The NEW American Dream

The present financial situation is still precarious. Most likely, Congress will shiver and huddle and decide, after all the posturing, that they don't want to face the music after a new "Great Depression" descends upon us.


So it looks like the taxpayers will be forced to roll up their sleeves for the unavoidable blood transfusion to save a Wall Street on life support. Ah, well.

On reflection, we are going to be working in a new economy, one where this kind of crisis will not happen again. But what will that economy look like? Will it be as compelling as the last one?

I admit that I have no idea what the new economy will look like. I do know that the old one is dead.

That old now dead economy was called the "American Dream" economy. It did a helluva job for this country after World War Two, and that was because most of the country wanted what the economy produced.

We produced "The American Dream". We struggled to get it, and we struggled to keep it. Then we passed it on to our children so they could continue the struggle.

What was it? It was more than just that house in the suburbs with the two car garage. Much more.

The dream was the house, the mortgage that could be paid with one secure salary from the same employer until retirement.

It was not one, not two but a car for everyone in the family. This was because once Dick and Jane hit sixteen, they wouldn't be satisfied with Mom and Dad driving them to school or to parties at the friend's house. And of course, the dream included the car loans that kept all those dealerships in clover.

It was the two week vacations for the whole family -- every year -- to Washington, to New York for the Broadway shows, to Disney World, to Yellowstone.

It was gifts and parties and barbecues and dinners and weddings for all the brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins, cousins and MORE cousins.

It was countless outings to movies, home team games and restaurants every weekend.

The American Dream lasted a long time. How long? It lasted from the time, long, long ago, when people actually spent time balancing their checkbooks (Does anybody still remember such a time?) until today, when you don't know how many credit cards you have.

It included every new gadget that could possibly be stuffed into the closets of the American Dream home, and it included all the extensions of the home to fit more closets to hold these gadgets.

It included four years plus of higher education for every child, but especially for the ones who had no particular interest or intellectual curiosity about anything they would learn in college except how the degree could get them their own American Dream, and if it would be bigger than they one they grew up in.

It included the swimming pools, patios, redesigned kitchens and landscaping that would be classified as "Home Improvement" and which would result in the huge profit everyone expected once they sold their American Dream home. This home became the equity that people expected to grow, as part of their estate, even though their ever more expensive lifestyle was being financed by using that home as still another layer of debt that would eventually be paid by the increased value of that home.

The dream did the job of maintaining this economy because Americans made an unwritten pact with each other to dream it, in unison, at the same time.

The alarm that woke us all from this dream is called the Wall Street bailout.

All functioning economies need a dominant theme to energize its citizens, a "dream" if you will.

America will need another "American Dream" to regain economic stability again. I don't know if it will be as dominant as THE "American Dream", the one that gripped the imaginations and yearnings of everyone who lived here or came here from every corner of the world.

That dream is over.