Dan Mac Alpine: Consumething be done about economic downturn?

My late Uncle Hal had a few comedic saws he'd always pull out, usually after few beers.

In one of his routines he would rub his palms together and say, "Consume. Consume. Consume. We must consume vast quantities!" And he'd cackle.

As a boy I thought he was funny. Looking back, he seems prophetic.

Today, our economy is addicted to consumption as much as it is addicted to oil.

We consume so much stuff our houses can't even hold it all. An entire "self-storage" industry has sprung up around our consumption addiction. Acres of metal boxes, row on row, have sprung up in the last decade.

According to the Self Storage Association - no, I didn't make that up - storage is now a $20 billion-a-year industry occupying 2.2 billion square feet across the country. The industry growth chart looks like a ski jump. In 1985, the association says the U.S. had 6,600 storage units. In 2007 we had just shy of 60,000.

By comparison, the rest of the whole world has 6,000 such units.

And it's not as if our homes have been getting smaller. The National Association of Home Builders notes the average home in 1970 was 1,400 square feet. In 2004, the average home had ballooned to 2,330 square feet.

And then the nation suddenly woke up and realized we can't really afford those bigger homes. We paid for them through finagled mortgages that have led to the highest foreclosure rates since the Great Depression. RealtyTrac Inc. says U.S. foreclosures filings jumped almost 80 percent in 2007, to 2.2 million.

So, what's Washington's answer to this disaster and the ensuing rrr, re, reces, ah, "economic downturn"?

Spend more! Go. Buy. Consume. Don't worry. Go shopping.