Kenneth W. Gronbach
Auteur van The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm
Werken van Kenneth W. Gronbach
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- 3
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- 64
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- #264,968
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- 3.9
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- 15
Strauss and Howe on the other hand not only describe the generations, but explain them with complicated personality characteristics loaded with value judgments akin to generational warfare. Gronbach tosses all that aside and simply looks only at the demographic size of each generation, which in many cases is enough to explain things. Generation X, which has been much maligned for a long time, only real fault is it's small size which means it has been unable to participate in society at the same level as its predecessor, the Baby Boomers. Thus the "slacker" tag.
I learned a lot from this breezy and captivating book, but there were so many questions and seeming contradictions I wish it had gone into more depth. Gronbach wears his personal politics openly and they usually fall on the side of conservatism ie. he suggests now would be a good time to "solve" the Middle East problem, namely Iran, with military measures, because of the large number of young people in Generation Y. But also fairly he takes a liberal view towards other issues like immigration. Who knew that 50% of all live births in the US are to Latino's! We would be sinking without them. He also forecasts China's economy will stall because of its 1-child policy (so much for the rise of China).
One thing I would caution about this book. Gronbach is using a "common sense" approach with a very simple tool to explain very complex phenomenon - this can be dangerous, as the world is much more complex. Still, it may be macro enough to get general trends correct some of the time, although more so in hindsight. Gronbach doesn't look at or explain things that are contrary to his theory. Gronbach is an evangelizer and visionary, the book is a manifesto, what's needed next is someone to do the hard research to see how well the theory really works.
--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2010 cc-by-nd… (meer)