Those who have forgotten how to shovel snow are doomed to wade through it. - By Anne Applebaum - Slate Magazine

Those who have forgotten how to shovel snow are doomed to wade through it. - By Anne Applebaum - Slate Magazine

I had meant to post this sooner in light of the recent standstill in London.

Read this article and think about what the author is suggesting. Is living beyond all of our means, which has now come back to bite us all in our respective arses going to be the undoing of us in the end? Do any of us even remember when times were so lean that you actually had to save pennies and know how to do repairs yourself, or find cheap ways to make things last? I remember such things simply because we were pretty poor when I grew up. I had hand-me-downs. I have wondered where my next meal was coming from, I have shopped at Good-will and thrift stores.

I don't remember feeling like it was beneath me to do those things, in fact I *still* shop at those places every now and then.

So in the end is a return to 'simpler' times going to be what helps us get through this. Are we going to see returns to soup lines, 1,000s of people applying for jobs for only 100 - wait isn't that going on now?

My heart aches for people suffering from hard times. I am not suggesting that before the downfall of the economy there have not been people suffering (how totally ignorant that would be of me) - however we all know this has become way more rampant, wide-spread and serious of late and more and more people are facing difficult situations and having to make tougher and tougher decisions...

The question isn't really when did this happen or why - the question is what do we do now?