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.
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."
What's new about the new economy is that it's scary all the time, not just in cycles. Globalization, for example, may be essential and inevitable and highly profitable, when free-trade policies push the share of exports and imports from 17% of our economy to nearly 25% over the past 20 years. Last week GM, which has lost market share to the Japanese, produced the first right-hand-drive Cadillac to be sold in Japan. But because the market is global, there is no longer even the illusion of control, of national boundaries, and that's what really frightens people. Factories in Karachi, Pakistan, can now produce shorts as quickly and cheaply as an American company in Quitman, Ga. U.S. manufacturers have hooked up computerized counters to sewing machines so they can monitor how quickly each seamstress joins two pieces of fabric. Not only does that give instant feedback on productivity, but the new, networked plant also cuts down on the number of supervisors on the cutting-room floor.