Downturn's generation gap

LONDON — Recession can have its upside. Perhaps, says Merilyn Canet, it's a timely opportunity for people to rediscover the true value of things after years of abundance and heedless waste. "Real life isn't about just having everything when you want it," said Canet, 67, who grew up on a farm in south England and still grows her own fruits and vegetables. "It's sometimes about saving up and looking after things, and the joy of making pumpkin soup from your own pumpkins."

Talk to Adam Hayes, however, who is Canet's junior by 40 years, and the silver lining of lean and uncertain times is harder to see.

Two months ago, Hayes felt the chill wind blowing through the financial sector and opted for a buyout from his job as a currency trader with Citigroup, the New York-based banking giant that recently received billions in aid from Washington. He is taking classes in graphic design, which suits his creative interests. But without the plump paychecks, the ski vacations and the dinners out he enjoyed before, the future looks daunting and contrary to expectations.

"When you're my age, you're used to an ever-increasing standard of living. . . . Suddenly it goes in reverse, and it's not a nice feeling," Hayes said. "It's a real change of mentality. You actually start looking at the price of things rather than just buying them regardless. It's difficult."

After years of letting the good times roll, Britain is hunkering down for a recession that analysts predict will last at least a year. Property values have shriveled, unemployment could hit a recent-memory high of 3 million, and retailers are slashing prices in a bid to salvage what's beginning to look a lot like a bleak Christmas.

Last week, the government unveiled a $30.2-billion spending and tax-cuts package to help keep the economy afloat.

A deepening gloom has descended upon almost every segment of society. But the downturn has also pointed up a divide between those old enough to have toughed out previous slumps -- or worse -- and those for whom tales of hard times were, at least until recently, almost apocryphal.

Britain's economic nose dive has posed a bigger shock for many people in their 20s and 30s than for their elders. These are young adults whose entire working lives have been spent in the sunshine of steadily rising prosperity, a generation that believed economic growth to be perpetual and that saw penury as "principally a theme for the alternative rock songs of their adolescence," as one columnist recently put it.