The Post-Consumer Society

My wife, Catherine, says that the difference between this depression and the last one is that this time, we're entering the post-consumer society. It isn't going to get back to the way it was. There's no there there. We're zooming past mallworld, on a trajectory somewhere to a place Americans have never been before.

I agree. We can't buy enough bluetooth thingies and digital garbage cans to get out of the fix Bush et al. put us in by sucking every last cent out of the economy. We can't. Even if we had the money, which we don't.

We're in a post-consumer society now. And what that means is -- well, we are once again thrown back on our own wits, only the question du jour is whether we have any.