What happened to all that?
We don't like to admit this, but either intentionally - because ours was supposed to be a rebellious generation - or by the accident of having lived through a period of unparalleled affluence, we eschewed the lessons our elders taught us. We were determined to live better than our parents and grandparents did - that's what they wanted for us, after all - but the measure of that progress seemed to be in the accumulation of consumer products. Instead of being something you earned based on your history or character, credit became something you got by virtue of breathing. And the party was on.
We lived beyond our means, and we didn't save. We stood by as American manufacturing jobs, including the unionized kind that had provided a way for our parents' generation to ascend to the middle class, disappeared, and a new economy emerged, something based on people spending money they didn't have, based, in part, on inflated assets.
There's a lot of blame going around these days, most of it heaped on George Bush, the man who stood on the rubble of 9/11 and asked Americans to go shopping to stimulate the economy.
Yet what's afoot now? Another stimulus package tagged with the hope of rebuilding consumer confidence, this one from the Democrats who blasted Bush. I think it's better to use these billions to fix the roads and seed entrepreneurs who will create jobs than give taxpayers another rebate.
But many people wiser than me - the editors of Barron's, for instance - suggest this kind of direct consumer stimulus is needed to give the economy a jolt and avoid deep recession, maybe even depression. We need to throw money into the economy now, many experts say, and worry about the accumulating government debt later.
I understand that spending makes the world go 'round, and our local retailers, in particular, need us to patronize their stores. In the immediate, the stimulus makes sense.
But in the long term, you have to worry about a culture that asks its worried citizens to spend money, even when it's not prudent. If that's all there is - an economy so dominated by consumer spending - then we're in the kind of structural trouble that will require a long, hard fix.
Please note: We had a stimulus of $168 billion to taxpayers from the government earlier this year. An interesting thing happened: A lot of people used it to pay down debt or build up savings. Imagine! "The savings rate," Bloomberg News reported, "more than doubled to an average 2.3 percent during the last five months from a 1.1 percent average the previous five years."
Our parents would be proud to hear that - not much else, but at least that.
Dan Rodricks can be heard on "Midday" from noon to 2 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays on 88.1 WYPR-FM.
