I'm Ok but You're Not?

When Harris Interactive recently asked people in the USA how they were doing, 76% said that things were going in the right direction for them. But when asked about how things were in their state it fell to only 44% and to 23% when asked about things in the country.

I’ve become more convinced that we’ve become a country of worriers. Last year 2/3 of Americans thought we were in a recession, when in fact, all of the economic data from this past year clearly showed that we were not.

We scared ourselves to death in the 70s when we thought that OPEC was going to rule the world, in the 80s when the Japanese were going to buy up all of California (Do you remember when the land under the Imperial Palace was worth more than ALL of California?), in the 90s with the “giant sucking sound to Mexico” and today with offshoring.

My guess is that we’ll find something new to worry about in five years. Meanwhile, we’ll have added several million new jobs, the economy will continue to grow, we’ll be doing even better than we were in 2008 but we’ll continue to think we are going off the cliff.