Between the Rock and the Hard Place:

Times are hard, so if you're like me, you've cut back on spending. Buying gas just to get to work and paying the heating bill this winter are terrifying prospects. (I paid $3.35 per gallon to fill the car's tank this evening. Who'd a thunk that'd seem cheep? The price per barrel of oil dropped below $90 today, which ought to make a gallon of gasoline cost less than $3.00 per gallon.)

Once upon a time, America was a producer nation, but sometime in the 1960s we began to move toward becoming a consumer nation. Buying stuff fuels our economy along with many of the economies in the rest of the world. It's supposed to be our job to buy stuff (and services) and then junk the stuff as soon as possible.

For a while in the 1990s, we were told that we were an "information society," but that was misleading. What we really did was consume. And then the inevitability happened.

Now regular folks all over the country are cutting back on consumption, and the little engine that could is running out of steam at both ends. (See The New York Times story.)