Taplin writes about America having to buckle up and go to the simpler life, which I think might not be such a bad thing:
In short, deleveraging means we are all going to have to downsize. You life is going to get simpler, you will shed excess baggage. The second hand stores will flourish. The malls will shrink and there will be fewer of them. You will spend more evenings at home around a table with friends than in high priced restaurants. You might even learn to play an instrument to entertain yourself and your friends rather than shelling out $200 a head for Rolling Stones concert seats. You will put up your solar roof and sell power back to the grid. You will drive a hybrid or use mass transit. Your garden will become a prime source of your food.
A call for simpler, more meaningful and more passionate lives not built on consumptive and external validation. Sounds like a good idea to me.
He also linked up this hilarious fictional dialogue between Obama and Jed Bartlett in the Times.
