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Summertime Blues
Four out of every five Americans—more, if you just survey the wealthiest—think the country is in a recession. But there's a precise formula for such a thing, and economists say it's not so, although Warren Buffett says it is, and my money's on Buffett (I wish). Of course, it's mainly a semantics game, particularly if you're hard-pressed to afford a gallon of milk or a gallon of gas. The economic classification "recession" was actually invented in 1937 when the economy was back in the toilet but FDR didn't want to call it a depression. And the description "depression" first surfaced during the Hoover administration, a substitute for a more vivid but disconcerting term of art: panic.
Most of us feel the ground trembling beneath our feet, as though the epicenter of an earthquake is somewhere else but still nearby. Some of the growth industries in the country nowadays are built around disaster. There are companies devoted to clearing away debris from flood zones, and contractors who tend houses that have been foreclosed on behalf of the banks that now own them. The Forest Service will be hiring every qualified applicant in California to battle the fires scorching hundreds of acres there.
But at least since the days of the New Deal there has been a national assumption that failure is not an option. Playing by the rules and working hard will lead to prosperity. Prosperity will lead to security, and security is immutable. But little seems immutable this summer, and prosperity has led to credit-card indenture. Having a two-car garage has an entirely different feeling when the cost of filling a car with gas begins to edge toward $100. This is the summer of our discontent, when the equivalent of the ice-cream-truck bells is the music of jingle mail, signaling that our old optimistic notion of America is on increasingly shaky ground.
© 2008
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Member Comments
Posted By: jane.simpson.wilson @ 07/15/2008 2:52:34 AM
Comment: Thanks Anna, once again, you are right on the money, but don't forget the small things we revelled in as children; The Library, long days languishing in a swimming-hole, Slip 'n Slide, water-guns, G.I. Joe, when you think of it, none of us with a stoop and a group of friends had to "Go on Vacation". My twenty-year-old and I sit in the back yard and play with kittens that have emerged from the orchard each day from five to eight p.m. How lucky I am. We can both enjoy a few kittens and a warm summer afternoon in the shade.
Posted By: sixthofeleven @ 07/03/2008 11:33:52 PM
Comment: Anna Quindlen's recent lament, "Summertime Blues", could just as easily have been titled "Crisis of Confidence" or "National Malaise", as the writer apparently went to the Jimmy Carter School of American Psychoanalysis. Quindlen offers no solutions for our collective woes, but she might start with a bit of individual accountability. The foreclosures and 'credit card indenture' she mentions could be avoided by simply spending within one's means. The entitlement mentality that led to purchases of unaffordable homes and accessories naturally leads to the expectation of government relief from such obligations. This leaves our government fewer resources to take care of true victims Quindlen mentions, such as those affected by the Iowa flooding and California wildfires.
Posted By: moreland01@gmail.com @ 07/03/2008 6:52:07 PM
Comment: What a huge Bummer, Anna! Is it just a coincidence that you and Abe are sporting the same pose? Hmmmm?