Will Bad Economy Lead To A New Outlook?

(CBS)  Spring may be here, but everywhere are signs that this is the winter of our economic discontent.

"What I'm learning is not to spend, spend, spend, you kind of need to save a little," one woman from Atlanta told CBS News correspondent Jeff Greenfield.

But more than that, there's a sense that the lean times will not ease anytime soon.

"Our children are going to be stuck with this bill for years and years and years to come," surmised one man.

If that's true, it will surely define this era, and change those who will live through it. But how? And might it even change us for the better?

The Great Depression lasted for more than a decade. Most Americans who lived through it felt firsthand the reality - or threat of - real suffering. Historian Morris Dickstein said it made some values supreme.

"Security, caution, stability," he said. "Civil service jobs, low paying, but steady - that was very important to the Depression generation."

And they took their values with them through the rest of their lives - for instance, embracing the post-war comforts of suburban life and consumer pleasures.

"They were reacting to all the depredation that they had experienced, or that their parents had experienced," Dickstein said.

Today's generation didn't stand on breadlines - they stood on line to buy iPhones, spent half a billion a year on ringtones. We have just passed through a time when those at the top earned kings' ransoms, when credit cards and the housing bubble led millions to acquire as if there were no tomorrow.

"We have been through a 26-year-long cycle or so that is all about individual ambition, individual getting, individual spending," said author and essayist Kurt Anderson.

Anderson argues in Time this week that the end of the age of excess may prove the proverbial blessing in disguise. For instance, he says, even when conditions get better, we'll ask ourselves, "Do I really need the fifth television, the third car, the slightly cooler laptop computer?"

More significantly, the next generation may choose radically different career paths.

"In terms of what will make them happy rather than be seduced by what looks like the easy road to wealth, " Anderson said.

We could, of course, emerge from these times a less confident, more cautious people, without the traditional American belief that things will always be better tomorrow. What we do know is that the conditions that surround us when we're young never really leave us. And this generation will carry with them conditions unlike any we have seen in a very, very long time.

[prohb]

As POGO said - "We have met the enemy, and he is us." It is ludicrous to point fingers and blame at this point at the past and the present president. It was spending money we didn't have that was promoted by money lenders with imaginary money they didn't have. It was inevitable this house af cards would tumble some day. As to how we get out of this mess, I stand by my original post on this article: WE MUST BECOME A RESILIENT PEOPLE! Let's pull up our bootstraps and get to work.

[sndkzyaa]

Suck it up pal, the Reagan Revolution is dead and who was the straw that broke the camels back, Clinton.
Posted by curse914 at 8:51 PM : Mar 28, 2009

OK, then it sounds like your point is that you're glad the "Reagan Revolution" is over, and you're amused that Clinton is the one who ended it by wrecking our economy when he "adopted" Reagan's ideas that you find so flawed.

So, faced with the biggest economic crisis since the Depression, all you want to do is spew hate for an economic idea from 20 years ago that you disagreed with. And you feel joy that our economy was destroyed by a member of the opposite political party, because you enjoy the irony of the way your hate was fulfilled.

I'm starting to understand why you post don't make any sense. You're driven purely by hate.

Why do you hate the USA so much?

And in case anybody is confused, I find your point totally illogical, and I don't agree with any part of what you said.

[luke_4u]

I think what they say in the article is mostly correct. But not completely, with some, as soon as things get a little better they'll just go right back to their old ways. You know, easy come easy go. We all need to hang onto our money better, and not buy everything we see. Buy the things you really "need", and very little of the junk that you just "want". And we need to get away from the idea of greed and getting something for nothing, as the Madoff investors did. Now that it's over, everyone should be able to see how much better off those people would be, if they would have just hung onto their money. There's an old saying, a fool and his money are soon parted. It's true, so don't waste or gamble away your money, hang onto as much of it as you can. Rainy day, and all that.

[2catnight]

I certainly hope it leads to a new outlook...especially for all you pessimists who just sit there and spew hate and discontent. If this doesn't change some lives, nothing will.

[harpoot]

Change outlook?? No way. Most of the population are as dumb as a post and go back to their old ways as soon as things improve a bit. Just like they did as soon as gas prices came back down. A nation of obese cretins.

[gce651]

New outlook? Rememebr the movie Groundhog Day? "You want a forcast? I'll give you a forecast. It's gonna be cold and grey and it's gonna last you the rest of your life!"

[philabias]

i cant help but to laugh at those who think we won because i sure dont
I would have been happy to bomb them day and night until the only way in or out of iraq
is on a camel. destroy everything and let them clean up the mess there own selves. just like gaza. they show me pictures of dead children, but i seem to remember the same children dressed as suicide bombers. I guess the only thing they are upset about is that they got killed befor they got to be martyrs.....nice!

[philabias]

no it wont chage anything or anybody.Americans arent smart enough anymore to see whats happening. I guess it goes to show that adding sodium floride to the water sure does stupify the population. and they still think it stops tooth decay. WAKE AMERCA FLORIDOSES DESTROYS TEETH. HINT prozac is made from a floride compound..............think it over then do some research ( YOU KNOW READ )

[curse914]

So before you start blasting away, first please clarify what you meant to say by identifying deregulation as a purely GOP idea (which is total nonsense anyway, but be that as it may...).

Posted by sndkzyaa at 6:00 PM : Mar 28, 2009

You are the one tap dancing. Suck it up pal, the Reagan Revolution is dead and who was the straw that broke the camels back, Clinton. It is as ironic as Carter and Clinton being more fiscally conservative than Reagan, Bush I and Bush II.

I do not have Party affiliation. This is a Class struggle, and partisan hacks, such as yourself serve only as foils.

"Utah Republican Party State Party Platform
(as ratified at the 2004 State Convention)

REGULATION
We recognize that government regulation can be a major impediment to productivity and to competition. We must rely more on market forces and less on government. Regulatory power now exercised by the federal government must be eliminated or returned to state and local governments."

"In the United States, the Old Right was a faction of American conservatism that opposed both New Deal domestic programs and also the entry of the U.S. into World War II. Many members of this faction were associated with the Republicans of the interwar years led by Robert Taft, but some were Democrats. They were called the "Old Right" to distinguish them from their anti-communist New Right successors, such as Barry Goldwater, who were interventionist in foreign policy, although a great majority of Old Right intellectuals were passionately opposed to communism and socialism. Many members of the Old Right were laissez-faire classical liberals, some were business-oriented conservatives like Herbert Hoover; others were ex-radicals who moved sharply to the right, like John Dos Passos; others, like the Southern Agrarians, dreamed of restoring a premodern communal society."

[billpl-2009]

"And it's me I'll work the mill just as long as I am able
But may I never meet the man whose name is on the label

And it's me and my machine
For the rest of the morning
The rest of the afternoon gone
For the rest of my life "
- Mill Worker
- James Taylor
Posted by veteran71

(More Like)

My words but a whisper -- your deafness a SHOUT.
I may make you feel but I can't make you think.
Your sperm's in the gutter -- your love's in the sink.
So you ride yourselves over the fields and
You make all your animal deals and
Your wise men don't know how it feels to be....
Thick as a brick.

--Ian Anderson