Americans! Stop It!

This post at Crooks & Liars makes the very important point that our society has become increasingly stratified; the rich have been getting richer and the rest of the country has been getting poorer. That's not exactly news, but it's so foreign to our notion of how things are supposed to work in America, that we tend to ignore it, even though it's been happening in plain site.

And, yet, as most Americans have lost ground (it now takes two incomes for most families to live not-as-well as most families used to live on one salary), they've also been subjected to increased advertising and cultural pressure to spend more. Drive an SUV! Live in a McMansion! With several large-screen, high-definition, plasma gel screen TVs! Get Lasik! Vacation twice a year! Replace your year-old cell phone!

And how have people been able to spend so much more while losing ground financially?
Americans [have been] cashing out the equity in their homes to keep consumer spending up. In other words, the "new economy" is based on people slowly losing home ownership, not gaining it. Yup. Americans sold their homes and used the money to buy stuff. Mostly, stuff made overseas.

It sucks.

You can't change the economy. You can change the extent to which you will allow yourself to be duped by it into acquiring stuff that you don't need at the expense of your own financial future.