In media land it is Hooverville. with falling stock prices, falling classified revenues, and "reorganization" after "reorganization" (shoving some in the water to keep room on the part of the deck that is still dry), it isn't any wonder that they are obsessed with gloom.

To maintain the illusion that there aren't serious problems, one must embrace falsity that "perception is reality."

The 84% and the 70% may both be right, and wrong, in part.

Polls like this are only meaningful in illustrating just how absurd they are.

Bruno:

there's nothing wrong with being a media dupe, but advertising the fact is unwise.

I would argue that saying

Everyone in George W. Bush's America is doing rather well

is at least as much evidence of being "duped" than some one "who can never be satisfied with "how things are going."

To the extent that I qualify as "never satisfied," it is only due to my belief that things can get better, and that we should make things better more quickly.

I'm one of those 84% who knows that things are going fine for me, while concurrently thinking that - at least with respects to many socio-political trends - things are going in the wrong direction.

If, in fact, the intellectually and morally flabby doped white mice of American Suburbia are proven right in their belief that "everything is A-OK in their little "Shires", it is only because better, more vigilant people did all the heavy lifting for them.

This view may appear unreasonable, but The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

It's easy to say "things are going in the wrong direction," Bruno. But what specifics do you have?

Productivity is up, unemployment is down. Taxes are moderate (unless you live in one of the megalopolises - sp?). GDP outstrips the trade deficit and the low dollar actually helps international economies.

The surge in Iraq is working. Al-Qaida and the Taliban are shells of their former selves.

I don't see wrong direction here anywhere.

Bartman,

Excellent individual points, most of which I agree with.

I could list various economic data associated with debt and the ability to pay it, but most here would point to the increasingly shaky "aggregate net worth" figure OJ is so fond of posting, and keep whistling.

I could also easily debate your view of the low dollar and inflation, of which the "core" data version is complete nonsense. There ARE some benefits to a low dollar, but pretending there are no downsides when the price of everything we truly need (energy, housing, food, transport) is rising rapidly, doesn't make much sense.

Another source of concern is the looming bankruptcy of state and local pensions, which have been looted by the political class with underfunding and overpromising, all tied to future streams of taxes that no one could possibly levy.

But my biggest worry isn't economics. It is the moral and intellectual (knowledge base) hollowing out that I see around me.

To be sure, there are positive trends in these areas, but I'm concerned about the negative ones.

Nearly everything in America is becoming a scam, from your cell phone contract to your mortgage, to your 'mortgage bailout legislation'.

We pay billions for fixing NOLA levies and disaster hand-outs, but they money goes to a waste and fraud. We pay for bridges to nowhere, but can't keep existing ones from collapsing, we pay through the nose for an 'educated populace,' but get a class of overfunded pension pigs and a dumbed-down generation of slackers.

OK, maybe those are only examples of outliers to you. Perhaps your parochial experience and aggregated data dumps are such that I seem shrill.

Fair enough. I'll take my chances, and (as always) would be happy to be wrong.

"If, in fact, the intellectually and morally flabby doped white mice of American Suburbia are proven right in their belief that "everything is A-OK in their little "Shires", it is only because better, more vigilant people did all the heavy lifting for them."

Bruno, if your goal is to convince folks that your plan is a better plan for handling education (which is your big issue), don't you think you should lay off comments like that? That speaks of scolding, of shaming, of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Especially when the most those suburban taxpayers did to earn any enmity is better their lives by moving to Des Plaines or Downers Grove.

And speaking of "mortgage scams," I wonder what Bruno would think of folks who tried to get their 160 acres of "prime South Dakota land" FREE after they financed their own 5 years worth of improvements. Only to abandon that 160 acres and whatever "improvements" were made at the first exposure to a harsh South Dakota plains winter.
Something along the lines of 20% of the initial settlers abandoned that land before the 5 years was even up.

It was the Homestead Act, Bruno. No other "misguided" example of expanding the Ownership Society on that scale has been tried before or since.

you're inching towards an insight, bruno

we pay billions and have tens of trillions left.

you're hysteria seems in large part a function of innumeracy. lots of zeroes do not a crisis make.

Why is this so hard to figure out?

Yes, I am satisfied with how things are going for me personally--more than satisfied: cars, guns, boats, loose shoes, warm place to. . ., you get the idea.

I simultaneously believe the country is headed in the wrong direction: perverts, baby-murderers, unburned witches, peace-creeps, jungle noises for "music," debased language, baseball caps on crooked.

Asking that absurd question about the direction the country is headed is a transparent ploy to exaggerate the degree of BDS. I'm not happy about the wimped-out botched occupation of the former Iraq, either, but that doesn't mean I'm having a Saddam memorial celebration like the Palestinians.

Except that all those pathologies have reversed over the last thirty years. You lot are just upset that everyone isn't just like you. It's the elevation of self over common sense.