By Nancy Gibbs
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1891527,00.html
Now we’re stripping down and starting over. A platoon of TIME reporters and pollsters fanned out to every corner of the country to measure — anecdotally and empirically — what’s changed in the way we set our priorities and spend our money since the Great Recession began. Most people think the pain will be lasting and the effects permanent: only 12% expect economic recovery to begin within six months, half believe it will be another year or two, and 14% believe we are at the start of a long-term decline. (See TIME’s special report on how Americans have adjusted to the recession.)
Our institutions watch for economic vital signs. But maybe, for individuals, the sickness is what came before — the hallucination that debt would never need to be repaid, that values only rise, that bubbles never burst. When the markets collapsed, that fever broke. In our assumptions and attitudes and expectations, the recovery is already well under way.
Talk to people not just about how they feel but about how they’re living now, and you hear more resolve than regret. Nearly half say their economic status declined this year, and 57% now think the American Dream is harder to achieve. And yet pain and promise are a package deal; even after all this, fully 56% believe that America’s best days are ahead. It would be nice if it took something short of a heart attack to get us to work out, eat better and spend more time with our kids. But in the end, where we wind up matters more than how we got there.
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