I distinctly remember my grandparents instilling me with values that were derived from the Great Depression.  Values that emphasized saving over spending, coupon clipping, living frugally, and only living within one’s means.  These valuable lessons were lost on more than one generation between the Great Depression and last year.  While I do not believe that the current global recession is anything near the Great Depression in terms of cultural impact, there are still some really important and significant lessons that need to be relearned obviously, and I often wonder exactly how long these lessons will remain imprinted on the average American psyche, if they are even resounding with consumers at all.

Evidence that American consumers are responding to this most recent recession by changing their spending and savings behavior is easy to come by.  Americans are less in debt than they were only one year ago.  They also shoulder far less credit card debt as a whole than they did just twelve short months ago.  But these behaviors are not as deeply rooted or have not been so widespread as to think they will actually become part of American culture.  It took the Japanese economy more than ten years to fully recover from their early 1990’s recession.  Culturally, the Japanese people have one of the best savings rates in the world, and some of the smallest debt to income ratios as well.  This is after ten years of recession.  American have only felt the pinch for about a year now, and it is not entirely clear whether or not they will permanently change their behavior.

It was easy to see that when gas prices skyrocketed last year to almost $5 per gallon in some places, that many people were willing to make sacrifices to cut back on gasoline consumption.  But only after they realized it hurt their pocketbook to drive giant gas-guzzlers.  Fast-forward to this past summer and you have people still buying into huge SUV’s and trucks that get less than 10 miles per gallon.  Their logic is flawed, or at least based on the notion that gasoline will never cost more than it does now, or did in the past.  Any real student of history realizes that this is simply not true.  American’s way of life as Americans was and to a very large degree, still is unsustainable.  The changes that are being made right now are moving the average US consumer in the right direction, but the real truth about the longevity of these behavioral changes will become apparent in the next decade.  Will Americans continue to defy logic and chose an unsustainable path of financial ruin or will they shape up like their ancestors had to during the Great Depression to survive?  And will these changes last much longer than they have to or will the most recent recession leave a permanent mark on American culture?  I would argue that Americans are far too lazy and unwilling to take a good hard look at the facts to really change for the better on a permanent level unless it hits them where it hurts the most- in the pocketbook, permanently.