we all have had a couple of decades of continuing “Good Times.” So, people get sloppy, they want to live like the movie stars, they build huge houses (much larger than in the 1970s, by the way), filled with the latest toys (in a couple of years EVERYONE will have HDTV; it seems that EVERYONE already has several cell phones, etc etc.

But there are a couple of other things, aside from the personal debt issue. I think people are ‘hard-wired’ to worry, so that we are all ready to deal with a famine, or a polar bear attack. Now that there is not much to worry about in North America, well, we have plenty of time to worry about global warming and cancer and falling off our bicycles and breaking our heads if we don’t wear helmets. Economic doom is just another reason to worry..

And then…the punditry work in an industry that is ‘restructuring’ (like the car biz in Detroit a few decades ago). Really, no wonder the dark night of gloom lies over the newsrooms. Being C-level intellectuals, newsroom employees don’t know how to stop projecting their own dilemma onto that of the USA. I mean, everyone KNOWS that being a New York Times Reporter is a sure road to excitement and wealth. Don’t they???