Necessity's Mother

Peggy Noonan's latest column--where she seems to look forward to a poorer America, since it'll have to be simpler--is weird even for her.

Now I have no objection to Ms. Noonan, or indeed anyone, sending me all the extra money that they don't need. She can be as thoroughly Thoreau as she pleases. I personally don't feel more money would make me less happy, and I'm willing to take that chance.

This isn't the first time I've heard the warning of poverty ahead. When I was in college the idea that we'd be poorer than our parent's generation was in the air. These former clairvoyants must have been wrong, since Noonan apparently considers us too rich today, and thinks our parents' generation--once considered an era of unprecedented bounty--to be the equivalent of genteel poverty.

PS Living in LA, of all the strange things in her piece, this paragraph really stuck out:

Hollywood will take the cue. During the depression, stars such as Clark Gable were supposed to look like normal men. Physical perfection would have distanced them from their audience. Now leading men are made of megamuscles, exaggerated versions of their audience. That will change.

No Peggy, during the Depression, stars were supposed to be witty, charming, glamorous and better-looking than everyone else. It's only about thirty to forty years later that you start getting leading men who look like average people.

Those who forget the past shouldn't be writing about our future.