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Americans' unhappy birthday: 'Too much wrong'

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-07-06 11:16

"There are so many things you have to do to survive now," says Larue Lawson of Forest Park, Ill. "It used to be just clothes on your back, food on the table and a roof over your head. Now, it's everything.

"I wish it was just simpler."

Lawson, mind you, is all of 16 years old.

Then there's this from Sherry White in Orlando, Fla., who has a half-century in years and experience on the teenager:

"There is a sense of helplessness everywhere you look. It's like you're stuck in one spot, and you can't do anything about it."

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In 1931, when the historian James Truslow Adams coined the phrase "The American Dream," he wrote of "a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement."

In 2008, using history as a yardstick, life actually is better and richer and fuller, with more opportunities than ever before.

"Objectively things are going real well," says author Gregg Easterbrook, who discusses the disconnect in his book "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse."

He ticks off supporting statistics: A relatively low unemployment rate, 5.5 percent in June. (Employers did, indeed, cut payrolls last month by 62,000 jobs, but consider the 10.1 rate of June 1983 or the 7.8 rate of June 1992.) Declining rates of violent crimes, property crimes and big-city murders. Declining rates of disease. Higher standards of living for the middle class and the working poor. And incomes that, for many, are rising above the rate of inflation.

So why has the pursuit of happiness -- a fundamental right, the Declaration of Independence assures us -- become such a challenging undertaking?

Some of the gloom and doom may simply reflect a society that demands more and expects to have it yesterday, but in many cases there's nothing imaginary about the problems.

Just listen to farmer Ricardo Vallot, who is clinging tight to his livelihood.

Vallot expects to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on diesel fuel to plant and harvest his family's sugar cane crop in Vermilion Parish, La. His two combines burn up to 150 gallons a day, and with diesel running an average of $4.68 a gallon in the region, he sees his profits burning away, too.

"My God, it's horrible, it really is," the 33-year-old says, adding: "If diesel goes north of five, it will be really difficult at the price we're getting to stay in farming."

Stay-at-home-mom Heather Hammack grapples with tough decisions daily about how to spend her family's dwindling income in the face of rising food costs. One day, she priced strawberries at $1.75. The next day, they were $2.28.

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