In Freakonomics, a popular treatment of economics (something we need far more of...), a case study of a Israeli day care yields unexpected results.

The day care facility decides to deal with the problem of parents late to pick up their children with a fine, assuming that creating a financial penalty would rationally reduce the objectionable behavior. Yet over the next few weeks, parental tardiness tripled.

Realizing their mistake, the fine was withdrawn, but the tardiness continued at the new, higher level than it had previously. The reasons parents made the effort to be on-time to pick up their children were a matter of social conscience embedded within the common culture--the perception that inconveniencing another, in this case the day care worker, was a boorish thing to do. Once an economic value was attached, the social dynamic changed. In one sense, the old joke became a reality--we've already established the fact that you're a whore, now we're just negotiating price...

This article in the Washington Post, made me wonder if we're not seeing a similar cultural transition, one that may prove durable for at least a generation or more.

"We're going to see much lower consumption going forward," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He blames diminished spending on the drop in housing prices. "People who thought they had equity in their homes have seen it disappear," he said.

The longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression has exacted a punishing toll that continues nearly a year after the economy started growing again. Hardest hit are the 9.7 percent of workers who have been out of a job for an average of nearly six months. Many Americans are delaying retirement and others have lower expectations for their children's futures, the Pew poll found.

The depression--and let's be honest, the use of the word "recession" simply doesn't apply after two years with the prospect of several more years of economic distress awaiting us--has destroyed the easy assumptions about the future that the vast majority of Americans have operated under since the 1950s. Easy credit, job security, guaranteed pensions and peer pressure to keep up with the rate of irrational consumption.

Its scaring the hell out of people who have never contemplated any other way of life, and like my cat who once got his tail caught in a door slammed shut by the wind, you never look at doors the same way ever again.

My children are young adults, and its interesting to see how their behavior and expectations have changed. Cash is king, and no one uses a credit card unless they can pay the balance almost immediately. The economy, and a kind of generational consensus has done what I couldn't accomplish with years of finger-wagging and pleas for financial wisdom.

I frankly see this as a positive development, although along the lines of not drinking because your father was an alcoholic. I suspect that a culture that understands the need for financial conservatism creates a much more stable economy in the long-term.

Now if we can just get the federal government to lay off the bottle...