WASHINGTON: When it comes to economic prosperity, almost two-thirds of Americans say their own lives are better today than those of their family members in the 1950s.
Yet beneath this picture of economic well-being and national accomplishment, there is a parallel story not nearly so triumphant. Most Americans do not see life in the United States overall as any better at the close of the century than it was in the 1950s. A substantial minority — three-in-ten people — say it’s even worse.
They also believe the country is suffering a moral breakdown, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center. More than half of today’s young people polled said they hold different values than the Woodstock generation.
All those surveyed said the generations differed on four core values: work ethic, moral values, respect for others and tolerance of different races and other groups; with 68 percent of respondents under 30 agreeing with that statement.
About 80 percent of those surveyed said youths and older adults hold different moral values. Seventy-eight percent also said young people and older adults differ in showing respect to other people.
Significantly, today’s teenagers are one of two groups that the public sees as worse off than their peers of 50 years ago.
Those who rate life in the US. as worse mention factors such as crime, family breakdown, lack of respect, and drugs as the causes for the decline.
And while new technologies — the space program, computers, medical breakthroughs — are seen as America’s greatest achievements of the past 100 years; its moral decline is prominent on the list of failures, including the greater acceptance of divorce and legalized abortion.
Even the minority who rate their own lives as worse blame moral breakdown for their problems as often as they do economic woes.
A majority of the public overall sees teenagers as worse off now than their counterparts were in previous generations.
Despite today’s political cynicism, Americans are near unanimous in crediting the system for the country’s accomplishments. Indeed, more than eight-in-ten people say the Constitution, free elections and the free market are the reasons for the nation’s success.
The country’s natural resources and its human resources — the cultural diversity and character of the American people — are also acknowledged as keys to US success.
The space program is cited as the country’s single greatest achievement of the century, and inventions as old as the radio and as recent as the Internet are heartily endorsed as changes for the better. Just about the only scientific innovations not heralded by majorities of the public are nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.
Just slim pluralities endorse the advent of Prozac, Viagra and fertility drugs as changes for the better, and almost half (49%) of Americans see the cloning of sheep as a change for the worse.
Looking back over important events of the century, John F. Kennedy’s assassination is the single most powerful memory. Nine-in-ten Americans who are old enough to remember say they know exactly what they were doing when they heard the news of the 35th president’s murder. The only other events to come close are the attack on Pearl Harbor and those that occurred in the late 1990s.
Americans reflect on the various decades of the 20th century in cultural terms. With the exceptions of the Great Depression in the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s, Americans use cultural references to define the decades, coming up with words like roaring and flappers for the 1920s, happy and rock and roll for the 1950s, hippies and turmoil for the 1960s, disco and drugs for the 1970s, fun and greed for the 1980s, and high-tech and fast-paced for the 1990s.
