Web Letters: The Future of the American Dream

That Mr. Greider writes so effectively and beautifully, and that his prose contrasts so starkly with the Big Government Collectivist views that he spouts, just reaffirms the maxim that liberals should be placed in charge of conceiving of good intentions, and nothing else.

Does Mr. Greider even realize that he has the freedom to espouse his claptrap only because our forefathers took this land and its resources, at gunpoint, from the Native Americans that originally inhabited it? A people who, by my accounting, possess all the values called for by Mr. Greider in his new master race of enlightened humanity.

The very least that Mr. Greider could do to contribute to humanity would be to write some excellent fiction, instead of subjecting us to the wanton hubris that fills his pulpit of sanctimony, to coerce people to live their lives in a particular way, all in the name of the Greater Good.

Eugene S. Park

Chicago, IL

Exciting ideas... but why are they so jingoistic?

Until we supply more of the world's immediate, pressing needs for food, water and medicine, we have no business fantasizing about our own national utopia.

There's not an ounce of this in Greider's thinking. He ends up being as selfish as the current business-first model.

I believe the new calling is much more communal. We have an inborn yearning to provide for others, and our current system simply fails to factor it in.

Even churches don't exercise imagination here: either they play Lady Bountiful, and commit all the relevant sins of pridefulness in doing so; or they do good works for the ulterior motive of gaining members, which plays to the manipulative attitude so prevalent in our society already.

The idea of a legitimate exchange of goods and services at fair rates just doesn't get discussed. Perhaps this is because we are so far from being "for others" in the sense Christ encouraged.

I'm tired of remedies for America. I want global discussion of problems, shared by many ranks and affiliations.

It's a much more religious vision than we're comfortable with.

The conservative Christians and Muslims have something to teach us here, just as we have something to prod them into facing, as mainline Western people of faith. It starts, I believe, with nonviolent resistance of injustice at every level, regularly and charitably, as a way of life.

Arthur Dan Gleckler

Baltimore, MD

While this article is a great read with a utopian dream, it is too far off the mark of reality. Do not get me wrong: I would like to see everything in this article accomplished.

My biggest fear in this day and age is that there are a lot of good ideas out there, and books written on how to accomplish them, but no concrete evidence that anyone is taking them seriously.

Perhaps I am so negative because of my own personal lack of professional progress, for which cannot really blame anyone but myself. I am college-educated, and work for a broker/dealer, but really do not see any professional progress in my life for the last ten years.

I would love to see American change into a kind of socialist-capitalist state as suggested in this article. I really think it is needed, but again I think in order to do this would take a revolution!

Lee Lipman

San Diego, CA

Mr. William Greider writes about the ideas and life-targets that have many times been the subject of my questions to my Western friends. Why do you hurry? What does "life" mean to you ? When do you want to use your own life and your skills for your own personal satisfaction, to feel you are useful ? In the name of the permanent profit of capital, you are spending sixteen and more hours a day working for a salary that gives you just the possibility to eat and to be dressed and to have a roof over your head, and there is no time to really realize life.

Everything starts with the social system. The right to get a job and to be decently paid for it. Then working-time regulations and the right to have a rest. This will give families time to live together, and for parents to teach children to behave when they need it. It will refresh minds and allow time to create personality. But this requires social solidarity. From an early age children need the possibility of free time to engage in interest groups where they may learn arts and crafts, to produce by themselves simple or more complicated products with the help of a qualified older teacher. This will give them a sense of responsibility, a sense of skillfulness and pride in their own ability to create, to discover for themselves.

America is strongly oriented to family life, OK, but what does that mean? Sitting in the living room together and watching TV? Taking a trip by car, going to the local McDonald's, drinking some beers and going home?

In the Czech Republic, we were brought up with something called active rest. It was possible only because there was a strictly regulated working law for parents, reducing the work week to forty-two hours, giving women some rights to take care of family and children etc. Everything depends on the society and its priorities.

History teaches us that all societies where the priority was given to money etc. were lost because money made it possible to buy anything, even rights and law. From this point of view, America should change everyday life, but it will be not easy. "Custom is an iron shirt," but life's validity is not in material richness and money. To change means first to want to change and second to create, step by step, patiently, social instruments to support these social changes.

From history it is also well known that these changes never come "from the top"--they have to be initiated from below.

George Dvorak

Saigon City, Vietnam

I found William Greider's article uplifting. I am a high school social studies teacher caught up in the struggle of 108 teachers being laid off in my school district because of the poor economy and not saved by Obama's stimulus plan. I'm one of the lucky ones. I've still got my job.

So Greider's article cheered me up, at least for a while. Then I got into his daydreams. I liked the first one--a livable wage. The second and third ones are pretty good, too--having to do with democratizing the workplace and creating the social corporation, but they seem to be way up in the clouds for me. Here's my Numbers 2 and 3. For number 2, we simply need to enact single-payer universal healthcare. It just shouldn't be so hard to do what every modern industrial economy does in this world--provide reasonable cost healthcare for all of its citizens. Number 3 is a little harder. We need an educational system that allows every high school graduate with a B average a fully paid college education up to and including a doctorate as long as the student maintains satisfactory grades.

If we can provide that three-point level of social safety net, then everything is possible, including Greider's daydreams.

Bill Crowley

Fort Wayne, IN

I share Greider's vision of a society that saves itself from collapsing by putting a premium on human pursuits other than consumption. There is, however, one erroneous assumption stated several times in the article--that scarcity and deprivation are forever behind us. We are facing a resource-depletion crisis that will make the current financial crisis look like the good ol' days. Oil, gas, water, metals, topsoil--you name it, and the world will soon not have enough of it to meet the demands of a rapidly growing population.

Alongside the cultural and philosophical shifts Greider dreams of, we need to focus (quickly!) on some very pragmatic problems, such as how to feed 7 billion poeple without fossil-fuel-based fertilizers, pesticides, farm equipment and delivery trucks. Greider calls for full employment, but as resources dwindle, unemployment must soar. What will a post-carbon society look like? I'm not sure, but we had better start envisioning and building it rather than allowing the end of oil to catch us unprepared.

Greider's article is welcome, but he and other liberal-progressive economists such as Paul Krugman need to start acknowledging natural resource constraints in their analyses (as even Thomas Friedman has done of late). Seen through the lens of resource depletion, an even more radical transformation of our economy--for better or worse--is clearly in the cards.

Erica Etelson

Berkeley, CA

While I applaud Mr. Greider's suggestions for redefining the American Dream, it seems that control of our collective destiny is slipping further and further away from the "dreamers" and may already be out of our hands altogether. We must keep in mind, in stark clarity, the fact that America is a nation that imprisons an astounding percentage of its population, far more than any other "developed" nation. For ethnic minorities in many parts of the country, America is still a place where the iron ceiling of opportunity grows steadily stronger and more oppressive. Schools fail, families are broken, and amid lost jobs and a shrinking economy, the "prison-industrial complex" is one of this country's strongest growth industries.

Mr. Greider's assumption, on which he bases much of his discussion, that the United States is a rich nation is also seriously open to question. The myth of America's great wealth is belied by soaring national debt, and by the fact that, increasingly, what wealth this country has is concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals and organizations that hold and exercise power and control over the actions of our political leaders and over our national discussion of matters such as those Mr. Greider puts forward for our consideration.

While this article is noble in its intent, it brings to mind many of the articles I've seen expressing nostalgia for the "good old days" when life was simpler, crime was lower and anything was possible for anyone. These articles always neglect to mention that in the "good old days," in much of this country, a person of color couldn't safely travel beyond or even within his own community, that the role of women in the workplace was limited to nonexistent, that American wealth was based on and built in large part on the exploitation of the labor and resources of other, less powerful nations.

Mr. Grieder, who is going to tell the real wielders of power in this country that they must relinquish their power for the common good? Who will enforce this vision when they laugh in our faces or, as is more likely, simply ignore us, as they have done to the voices of courageous people such as Michael Moore? Please keep dreaming, Mr. Greider, but don't forget that history teaches us that real change will require both dreams and struggle, as well as both tears and joy, and the end result may well be far different from our wildest imaginings.

Lindsay Haisley

Leander, TX

After reading this article, I cried out loud.

Thank you, Mr. Greider, for writing about what my heart has, for years, whispered.

Debra Killian

Nederland, TX

Over the past thirty-plus years, we have been given a range of social and economic policies that, I believe, guarantee the end of the US as we knew it.

Through those "good times," when people were rolling in disposable income (or debt), a steadily growing chunk of America was falling deeper into poverty. We didn't care. We forgot about economic cycles, and decided to rip the social safety net out from under us. If you "work hard and play by all the rules," you won't be poor. We foolishly thought that welfare "reform" would effect only "the losers," unaware of how powerfully these policies would impact the whole of the working class. Wasn't hard to figure out, though...

We flooded the workforce with a (growing) mass of desperate people who can be required to do our jobs at a fraction of the pay. More workers, fewer jobs. And we can't do anything about it anymore. Go on strike? Don't bother, you'll be replaced by morning with workfare labor.

This has never been a full-employment economy. The difference now is that without that "failed welfare system," fewer people have the means to work their way back up out of poverty. Out of ignorance and/or apathy, we ended up shooting ourselves in the foot. Too bad.

We have lost all concept of how we (of different economic classes) are interrelated.

The oldest known strategy in war: divide and conquer. And We the People have been severely divided and, evidently, conquered.

Dianka H. Fabian

Fort Atkinson, WI

Greider's article is right on the money! We have lost ourselves in the quest for personal wealth. The mechanics of his solution are a bit beyond my ability to judge--democratically run businesses seem to imply an equality of education and focus that I'm pretty sure doesn't exist --but the notion that the real joy of life is about something other than money is only too obvious. How to achieve it is another matter.

The article obviously set off a lot of "commie-pinko" alarm bells--see other responses--but I think everyone should just take a nice deep breath, and be happy that someone is looking for a better solution. Because, clearly, whatever we're doing now isn't working all that well.

Bart Braverman

Los Angeles, CA

A potential solution might lay in a reconsideration of money.

Money functions as both a store of value and a medium of exchange. These work at cross-purposes, because as a store of value it is a form of private property, while as a medium of exchange it is a form of public utility, similar to a road system. Most people focus on their own wealth in comparison to others and thus think of it as private property. The reality is that the system belongs to whomever guarantees its value. We do possess the money we hold, in the same way we possess the section of road we are driving on. You own your car, house, business, etc., but not the roads connecting them. Money is a similar medium. It was one thing when money signified some commodity you had stored or traded and its value was entirely based on that underlaying commodity, but now the money supply far exceeds the underlaying value of the real economy and so its value is maintained by the ability of the government to support it through taxation. This means that it has broken away from being an actual store of value and it is now entirely a medium of exchange. While this is potentially catastrophic, it presents an opportunity to change the basic economic equation.

Believing money is private property encourages people to hoard it. The problem is that capital is subject to the laws of supply and demand, with the lender as supply and the borrower as demand. Since the supply of capital must be balanced by demand for it, there must be sufficient borrowers for this notational wealth, or its value will collapse. The problem is that political power is on the side of those with money, rather than those borrowing it, and this lack of balance regularly creates situations that swell the supply of money, while depleting the abilities of those borrowing it. This results in periodic credit collapse, as masses of borrowers default. We are at an extreme state of this particular situation, since lenders have persuaded the government to borrow massive amounts of its own money back, lowered loan standards and blown enormous bubbles of excess circulation, essentially pari-mutual wagering, a k a derivatives, to hold this surplus notational wealth. Now that the bubble is collapsing, the Powers That Be are engaged in even more destructive behavior, by issuing ever more debt and currency to keep the bubble from imploding. Since the money supply already exceeds the value of the general economy, the only way to prevent this additional money from being seriously inflationary is to draw ever more value out of society and the environment in order to support and pay interest on it, to the increasing detriment of world health.

Consider how it would change public perception of monetary wealth if we were to come to the realization that the monetary system really is now entirely a form of public commons. The practice of hoarding excessive amounts would lack moral, logical and eventually legal justification. If people understood that monetary value constituted public property, then they would be far more reluctant to drain value out of their social networks and environment to put in a bank in the first place. We all like having roads, but there is little inclination to pave more than we have to. In this situation, the same would apply to monetizing our lives. Other avenues of trust and reciprocation would have the space to develop.

We made politics a public trust, why not do the same with the banking industry? As the currency is a public utility, so profits from its administration could be public income. A public banking system would not be one huge behemoth but consist of institutions incorporated at every level of governance, so that individuals could bank with the ones that funded the services they are most likely to use. Different communities would seek to provide the best services with these funds; otherwise, they would lose business and citizens to other communities. As it is, banking doesn't need the inventiveness for which private enterprise is most suited but the stability that is the strength of the public sector.

The lack of extreme amounts of monetized wealth might also reduce the potential for bloated regimes to develop.

The only unit that fully defines humanity and life is the earth. Possibly humanity is the embryonic central nervous system of a planetary organism. Otherwise we are just top predator of a collapsing ecosystem.

John Merryman

Sparks, MD

The American Dream has never been sustainable. While we have been beguiled with the moral virtues of he Puritans, this continent was mostly settled by those who exploited the vast resources available here--in the air, on the lands and waters, animal, vegetable and mineral. The aim was to get rich, and many, many folks did and continue to do just that. It is still the aim of the majority of Americans. The interpretation of the the words "life, liberty nd the pursuit of happiness" has prompted endless consumption, far more than necessary, resulting in pollution and exhaustion of all resources and despoliation of this continent. Coupled with rampant individualism, in which the common good and general welfare remain issues of conflict, the citizens and residents of the US of A are in for a very hard time for all future centuries and generations.

Virginia M. Paulsen

Seattle, WA

America's fate in this century will be, at best, parallel to Britain's in the last. Like them, we've clearly bankrupted ourselves and literally can no longer afford to defend the periphery of our empire, much less restore "the American Dream" of widespread prosperity. Under the best of circumstances, both China and India would have been richer than America by the end of the twenty-first century, since America is simply, like England before us, simply too little to prevail. But the combination of the insanity of the Iraq War and the parallel Wall Street madness that Madoffed our economy have immeasurably greased the skids of America's fall, and Israel's with it, since Israel is entirely dependent on the strength of America, now evaporating before our eyes. Because of Iraq, the Taliban will most likely conquer Pakistan, passing on its nukes to bin Laden, who will have no shortage of volunteers to transport the nukes, one way or another, to the vaporization of Tel Aviv and NYC. So, yes indeed, the American dream has come and gone.

Fred White

Baltimore, MD

We are going to have a "great leap forward"!? I certainly hope that it does not come with mass starvation, as it did in China. It's fine for the author to set out what he thinks people ought to want and how they ought to act, but when he puts the muscle of the government (another phrase that's come back into fashion) behind his wishes, the results which follow will merely be tyranny.

Joanne Hill

New York, NY

Having lived in a communist country, I recognize that, while coming from good intentions, your idea of "of ignoring the orders from above" by substituting the voluntary agreement that exists between employee and employers in the free market by the authoritarian fist of the state (that the dictator is "elected" each four years changes nothing) is a guarantee for slavery and misery on a giant scale.

On the market, if one doesn't want to "obey the orders" dictated by his boss, he quits and goes work for someone else, or even for himself.

When the employment is organized "by democratic principles"--i.e., by the state--one can't quit, since there's only one employer: the government. You do what is asked, or you find yourself in a "worker's paradise" camp somewhere where people die young.

I see the intellectuals in the West walking the path of building a socialist tyranny once more, and it scares me.

Marek K. Nowak

Warsaw, Poland

Mr. Grieder falls into the same trap that most "progressives" fall into. He claims new knowledge but recycles the same old failed ideas of past communal societies.

"Small Is the New Big"--what a deception. Small is small and always will be small.

Living large is only possible when people deal with their inner tendencies to "mess things up." This is called "sin." So, what you are really saying in your first paragraph is that America needs a "spiritual awakening," an "ol'-time religious revival." Only then can some of the issues you name be solved. You look too much to government as the equalizer rather than as the catalyst.

You want all outcomes to be the same and want everyone to "settle" for what you view as idyllic and idealistic. I may want to have it large and to create lots of wealth. Who are you to prevent it? Social ills come out of fallen man's own mind, not out of democracy and capitalism "favoring" one over another.

I could fill a book with what is wrong with your worldview.

Dr. John Paul Matthews

San Angelo, TX

Karl Marx accused religion of being the "opiate of the people." Certainly, that can be an aspect of religion. Reflecting human needs for certainty and order, any closely held belief is inclined to be an opiate, and this quality is not unknown in in politics, economics, or historical analysis. Political, economic or historical theories may have their uses, however; application sometimes fails when faced by the variety of human experience. Seeking to retain certainty, the secular belief system can take on an "opiate" quality and sometimes the character of a secular religion.

The short form for that rather long-winded paragraph is that one size does not fit all, and any one who tells you there is one way to solve the world's problems is an idiot. "Universal answers" and "uniformity of beliefs" do no exist, because they will not work all the time. In other words, you have do do the "grunt" work and think!

"Free trade" and "globalization" are collapsing around our ears. The famous question you need to ask yourself is, Are you better off with "free trade" and globalization or with our traditional independent national market that gave us the "American Dream"? You will lose that dream, if you do not fight for it!

Pervis James Casey

Riverside, CA

"To accomplish this sweeping change, people need power--more power to say what they think without getting fired and to make choices that are more in line with their values and aspirations."

Greider's objective of more civility and a "kinder, gentler" society are not likely to come about as a result of satisfying people's concerns about obtaining "more power to say what they think" and "making choices that are more in line with their values and aspirations." We live in a society where we have already gotten to the point where we spend so much time "saying what we think" that we have no time remaining to listen to what others think. And even if we had the time, the incredibly uncivil nature of the ways we are beginning to "talk" to one another are building impenetrable barriers to real communication. Saying what we think has simply become an exercise in shouting into a universe of cacophony.

The kinds of cultural changes Mr. Greider proposes cannot come about in a world where each of us believes that everyone else needs to change to accommodate our own individual "values and aspirations." In the end, civility and an understanding that we can only survive if we can understand the places where we must compromise our own values and aspirations to allow space for other people's "values and aspirations."

It may be that we can look to "government" to help make this possible. But it is more likely that the best place to start is to consider the value of civility and tolerance in our relationships with others who have different values and aspirations.

Don Harban

Tulsa, OK

Mr.Greider spells out many laudable goals, but I think he fails to address one of the primary causes of economic stress on the poor and middle class: surplus labor.

With the efficiencies of computers and automation, the number of workers needed has declined--or at least failed to keep pace with population growth.

With an oversupply of labor, inexorably, the price for labor goes down. In America, wages have been flat since the 1970s.

Increasing demand for labor is one way to raise wages, but an immediate fix would be to reduce the supply: by legislating--with mutual agreement with the G-8 countries--a reduction in the work week and retirement age.

This would not only raise wages, it would have the effect of facilitating the "pursuit of happiness."

Vince Johnson

Houston, TX

We positively must recognize that any system that best develops the maximum in human artistic and intellectual potential cannot be one that fosters the most in immediate economic growth, and also definitely does not have the most in immediate social benefits. We are deeply into the tension between freedom's satisfactions and the happiness that comes from temporary, superficial security. We have, then, three different goal-directions for guidance, which means that we can plot the vectors in a three-dimensional space matrix, and difference them all for time.

Delays are necessary in many things, in order to get a bigger, better, benefit. You are advised to not eat the seed grain, or pick the fruit before it grows full size and ripens. If you prefer, don't drink the water needed to prime the well's pump.

And you absolutely "can't make an omlette without breaking eggs."

Should we gear society to maximize political and social freedom? Or should we maximize individuals' temporary economic security? Or should we maximize economic freedom and progress for growth and wealth? Or should it be personal security against terrorism and crime?

These are not coherent goals at all. Indeed, it is really hard to balance any two of them, much less all four. They are like the oxymoron slogan: "Peace and freedom!" That combination is not remotely possible or self-compatible for any great duration, unless you are a small state protected by larger ones. Liechtenstein is a good example.

The path towards a society that is most psychologically satisfying is likely to provide a fifth, very different direction from all those above. It needs to be balanced in all fields and provide for expansion in them all. But it is culturally based, in that a modern self-satisfied, democratic society may not be at all to the liking of extreme Islamists or adherents of various ideologies.

But, therein lies the danger of a type of social narcotic. Put people to sleep so that they will be quiet and the elite, the powerful, can rule. That was Bismarck's plan with the first welfare state. It was like Roman "bread and circuses!" However, the problem is inherent even in honest proposals to create a government that would try to manage the economy or fill gaps in healthcare. Again, we face the stagnation of any planned society that lacks challenges or upsetting innovations.

In pondering how to have a decent balance, we are debating the old philosopher-king, and Big Brother, yet again, one more time.

If the philosopher-king knows the absolutely correct path, how does he persuade or coerce the people to do it? Perhaps the same partial answer is to have a variety of psychohistoric or politicometric systems to serve as checks and balances on each other. But then they still need enforcement!

John D. Froelich

Upper Darby, PA

I very much enjoyed reading this. I have to say that on several points, my family already reconnected to it. Yes, that means at one time we lost sight of what the American Dream was. Between the American Dream post, and a post about the Cozy Coupe on www.ProudlyMadeInAmerica.com, I now realize how important it was to get the “real” American dream back.

For many years I worked in New York City at a very well-paying job. It was a great job, but it required me to put in eleven- to twelve-hour days, working when I got home, and “dialing in” on weekends. This went on for years, then one day I realized that my kids were almost grown up and I was missing a great deal of their lives.

We did have dinner together as a family, but as time went on it became harder and harder to get home in time. One day a friend of mine told me about a job about five miles from my house. I applied for the job and got it. The job was so close to home it changed an hour-and-a-half commute down to about ten minutes. In addition, it was a straight 9-to-5 job. Between the shorter commute and the regular work hours, I got back about five to six hours a day.

The downside of the job change was that my salary was cut in half. Even so, I still look at getting the new job akin to winning the lottery. I might not be able to just go out and buy that new big-screen television, but I can walk into my daughter’s room and have an hour chat about Lost, Heroes or college. Now I have the American Dream.

Michael Clay

Plainview, NY

Thanks for a great article. It raises an important question we should all ask ourselves: do our lives have to be all about money and nothing else? We've been so much in thrall of the money culture for so long that posing the question to many Americans would produce a lot of quizzical looks. Their response: of course making money is our first and foremost job. What else? The cheerleaders for the money culture have worked tirelessly to convince us of this. Our attention is directed to the daily moves in the stock market, the periodic predictions of GDP, inflation and other economic indices. When business or political leaders talk about bolstering our education system, their implied or stated assumption is that the purpose of an education is to produce effective workers. What about the benefits to society of an educated and thinking populace or the benefits to the individual deriving from the joy and empowerment of lifelong learning? Remember Animal House's Faber College motto: "Knowledge is Good."

When my military stint ended in the early '70s I found the corporate job offerings rather dismal. Seemed like they wanted to put all of us into little pigeonholes. Just about every job posting detailed a list of highly specific requirements, among which was usually the requirement that the applicant have a degree in a specified major. Thus an 18-year-old must decide what he wants to do for the rest of his life. To make a switch later in life is possible, but not easy and may involve an economic sacrifice. Worse yet is the perception that the company owns its employees. If you want the offered promotion, it often involves a move to a distant city. This may happen every few years. Uproot the family. The kids leave their friends behind. No chance to get involved in the community or develop a long-lasting circle of friends. And since one serves at the pleasure of the corporate command and control structure, one is always vulnerable, not in full command of his destiny.

I had thought that among the things to come out of the '60s protest years would be a movement, along the lines you suggest, to empower workers and induce industry and government to listen to the people. Unfortunately, after the protest generation graduated and entered the job market, the corporate world stepped back in to take firm control and has held it up to the present time. Maybe this time we can make it happen.

One aspect of the free market that deserves more attention is the fact that for decades there has been a worldwide shortage of demand. Try as we may, we have the greatest difficulty in attempting to consume all we produce. Even if we shower consumers with credit, at some point they have to take a breather. We have enough stuff. We don't need more stuff. Rather than more riches, what we need, as you so eloquently point out, is a richer life. We have it within our ability to achieve this. Economically advanced nations have long since solved the ancient survival problem. Time to move to the next phase: creation of a community in which we rise to a fuller enjoyment of the real treasures life offers, dropping the idiotic assumption that mankind's highest calling is to toil incessantly to produce yet more goods for an already bloated marketplace.

Dennis Frisch

Ignacio, CO

I have to admit, the calming effect of Mr. Grieder's prose almost leads me to wish and hope for the next coming of the Great "Somnolent" Society.

If you ignored the meaning of the content, it led to memories of the quiet moments in the ward of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

I have worked for three start-up (small) companies and two Fortune 500 companies. The daily competition, the drive, the problem-solving is what much of humanity is about.

The day that Mr. Grieder's world comes, when there are no more problems to solve and we can all hang around discovering ourselves, will be the day humanity wanes into oblivion.

Tom Lewellen

Scottsdale, AZ

The economic crisis that started making headlines in September of 2008 has shaken many Americans from their short-sighted focus on material gain. Time-outs from our ceaseless rounds of financial improvement help us to think large. They give us a chance to ask what we really want from the economic engine that powers our society.

A widely voiced perspective on the current recession is that if it is long and deep enough it may bring us to our collective senses. At some point, the reasoning goes, the pain will cause us to cease being the greedy, indifferent creatures that we are now. We will become socially and ecologically responsible citizens who place the acquisition of wealth in the context of greater and more spiritual goods.

Thomas L. Friedman, author and columnist at the New York Times, is one of the writers who takes this perspective. Arguing in his column for January 20, 2009, that "a crisis is a terrible thing to waste," Friedman pleads for "radical departures from business as usual." "We need to write some new history," he says, and look for values in this history that "will reboot, revive and reinvigorate America." It is impossible "to exaggerate how much our future depends on a radical departure from our present." Two months later (March 7, 2009) he speculates: "What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it's telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall--when Mother Nature and the market both said: 'No more.'"

William Greider, in the first chapter of his new book Come Home, America, also call for a "new vision" and "a promising story of the future" in which we renounce the pursuit of material wealth in favor of "the right to live life more fully and engage more expansively the elemental possibilities of human existence."

But is it likely that the current recession will have this "reboot" effect? Is the redefinition of American goals any nearer now than it was a year ago?

The sentiments voiced by analysts such as Friedman and Greider are part of a values shift that occurs in the transitions between Signature Generation (SigGen) cycles. I have described these transitions in my recent book,The Next Generation Gap. Comparison with earlier SigGen cycles suggests that this current malaise will not lead to fundamental social change--at least not in the way that proponents of the "happy recession" theory intend. The capstone generation of every SigGen cycle experiences a system-wide economic downturn in the years that precede the rise of a new SigGen. The generations in power hear the voices of "beats," solitary prophets forecasting the imminent crash of the ship of state. In the end, though, these prophets go unheard, the economy heals, and Americans return with relief to the boring assumptions that have determined social directions in previous decades. This happened in the late fifties, just before our own Signature Generation came on the scene, and I believe it is happening again now, in the late twenty-oughts. The exit from the current recession will not be marked by the emergence of a new social visions among the broad American middle class. It will be accompanied by deep sighs of relief as we return to the getting and spending that is our usual business.

The assumptions that steer our ship of state can change, of course, and they have changed several times over the last two and a half centuries of American history. But they cannot be changed from the top down. Real shifts in social values, we learn from the history of SigGen cycles, begin in tight revolutionary circles that form countercultural enclaves. Bold rebels construct value systems that oppose the larger cultural drift. Young people who are willing to fight and die for these values eventually find support from members of the larger society. Just before they make their move on the powers that be, the paradigm supported by the older set of values cracks and collapses. All of this, though, lies in the future. First we must welcome (if that's the word) a new Signature Generation into our social mix. If the historical patterns hold, the wreck of our own cycle, the apocalyptic end of our current postmodern assumptions, won't happen for at least another ten to fifteen years.

Like Friedman and Greider, I also wish this was the time when Americans came to their senses and changed their wasteful ways. But I can't bring myself to believe it. The new government, from President Obama all the way down to the most junior Representative, is working flat out to restore the country to its status quo ante. Salvation is couched in terms of stabilization of the banking system, the reduction of unemployment and the renewal of consumer spending. Moves that would be truly revolutionary--altering America's dependence on imports, reducing our impact on natural systems, joining the council of world opinion, curbing the export of arms--aren't on the docket.

The revolution has been postponed. Check back later.

Kem Luther

Victoria, BC, Canada

1. "Every American ought to have the job they want and receive a "livable" wage."

2. "right to own their own work"

3. Establish the "social corporation"

It appears to me that you have penned a new socialist manifesto that establishes a lot of rights and perogatives without any responsibilities or accountablities.

Brian Marks

Richardson (Dallas) , TX

I agree with Greider's basic thrust. For some years now I have been advocating the idea of building new towns outside our existing metropolitan areas in which people would be employed essentially half-time (eighteen to twenty-four hours a week) and in their free time would build their own houses, cultivate gardens, cook and eat at home, and care for their own children and old people instead of putting them in daycare and nursing homes. There's an article about it here and a whole book about it here.

Comments are welcome.

Luke Lea

Chattanooga, TN

Mr. Greider writes in soaring generalities that mask his real intent. For example, he writes: "What's needed in American life is a redefinition of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' " The premise of this statement is that there is some "definition" of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in American life, but there is no such thing. Definition is an act of speaking, and in America we have, as he admits, robust freedom of speech. Ergo, Americans are free to define that phrase how they wish.

The real thrust of his statement is he wants the "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" to be "redefined" to mirror his own personal tastes. Like most people on the left, he wants to control his fellow citizens' tastes and preferences. He is simply a social engineer with little regard for true liberty. Thus he writes: "What government can do is construct the rules, legal premises and supportive platform that enable people to pursue social transformation more aggressively." As that sentence shows, he is not trying to expand people's liberty to choose; he simply wants to "construct rules"--like an engineer--to "transform" what "people" can choose, so that the set of available choices more closely mirrors his personal tastes and preferences.

Mark Thompson

New York, NY