Only Yesterday
by Michael Schaffer
DECEMBER 4, 2008 TAGS:
In 1931, two years after the great stock market crash and around the time Americans were realizing the economic troubles weren’t just another cyclical downturn, the historian Frederick Lewis Allen released a surprising hit: Only Yesterday, a history of the dance crazes, speculative bubbles, technological innovations, social changes, and political gyrations of the prosperous age that so spectacularly ended on Oct. 29, 1929. The book was an unlikely candidate for the Depression decade’s bestseller list. After all, American culture had emphatically turned against the supposedly superficial tastes and trends of the Roaring Twenties. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s dandies were out; John Steinbeck’s everymen were in. Yet Allen’s opus, produced at lightning pace, sold 500,000 copies between its release and his death a quarter-century later; it’s still in print, a college curriculum staple.
Why would Depression-mired Americans shell out for a book that promised to trace the rise in flappers’ hemlines or the origins of pop frivolities like “Yes, We Have No Bananas?” Scholars today call Allen’s book an early masterpiece of social history, praising its jargon-free language and broad range of sources. But after another brutal financial autumn, and intimations of another golden age permanently ended, I can imagine another motivation for embracing his dispatches from a world that suddenly seemed very far away: mourning. Many Americans of the 1930s had reason to wonder if they’d ever again have it so good. And many feel the same way now, amidst a drumbeat of news about depleted 401(k) accounts, vanished home equity, and upended certainties about a prosperous retirement. There’s no Only Yesterday to eulogize the departed world — not yet, at least — but plenty of people are stopping to consider what has gone away.
For most people who weren’t counting on a paycheck from Lehman Brothers, the central drama of the 2008 collapse has been the more personal matter of their retirement savings and their property value. Unfortunately, those two things constitute the bulk of most families’ net worth. That’s especially true for baby boomers who played by the rules, doing what financial advisors suggested while planning for a retirement that is fast approaching: investing the 401(k) to grow over time; buying property to build up equity with every monthly payment. Today, that wisely diversified 401(k) has fallen by a third and the 75 percent of that house that a 55-year-old boomer might own has shrunk by a similar figure. And with it, the prospect of a non-penurious old age, the basic reward for a life of hard work and the major reform enacted during the years Allen’s book rode the bestseller list, suddenly seems embattled. So much for all those ideas of affluent freedom, all those TV ads featuring Harley-riding healthy seniors, after leaving the 9-to-5 behind. That rug has been yanked away. But how to say farewell?
For a lot of people, the answer has involved no shortage of panic and blame. Like accounts of machine-gun rampages, media accounts of financial turmoil now often feature a psychologist offering coping advice to a panicked public. The American Psychological Association’s annual stress report, in June, called money the number-one fear. By September, after the crisis, calls to hotlines were up. Reporting on the stress captured a wistful tone, a farewell to something that had seemed certain. “I'll probably be working for the rest of my life," one woman told the Washington Post. "Some golden years."
On a society-wide level, the year’s vibe also involves having to wrap our minds around a future where we’ll just have less — less money, less power, less flexibility. I’ve been struck by how much of the advice from pundits to the new president-elect boils down to that concept. Will a government with annual deficits headed towards $1 trillion be able to rescue floundering corporate titans, and their millions of employees, at home? Will it be able to do the same for troubled allies, and their millions of citizens, abroad? At the very least, it will involve an element of the back-of-the-envelope cost calculations we didn’t undertake before, say, Bill Clinton intervened to stop Serbian genocide in Kosovo. But of course Clinton led a true superpower, the sort that had the economy to go with its armaments. A central facet of American life in the coming decade will be accepting the demise of that status.
That we might not be such a country anymore creates a kind of vertiginous feeling, like stepping out a window in your childhood home only to realize that the balcony that’s been there all your life is gone. The feeling is especially complicated for the postwar generation, the ones who, as the Port Huron statement put it, were all “bred in at least modest comfort” in the “wealthiest and strongest country in the world.” The statement went on to question the many places that country wasn’t living up to its values. And those questions defined the politics of that generation, both for the left-wing Students for a Democratic Society members who wrote the statement in the 1960s, but also for the right-wing Christian fundamentalists who exerted their own muscular influence on politics a couple of decades later. Neither side, though, spent a great deal of time contemplating a future where the wealth and the strength themselves were threatened. Getting used to that involves the same cycles of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance as getting used to a death.
Will that also drive us back into nostalgia for the world that seemed until this fall to be unremarkable and ordinary? We’re not quite there yet. Just picking up a glossy magazine from last spring — all those ads featuring smart-looking financial planner types advocating some stable-sounding family of mutual funds! — feels odd, like slipping on a shirt from a dead man’s closet. But my initial consumer unease about exploring the pre-crisis world of Brangelina babies and fleur de sel reviews shouldn’t put off any modern day Frederick Lewis Allens. By his standards, the book wouldn’t have to land until 2010.
Why would Depression-mired Americans shell out for a book that promised to trace the rise in flappers’ hemlines or the origins of pop frivolities like “Yes, We Have No Bananas?” Scholars today call Allen’s book an early masterpiece of social history, praising its jargon-free language and broad range of sources. But after another brutal financial autumn, and intimations of another golden age permanently ended, I can imagine another motivation for embracing his dispatches from a world that suddenly seemed very far away: mourning. Many Americans of the 1930s had reason to wonder if they’d ever again have it so good. And many feel the same way now, amidst a drumbeat of news about depleted 401(k) accounts, vanished home equity, and upended certainties about a prosperous retirement. There’s no Only Yesterday to eulogize the departed world — not yet, at least — but plenty of people are stopping to consider what has gone away.For most people who weren’t counting on a paycheck from Lehman Brothers, the central drama of the 2008 collapse has been the more personal matter of their retirement savings and their property value. Unfortunately, those two things constitute the bulk of most families’ net worth. That’s especially true for baby boomers who played by the rules, doing what financial advisors suggested while planning for a retirement that is fast approaching: investing the 401(k) to grow over time; buying property to build up equity with every monthly payment. Today, that wisely diversified 401(k) has fallen by a third and the 75 percent of that house that a 55-year-old boomer might own has shrunk by a similar figure. And with it, the prospect of a non-penurious old age, the basic reward for a life of hard work and the major reform enacted during the years Allen’s book rode the bestseller list, suddenly seems embattled. So much for all those ideas of affluent freedom, all those TV ads featuring Harley-riding healthy seniors, after leaving the 9-to-5 behind. That rug has been yanked away. But how to say farewell?
For a lot of people, the answer has involved no shortage of panic and blame. Like accounts of machine-gun rampages, media accounts of financial turmoil now often feature a psychologist offering coping advice to a panicked public. The American Psychological Association’s annual stress report, in June, called money the number-one fear. By September, after the crisis, calls to hotlines were up. Reporting on the stress captured a wistful tone, a farewell to something that had seemed certain. “I'll probably be working for the rest of my life," one woman told the Washington Post. "Some golden years."
On a society-wide level, the year’s vibe also involves having to wrap our minds around a future where we’ll just have less — less money, less power, less flexibility. I’ve been struck by how much of the advice from pundits to the new president-elect boils down to that concept. Will a government with annual deficits headed towards $1 trillion be able to rescue floundering corporate titans, and their millions of employees, at home? Will it be able to do the same for troubled allies, and their millions of citizens, abroad? At the very least, it will involve an element of the back-of-the-envelope cost calculations we didn’t undertake before, say, Bill Clinton intervened to stop Serbian genocide in Kosovo. But of course Clinton led a true superpower, the sort that had the economy to go with its armaments. A central facet of American life in the coming decade will be accepting the demise of that status.
That we might not be such a country anymore creates a kind of vertiginous feeling, like stepping out a window in your childhood home only to realize that the balcony that’s been there all your life is gone. The feeling is especially complicated for the postwar generation, the ones who, as the Port Huron statement put it, were all “bred in at least modest comfort” in the “wealthiest and strongest country in the world.” The statement went on to question the many places that country wasn’t living up to its values. And those questions defined the politics of that generation, both for the left-wing Students for a Democratic Society members who wrote the statement in the 1960s, but also for the right-wing Christian fundamentalists who exerted their own muscular influence on politics a couple of decades later. Neither side, though, spent a great deal of time contemplating a future where the wealth and the strength themselves were threatened. Getting used to that involves the same cycles of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance as getting used to a death.Will that also drive us back into nostalgia for the world that seemed until this fall to be unremarkable and ordinary? We’re not quite there yet. Just picking up a glossy magazine from last spring — all those ads featuring smart-looking financial planner types advocating some stable-sounding family of mutual funds! — feels odd, like slipping on a shirt from a dead man’s closet. But my initial consumer unease about exploring the pre-crisis world of Brangelina babies and fleur de sel reviews shouldn’t put off any modern day Frederick Lewis Allens. By his standards, the book wouldn’t have to land until 2010.
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COMMENTS (4) TO ADD A COMMENT, PLEASE FIRST SIGN IN OR REGISTER.
Claire Ducker wrote on March 4, 2009 4:12pm
The baby boomers did not "play by the "rules," unless we mean the rules of fantasy, which, by definition, are not rules at all. They messed around a lot, married late, divorced frequently, lived on credit, and relied on the Social Security and Medicare pyramid schemes as the foundation for their early retirements. The IRAs and 401(k)s were to enable them to live in the style to which they had accustomed themselves. They bought houses they could barely afford, relying on their projected increase in value (fantasy) to make them economical or profitable over time. I think that baby boomers have generally been self-absorbed, frivolous, extravagant, and intemperate. They rejected traditional morality, religion, and old-fashioned notions, like maturity, thrift, and moderation and substituted a kind of childish magical thinking that leaves them ill-equipped to deal with the consequences of bad luck and bad policy which we now face. [Report Comment]
Thomas Hutcheson wrote on December 6, 2008 4:47pm
Yes we lost a lot, but the basic problem is to have figured on retiring at 65 -- a 1930's idea. Lifespans and health have increased and so can years of work. Who wants to be "retired" from 65 to 95? [Report Comment]
Tim Cavanaugh wrote on December 6, 2008 3:20pm
"Unfortunately, those two things constitute the bulk of most families’ net worth..." If you have been investing for retirement since 1988, you have seen the market expand at such rates that, even factoring in all the declines and stagnation of the post-1999 era, it is now four times the size it was when you began investing. If you were dollar-cost averaging all that time, your retirement savings should be substantial. And that's only the last twenty years. If you've been investing for your retirement since 1968 -- i.e., if you are now retiring at about what President Fiscal Deity Roosevelt judged to be the proper retirement age, you have seen the stock market grow eightfold. If you figured out how to lose money throughout that period, you are a genius and should get yourself a teaching post at the Wharton School. The same, only more so, goes for your house. Real estate is a much less national affair, and thus less easily subject to glib punditry, but in many regions of the country houses and lots both cost about twice what they did even ten years ago. That means a 7% return at least per year, and again, that is factoring in the steep but not catastrophic declines of the last two years. (And yet again, if you're retiring today, isn't it probable that you bought your house much longer ago and thus have enjoyed even greater appreciation?) As it happens, Mr. Schaffer even got the year wrong. The recession began in late 2007, so by his timeline the contemporary counterpart book should be coming out in 2009, not 2010. As it happens, though, our Fanfare for a Forgotten Half-Decade actually came out back in 2001. It's called The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. I'd recommend it, but I think some strenuous readings in economics should come first. [Report Comment]
Al Bunn wrote on December 6, 2008 1:42pm
Well, most economies are hit so if the Yanks get poor and most developped countries do so as well, everybody will be in the same boat. Objectively poorer, but less so subjectively. Good old American envy, keeping-up-with-the-Jones variety, might even recede... [Report Comment]
