abject, self-indulgent twaddle elevating self pity to virtue signaling. if you were really any good at creating, you’d already be doing it. it’s easier than ever and never before has reaping rewards for it been more direct and more scalable. it’s just a bunch of whiny flailures lacking both discipline and talent once more outsourcing the blame for their failures to launch that they may wallow in the ill deserved ego of the terminally “never failed because i never tried” cohort.

spare us the indignation. if you spent 20% of the time building that you spend sputtering, you’d have long since freed your talent and the vast body of “dependency culture” is creating bascially zero art and culture. nothing is being suppressed by work or a need to demonstrate value. dollars paid are “amount cared about something.” it’s a unit of value. all this “but muh creativity!” is not a sign of creative suppression, it’s a sign of creative irrelevance, it’s failure-wubbie clutching to hold on to illusions of grandeur.

this whole idea is basically gumptionless grievance grubbers claiming that working at starbucks is what’s holding them back from greatness.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sun Apr 19, 2026 5:25 pm Seems I'm a wild optimist.

Live Science spoke with Nobel prize-winning physicist David Gross, who recently received the $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, about the quest to unite all the forces and why humanity might not live to see a unified theory.

In the last 10 years, there are no treaties anymore. We're entering an incredible arms race. We have three super nuclear powers.

People are talking about using nuclear weapons; there's a major war going on in the middle of Europe; we're bombing Iran; India and Pakistan almost went to war.

OK, so that's increased the chance [of nuclear war]. I would really like to have a solid estimate — it might be more, and I think I'm being conservative — but a 2% estimate [of nuclear war] in today's crazy world.

TG: Do you think we'll ever get to a place where we get rid of nuclear weapons?

DG: We're not recommending that. That's idealistic, but yes, I hope so. Because if you don't, there's always some risk an AI 100 years from now [could launch nuclear weapons], but chances of [humanity] living, with this estimate, 100 years, is very small, and living 200 years is infinitesimal.

So [the answer to] Fermi's question of "Where are the civilizations, all the intelligent organisms around the galaxy, and why don't they talk to us?" is that they've killed themselves.

You asked me to think about the future, and I am obsessed the last few years, thinking about that ‪—‬ not the future of ideas and understanding nature, but of the survival of humanity.

https://www.livescience.com/space/cosmo ... wtab-en-us

Dynamite’s Destructive Side

While Nobel intended dynamite to facilitate construction, it quickly became a tool for destruction as well. Although the inventor understood dynamite’s potential use as a weapon of war, he believed that the more destructive the weapon, there was greater chance for lasting peace through deterrence. “Perhaps my factories will put an end to war. . . On the day that two army corps can mutually annihilate each other in a second, all civilized nations will surely recoil with horror and disband their troops,” he commented in 1891.

Nobel’s hope that dynamite could deter wars, however, was quickly dashed. Just three years after dynamite’s introduction, both sides in the Franco-Prussian War used it in combat, and anarchists wielded dynamite to destroy public monuments during the subsequent Paris Commune of 1871.

Dynamite made it easier to breach fortified positions and blow up defenses. In subsequent wars, armies dynamited wars, armies dynamited roads, bridges, canals and dams —the very infrastructure the explosive made possible. Nobel’s invention made warfare even more lethal as dynamite was used as an explosive in mines, grenades, torpedoes and artillery shells.

Since it was cheap, safe to transport and easy to use, dynamite also became the weapon of choice for anarchists, saboteurs and revolutionaries. From his exile in New York, Irish nationalist Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa established a “dynamite school” in Brooklyn to train volunteers in the handling and use of explosives, while anarchist newspapers described how to make dynamite bombs. “It’s an easily transportable, small-scale substance that could fit in a suitcase and do tremendous damage,” Bown says. “You can’t roll up 12 barrels of black powder and have no one notice as opposed to a tiny, triggered explosion in which all you need is a suitcase. Dynamite transformed terrorism like it did war and civil engineering.”

With access to the same firepower as nation-states, rogue actors ramped up their use of dynamite for political violence in the 1880s. Russia’s Czar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881 when a revolutionary threw a bomb at him. During Chicago’s Haymarket Riot in 1886, an unknown person tossed a dynamite bomb into a phalanx of police during a labor rally, resulting in gunfire that left at least eight dead. In the early 1880s, Irish nationalists dynamited government and civilian targets in Great Britain, including the Tower of London, House of Commons and Scotland Yard.

Live Science spoke with Nobel prize-winning physicist David Gross, who recently received the $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, about the quest to unite all the forces and why humanity might not live to see a unified theory.

TG: Do you feel that in 50 years, we'll be closer to having some kind of unified theory that incorporates all the forces?

DG: Currently, I spend part of my time trying to tell people … that the chances of you living 50 [more] years are very small.

Due to the danger of nuclear war, you have about 35 years.

TG: Why do you think that we'll blow ourselves up, essentially, within 35 years, give or take?

DG: So it's a crude estimate. Even after the Cold War ended, [when] we had strategic arms control treaties, all of which have disappeared, there were estimates there was a 1% chance of nuclear war [every year]. Things have gotten so much worse in the last 30 years, as you can see every time you read the newspaper.

I feel it's not a rigorous estimate, that the chances are more likely 2%. So that's a 1-in-50 chance every year. The expected lifetime, in the case of 2% [per year], is about 35 years. [The expected lifetime is the average time it would take to have had a nuclear war by then. It is calculated using similar equations as those used to determine the "half-life" of a radioactive material.]

TG: So what do you suggest as remedies to lower that risk?

DG: We had something called the Nobel Laureate Assembly for reducing the risk of nuclear war in Chicago last year.

There are steps, which are easy to take — for nations, I mean. For example, talk to each other.

In the last 10 years, there are no treaties anymore. We're entering an incredible arms race. We have three super nuclear powers.

People are talking about using nuclear weapons; there's a major war going on in the middle of Europe; we're bombing Iran; India and Pakistan almost went to war.

OK, so that's increased the chance [of nuclear war]. I would really like to have a solid estimate — it might be more, and I think I'm being conservative — but a 2% estimate [of nuclear war] in today's crazy world.

TG: Do you think we'll ever get to a place where we get rid of nuclear weapons?

DG: We're not recommending that. That's idealistic, but yes, I hope so. Because if you don't, there's always some risk an AI 100 years from now [could launch nuclear weapons], but chances of [humanity] living, with this estimate, 100 years, is very small, and living 200 years is infinitesimal.

So [the answer to] Fermi's question of "Where are the civilizations, all the intelligent organisms around the galaxy, and why don't they talk to us?" is that they've killed themselves.

You asked me to think about the future, and I am obsessed the last few years, thinking about that ‪—‬ not the future of ideas and understanding nature, but of the survival of humanity.

tim wrote: Sun Apr 19, 2026 8:12 am

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Apr 18, 2026 10:38 am Something came to mind as a result of reading the post about the 2 gay men who mocked and abused their surrogate baby. Which shows how abnormal behaviors such as these gay men typify are attempted to be quickly normalized and adopted using the Internet. The Internet gives groups who would have been shunned and ignored before its advent a way to gain attention and acceptance. Only in rare cases like this does it backfire but they can regroup and try again. Fringe groups can thus gain outsized influence.

Anyway, that led me to think about how learning to do things works in a similar way. Let's say it's the 1970s and you want to learn how to garden. Some sources of information might be:

1. Subscription to a gardening magazine,
2. Books from the library,
3. A local elderly person who has decades of gardening experience in the local area,
4. A grandparent who also has decades of gardening experience but who is not in the local area.

Now fast forward to the 2020s. Probably you go pretty exclusively to the Internet.

Having done both, the 1970s option is better. Again, the 2020s information sources can easily gain outsized influence just by showing up online. Better information sources like your elderly neighbor who is out tending her garden and the library need you to show up.

I'm on the fence on this one.

I completely understand what you're saying and agree with it at first.

Yet, the information I have been able to gain exclusively because of the internet is some of the most valuable information I have come across. I never would have found this information in books and most of it was recorded long before anyone alive today was around to pass it on to me. Even if my elders were around, many of them would have been deceived such as how they believe the polio vaccine is what ended polio and all the other fraud that was exposed through the COVID pandemic.

The information such as Generational Dynamics and the Fourth Turning all came to me through the internet while nobody I know has any clue about these subjects.

Official sources of information are highly censored, which I've only come to find out about through the internet. "Peer-reviewed" medical studies are taught to be the gold standard of research, yet it turns out you have different people funded by the same agencies or foundations that aren't allowed to do the studies that would show outcomes their benefactors disapprove of.

When I discovered traditional vaccines were never placebo tested, only tested against other "proven" vaccines I was shocked. I don't think you will find this information anywhere but the internet.

There is a lot of disinformation and bias on the internet and I wouldn't be surprised if most people were subjected to more propaganda overall because of it.

Higgenbotham wrote: Mon Sep 02, 2024 7:58 pm She asked me what I thought of AI. I said the first thing that comes to mind with regard to any new technology is whether you believe the civilization is on the ascent or the decline. If you believe the civilization is on the ascent, and you are right about that, then AI will probably on net be a positive and force for good. However, if you believe that the civilization is on the decline...at which point she interjected, "Oh, definitely!"...and then I finished my thought.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Apr 18, 2026 10:38 am Something came to mind as a result of reading the post about the 2 gay men who mocked and abused their surrogate baby. Which shows how abnormal behaviors such as these gay men typify are attempted to be quickly normalized and adopted using the Internet. The Internet gives groups who would have been shunned and ignored before its advent a way to gain attention and acceptance. Only in rare cases like this does it backfire but they can regroup and try again. Fringe groups can thus gain outsized influence.

Anyway, that led me to think about how learning to do things works in a similar way. Let's say it's the 1970s and you want to learn how to garden. Some sources of information might be:

1. Subscription to a gardening magazine,
2. Books from the library,
3. A local elderly person who has decades of gardening experience in the local area,
4. A grandparent who also has decades of gardening experience but who is not in the local area.

Now fast forward to the 2020s. Probably you go pretty exclusively to the Internet.

Having done both, the 1970s option is better. Again, the 2020s information sources can easily gain outsized influence just by showing up online. Better information sources like your elderly neighbor who is out tending her garden and the library need you to show up.