What if we just have enough stuff?

The hand-wringers were working overtime again last week. Now it seems that Americans aren't hitting the stores hard enough to keep the Chinese gizmo factories humming and some are even daring to suggest they might only spend what they can afford on Christmas gifts this season. All of this, of course, is the latest harbinger of economic collapse to spoil the day of any American not in the Marine Corps, in prison or so spectacularly wealthy they don't have to worry about their next three hots and a cot are coming from. Of course, this bad news comes hot on the heels of the dire warnings that Americans were drowning in debt, couldn't get credit and the whole tottering economic edifice was about to collapse because we just couldn't exercise any self control at the checkout counter.
Y'know -- y'just can't please some people.
Now I realize that for decades millions of us have lived up to the consumer mantra: When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping -- and Americans have always made it a point to prove to the world that nobody's tougher than us. Through the years we've dutifully bought stuff and bought stuff -- putting up ever bigger houses complete with multiple car garages (with the multiple cars parked on the driveway) to hold it all. We just kept on hauling it home and stacking it up and now, I suspect, more and more of us are confronted with a reverse Mother Hubbard -- far from being bare, the cupboard doors barely close. After a half century buying binge -- might it just be that a whole lot of us have enough stuff and might just use all this recession talk as an excuse not to add on yet another room to hold another holiday's worth of gifts we'd really rather not get?
And if enough is finally enough, does that mean the inevitable collapse of commerce? Well, not necessarily. While a lot of us can't find room for one more thing, there are a whole lot of people elsewhere in the world who'd have no trouble finding room to walk into their walk-in closet -- if they only had a house to put a closet into. If we have enough stuff, maybe we could let them have some -- there are some long Christmas lists out there.