The Great Recession has had devastating impacts on every part of every community in the country – individuals and families with nest eggs severely depleted or disappeared often along with their jobs, businesses treading water, governments caught between the greater demand for services and fewer resources to provide them.  Recovery will be protracted, and may potentially take a decade.

In any and every sense, the Great Recession has been a disaster.  But we will recover – we are already seeing communities that are using the Great Recession as an opportunity to look at themselves with a new perspective and to do things better than before.  We are also seeing the classic dichotomy of views about what “recovery” should look like – some want to rebuild the economy the way it was; others want to build a new and more resilient economy.

If we could describe our pre-Recession economy in one word, it would be “consumption.”  We as individuals piled up debt to buy things we couldn’t afford, and might not have needed.  Government encouraged (and in some cases coerced) financial institutions to make risky loans.  Speculators packaged those loans into even riskier investments, offering outlandish rates of return.  We were living off of our futures, while ignoring the lesson of the past that the future is never certain.

It is clear that the American people have recognized that the economic model of the recent past is not very viable, and certainly not resilient.  Instead of spending, most of the almost 90% of us who are working are saving more than ever.  Individual savings are at a level not seen in decades.  Clearly, those who want to go back to a consumer-driven economy are likely to be disappointed.  This begs the question, what might a more resilient economy look like?

I’m sure there are several possible alternatives.  One that I can envision is what I call a “value-driven” economy.  In a value-driven economy, economic decisions are made on the basis of overall value at each step of the economic chain.  Individuals and families would make their purchasing decisions balancing protection from future contingencies against the value of the goods or services to be purchased.  Thus, we would see a return to saving for a house or a car, and a lessening of future debt.  Instead of spending so much on health care, individuals and families might spend more on health – eating better, getting outside more, spending more time together (Somehow in the debate about health insurance all sides seem to have lost sight of the fact that Americans rank somewhere in the 25-30 range in terms of almost all health measures – when we don’t rank even worse!).

Businesses would recognize that employees are not interchangeable parts, but significant assets to be nurtured (Loyalty might even make a comeback!).  Businesses would recognize that we live in a time of almost frenetic technological change, but that success in business is built more on relationships than technology.

Government and business would forge a new relationship.  In times like these, government would not try to create jobs (at $240K per job!), but would help businesses – especially small businesses – create many more and better ones.  Government would not champion energy measures that actually add to our already bloated energy budget (e.g., carbon capture), but would encourage and reward efficiencies that reduce that budget. Communities would balance incentives to attract new businesses against actions to nurture the ones they already have.  Communities would also recognize that the natural environment is just as important to the community as the built environment.  And most importantly, communities would encourage and help individuals and families to be as self-reliant in the face of disaster – of any type – as possible.

 An unrealistic pipe dream?  Perhaps.  But clearly the old model didn’t work – this one just might.