What the Great Recession Wrought: The State of the U.S. in 3 Years of Polls

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/what-the-great-recession-wrought-the-state-of-the-us-in-3-years-of-polls/251010/


reuters

More than three years into the deepest economic downturn since the Depression, Americans are resilient, wary, and divided.

That's a central message from the 11 Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor polls conducted each quarter since April 2009. Across an array of questions, the polls show Americans to be resilient in their enduring conviction that their economic fate will turn primarily on their own efforts, rather than on large forces beyond their control; wary in their deepening skepticism that they can rely on any large institution, from banks and major corporations to Congress and the federal bureaucracy, to protect their interests; and deeply divided along partisan, ideological, and racial lines over Washington's proper role in national life.

With more than 12,000 cumulative interviews, the surveys paint a portrait of a nation struggling to maintain faith in old beliefs about opportunity, self-sufficiency, and the rewards of hard work amid a nagging fear that the economy's new dynamics expose average Americans to far more financial insecurity than earlier generations--and sentence the nation to more disruptive cycles of boom and bust. By overwhelming margins, those polled consistently have expressed faith that they can still achieve the American Dream, defined as the opportunity to advance as far as their talents will take them, and to live better than their parents. And yet, the surveys also find ominous cracks in that conviction, with many Americans, especially whites, growing pessimistic that their children will exceed, or even equal, their own standard of living.

This uneasy mix of anxiety and determination infuses all 11 surveys, which examined American attitudes toward a variety of economic trends and financial challenges from opportunity and risk to demographic change, global competition, the millennial generation's prospects, homeownership, public and private debt, and the changing nature of retirement. The polls make clear that the recession landed in the center of American life with the force of a natural disaster, even rattling groups usually sheltered from economic instability and shaking beliefs that have persisted for generations on issues ranging from the nature of retirement to the value of a college education.

One theme consistently winding through the polls is the emergence of what could be called a "reluctant self-reliance," as Americans look increasingly to reconstruct economic security from their own efforts, in part because they don't trust outside institutions to provide it for them. The surveys suggest that the battered economy has crystallized a gestating crisis of confidence in virtually all of the nation's public and private leadership class--from elected officials to the captains of business and labor. Taken together, the results render a stark judgment: At a time when they believe they are navigating much more turbulent economic waters than earlier generations, most Americans feel they are paddling alone. Shawn Kurt, an unemployed lumber-mill worker in Molalla, Ore., who responded to one survey, spoke for many when he plaintively declared, "I myself don't see no one trying to help me."

[Tomay]

1. The puzzling thing about the Great Recession

is not how it started (capitalistic greed and fraudulent practices, as usual; only the scale is larger than usual), but why the public is so indifferent about fixing the structural imbalance that caused it, and is so resigned to its fate. It's like most people just don't see an alternative to the status quo, as bad as it is. After the 1929 Crash, the public grew steadily angrier and angrier, until by 1933 the government simply had to act against the "banksters" that had ruined the country, or risk a revolution in the streets. Nothing like that is happening this time, though OWS is a step in the right direction. Nobody seriously thinks that OWS is going to seize power, though, unlike in 1932, when farmers were literally up in arms over bank foreclosures, and commentators at the time frequently described the atmosphere across the country as pre-revolutionary. Granted, 2012 isn't is disastrous as 1932, but in even in previous recessions of less severity the government was expected to do something. Why not this time?
Is it simply that the country has been relentlessly propagandized for 30 years about the supposed perfection of the capitalist system, so most people can't think outside of the box on the subject?

[xchrom]

2. you ask very good questions -- all the 'what's the matter with kansas' questions

and i'm not sure there are any easy answers -- some of it is the spread of unaffliated evangelicals, some is wide spread disaffection and mistrust of institutions, some of it is mistrust of fast changing modernity, etc.

i don't think we can encapsulate this nihilistic fate that we have seemingly embraced.

[zbdent]

3. Don't forget that a huge chunk of the corporate-owned media (read: "liberally-biased media")

have a lot to gain from the uninformed masses electing presidents (Obama included) who make it easier and easier for people (read: corporations) to avoid taxation ... so the corporate-owned media doesn't like "good news" when it comes to the economy.

[saras]

4. Back then, people DID see an alternative - self-sufficiency.

As a last resort they could picture themselves going back to the farms, a hard, ugly life, but a workable one, and one they knew they could do. Most modern urban people have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how to build themselves a functional society if the one given them by capitalism is taken away. They will, in the clutch, support any fascist that promises them freedom from the stress of making a new society. Turn off the food and water going into ANY American city, and in a couple weeks you will have a fascist government of SOME sort, whether the National Guard or a private mafia. CIvil rights - long gone.

The other thing they can't visualize is "no more investments - you have to earn your money".