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The world as we knew it has changed forever, and the American Century looks to conclude with a huge party, a cancan line of irrepressible bankers and impossibly rich computer nerds dancing on the grave of the business cycle, while politicians of all kinds sing the praises of a new economy that might let them be re-elected forever and ever, as long as people keep voting their pocketbook. So now what?
In real life, the big, bright, global, wired economy means that offices in Washington that once skimped on holiday decorations have hired a singing harpist for the lobby. There are 50 kinds of mustard at the supermarket, and at the Tops in Buffalo, N.Y., sales of shiitake mushrooms have doubled this year. Clinique is marketing a perfume called Happy, and Levi Strauss sells custom-fit riveted jeans based on customers' computer-detailed specifications. The youngest donors ever to endow a chair at Stanford are the founders of Internet browser Yahoo!--even the chair comes with an exclamation point.
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ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME BY VICTOR JUHASZ
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All of which begs the question, If we are so rich, how come we're not happy? The marketers and sociologists whose job it is to measure consumer fears and lusts find that people are still wary of this crunchy economy. If there is such a thing as a national mood, it contradicts itself so much that even the pollsters are confused. "The country is just euphoric," says g.o.p. pollster Robert Teeter; his latest figures show that 78% of Americans are not worried about their job security. "There is not a lot of euphoria out there," says Tom Smith of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, whose survey finds that job satisfaction, financial satisfaction and overall happiness are all lower now than the average for the past 20 years.
But Americans don't listen to pollsters and economists. They listen to neighbors, to friends, to family; they look at their own situation and say yes, we have a little more money, but new cars are expensive, and while microwaves may be cheaper, the utility bill hasn't gone down. "Even those who say they're doing O.K. now think that other people are losing ground," says Susan Mitchell, author of The Official Guide to American Attitudes. "They all know people who were laid off. Even if it was distant cousin Billy Bob, just knowing someone who was laid off shakes your faith."
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