What Happened to the American Dream?

Traumatized Americans> “‘Whining’ hardly captures the extent of the gloom Americans feel as the current downturn enters its 18th month. The slump is the longest, if not the deepest, since the Great Depression. Traumatized by layoffs that have cost more than 1.2 million jobs during the slump, U.S. consumers have fallen into their deepest funk in years…In one of history’s most painful paradoxes, U.S. consumers seem suddenly disillusioned with the American Dream of rising prosperity even as capitalism and democracy have consigned the Soviet Union to history’s trash heap.”—Time, Jan. 13, 1992

As Tyler Cowen points out, “The article is describing the recession of 1991, an unusually mild recession that preceeded [sic] one of the biggest expansions in American history.”