Time has labeled the 00s as the Decade from Hell. And, for the U.S. on a macro level, that’s pretty accurate. As the article points out, the economy was book-ended by recessions, we inflicted that god awful 2000 election upon ourselves, we lost the World Trade Center and 3,000 lives on 9/11/01, Katrina mostly destroyed New Orleans, we invaded Iraq for no good reason, and our economy continued to rearrange itself in less than pleasant ways – housing bubble burst, some enormous Ponzi schemes, and general high level looting. It was bad enough that Anthrax and Afghanistan almost became afterthoughts.
Nevertheless, I can’t help but look at how my own life has changed in the last decade and call it a win for me personally. I married well and became the father to two wonderful children. I became a partner in my small law firm. I became a home owner. I started this blog. I ran a couple of half marathons and climbed a couple of 14ers. Those are the highlights. Sure, there has been day-to-day frustration, and I’m certainly omitting any number of life’s small joys which are probably more important, ultimately, than some of the benchmarks.
So, there you have it, the aughts were generally a bad decade for America and a good decade for me. Stealing a page from Sen. Franken, maybe we should make the 10s the Masson Decade and see where that takes the country? Probably a bad idea.
Go for it! Couldn’t be any worse on a macro level than the previous decade.
It wasn’t Katrina as much as the Flood that devastated Nawlins. What should have been a rough hurricane became historical thanks to inept governance.
After a decade of so much bad policy– from both sides– and with more on the horizon, it’s difficult to be hopeful…except to point to the general resilience of people and the market. At the end of the day, it’s not about public policy and external circumstances. But it’d sure be nice if public policy did a lot less damage, especially to the most marginal in society.
Grace and peace to all in the new decade.
It seems most things can be taken like that. For most of the country, on a personal level, things are good. They may even be better than they were 10 years ago. For the ones affected more directly by losing their loved ones or losing their job, it may have been awful.
However, the number of people who have been directly affected by those things is dwarfed by the number of people who only hear about those things in the news.