The remarkable thing about the “wildly popular” scheme to encourage American consumers to purchase more automobiles is not, as a few conservative commentators have wryly remarked, that the mainstream media finds it surprising that people enjoy federal largesse. It is, rather, that so many commentators have recognized that the program is merely designed to encourage tomorrow’s consumption today. This is remarkable because most of them had not hitherto been able to recognize a similar pattern that has been at work in the American economy since 1983.