Generation Recession

The main thrust of the argument in the "Generation Recession", a feature article in Newsweek, saying that a generation coming of age in recent years is likely to remain forever haunted by the recession in their financial choices may be a bit overblown, considering the extent of the downturn hasn't been as devastating as it'd been previously anticipated, but there are some other inspiring ideas in it worth concentrating on.

For example, as an apt illustration for how the Great Depression shaped perceptions of the entire generation of American consumers, the author retells a story of one elderly lady brought up in the period of harsh economic conditions who has never lost her habit of reusing a teabag until there are last drops of intensity in it. As opposed to baby boomers, whose growing up in post-war prosperity let them embrace lifetime optimism and have no pangs of conscience about spending beyond their means, the post-depression generation has continued to hold a bleak outlook on their financial future. This resulted in much more principled consumer choices and a strong resistance to risky bank products which were promising bombastic returns but were too intricate to understand. Is the newest generation likely to downscale on their lifestyle in a bid to reallign it with their resources? I don't see it coming.

There's another side to the Newsweek article which kind of made me reminisce on how keen I was as a teenager to follow the gospel of American newsmagazines. As a dedicated reader, who actually used Time and Newsweek to learn English, first at extraordinary effort, speding a month or so to merticulouly translate each and every word in a single issue, I was seduced by their unrelenting spirit of enthusiasm and looking forward, rather than backwards. In lots of ways, these two magazines, on top of contributing to my language skills, managed to impart in me the kind of drive typical for Americans and I relied on it for most of my secondary school and beyond. Indeed, this regular dose of idealism and inspiration might well have played a role in saving me from the impact the dreary 1990s had on a generation of teenagers in Poland, with its dejected public discourse at the time, and in propelling me to major in English.

I detect plenty of this American spirit in Newsweek's article as it focuses on trying to set the US apart from the Old Continent, with its "European notion that success is more about luck than effort", so taking it easy in life or falling back on state support is as good as working hard towards your ambitions, and trying to bring home the collateral damage from social ills like unemployment or reliance on benefits. Even though the conclusions might sound alarming, in the end this is the sort of alarm and the sort of concern which runs an undercurrent of motivation, rather than resignation.

Waxing sentimental about the American newsmagazines in the 1990s, I shouldn't overlook, though, the fact that much of that energy has sapped from me in recent years, somehow. This random article I had a chance to browse through in passing in a bookshop near my workplace has revived bits of this feeling and nudged me towards rediscovering it. Where has it gone?