You're not going to see some return to backyard vegetable gardens and local farms. Factory farming exists now, and it's not going away. In fact, in a downturn, it's the expensive "organic" farms (luxury goods), the uncompetitive "local" farms (dependent on cheap transportation for limited quantities) and the subsidized "family" farms that are going away, not the wheat factories that stretch for 100 miles in every direction. You might claim that long-distance shipping in a world with more expensive oil will be a problem, but if you work out the transportation cost vs. value of a ton of food, you'll realize that shipping costs just aren't significant. That's why it is sometimes more fuel efficient, as well as cheaper, to buy food shipped halfway around the world than to buy locally produced food.

TV, video games, the internet, etc. are all here to stay. Not only does the infrastructure all exist already, those things are dirt cheap to produce now. The technology isn't going away, and neither are the factories. You're going to have the same mass-produced, media-saturated environment that has produced so many things you dislike about the modern world.

You'll see more people shopping at Wal-Mart instead of buying luxury goods. You'll see more people "eating out" at cheap Chinese or McDonalds instead of upscale restaurants. Everything from clothes to cars will be used longer. The thing is, all those products *will* last longer, since they are so much better made than they were 80 years ago. About the only class of products which isn't made to better standards than ever might be housing, and I'm not even sure about that. Even if you are right that modern houses are poorly made, they can still last for years more than before without upgrades or repairs. There is a huge amount of slack in the system. That's what comes from being rich, instead of poor. We have reserves, if not savings.

It's also a mistake to generalize attitudes across the whole country, or even across the entire middle-class suburban parts of the country. If we have a Depression, the Mormons and deep south Christian fundamentalists will not handle it the same way as the Hispanic migrant workers or the inner city union members, the same way as college students or retirees, or the same way as the coastal liberal elites. Each group has its own attitudes, its own political clout, its own resources (financial and community) and its own expectations of life.

Different parts of the country are already on different courses and will continue to react differently. New Jersey is not going to go through the same kind of real estate crash as California or Florida. The upper Midwest is already deserted and that probably won't change. Detroit is already a disaster area and will probably see the bankruptcy of at least one major car company. The Washington D.C. area has been fairly immune from the latest downturn, and if government grows during a Depression, will still be cushioned from it. If we have deflation, all those seniors living on Social Security or savings will be sitting pretty. If we have wild inflation, seniors (and the cities they've flocked to) will be hard hit. Of course, seniors vote even more than farmers.

You would think that recent immigrants, and illegals, would be hardest hit, and might leave the U.S. The economy in the U.S. would have to completely collapse to get as bad as Mexico is now though, so I doubt it. Especially not if Mexico follows the U.S. into a downturn. If anything, the desire for cheap labor (and very hard working labor) will be even more intense across the board. Americans think they can't compete with cheap labor overseas. Some parts of the population probably can't compete with it here at home either.

In fact, if there's one group that will be hardest hit, in my opinion it's the coastal liberals who think that their education guaranteed them a place high on the hog for life. Other groups with more determination and more realistic expectations, better skills (as opposed to formal education) and more solid communities will predominate. Your coffee shop slackers will be pressured from below by immigrants happy to do those crappy jobs (better than they do, for less money) and pressured from above by older people with experience pushed out of high-paying jobs. I would expect fewer and fewer "easy" jobs. Your idealistic, liberal arts educated, sensitive greenies with few skills and little job experience are going to be living in their parent's house for the foreseeable future. They will be lucky to find any job at all.

And I expect technology to keep marching forwards. You might expect less R&D during a downturn, since it costs money and has a delayed payoff. With companies trying to mend their bottom-lines, you'd expect that sort of thing to be cut. In previous recessions, perhaps it was. But this is a "knowledge economy" now. Cutting your R&D efforts for a software company is like closing a plant for a car company. Worse, since the car company can just make fewer cars. The software company knows that if it stops innovating, it has no product at all. The same goes for all sorts of other industries. In fact, during a downturn, they have to be even more innovative, to pry dollars out of their customers hands with something obviously worth the money. Look for salaries to go down perhaps, but not for innovation to stop.

So I expect computers, software, the internet and robotics to continue to advance, chewing into not only factory work, but anything that can be automated. We forget that an ATM instead of a live bank teller is automation, and so is a voice-recognition system instead of a live operator. So is a website that walks you through a problem with your PC, or an Amazon.com that takes an order online without a human involved. All of that will continue to develop, as technology gets cheaper and humans stay relatively expensive.

Many people think this will be an opportunity for even more government action, an excuse to enact a liberal agenda, to correct all the "failures of the market." I doubt it. I expect all levels of government to be strapped for cash. The federal government in particular will be crushed between exploding entitlement spending (for all those elderly, voting boomers who definitely will not go quietly), unaffordable defense commitments, and a deficit that will explode if the economy slows or the value of the dollar drops. Governments may want to just increase tax on companies and rich individuals, but they will find out how mobile both business and capital have already become. I doubt there's going to be any room for activism.

I'm not looking forward to hard times. I don't think suffering improves a person, a country or a world. But if it does come, I expect it to accelerate some trends, not reverse them. The "good old days" are gone forever.


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