No, I'm not referring to Steely Dan's vision of flying financiers making their final impact on Wall Street. I'm talking about America's newest holiday, the post-Thanksgiving retail shopping frenzy that is going on even as I write.

The fundamental problem of economics has been solved. We no longer must struggle to devise a way to deliver to everyone everything they need. The challenge that now faces us is trying to ensure that the masses are able to acquire everything they want. We have substituted a new challenge to replace scarcity. Our economy and livelihoods, our economic health, now depends on everyone getting as much as possible, not on surviving on as little as they can.

Don't get me wrong, if you have to pick which disease to suffer, only a fool would prefer starvation to obesity. It is a triumph of twentieth century industrial capitalism to have been able to accomplish this, and even its severest critics should be willing to concede this point. It is truly an unprecedented period in history, and it has essentially unfolded during the lifetimes of some who are still alive today.

No, this is Off-Topic, and I'm not going to launch into a cautionary harangue on our embarrassment of riches and the peculiar set of problems it now presents. I simply wanted to reflect on this truly remarkable set of circumstances now before us. Yesterday we celebrated a truly American holiday, one which has always been my favorite, one where we recognize our good fortune and celebrate it with the culinary icons of our pioneer past. Even as agnostic immigrants in an immigrant community, my family participated in this American festival, even adding our own ethnic touches to it (we had flan for dessert, plátanos on the side, and stuffed the bird with congrí).

Today we have Black Friday, the day that launches the holiday retail blitz, and we watch it unfold carefully for what clues it may hold to our economic destiny. The financial wizards on the media and the press itself quietly encourage us to go out and spend money at a time when our natural instinct is to do just the opposite. Our personal security and prosperity now depends on our collective contributions. We're not being asked to work for our country, sacrifice for it, or even die for it. We're being asked to spend for it.

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I haven't had my Thanksgiving yet, on Sunday I'll drive across the state to my brothers' for the annual family feast (family, unfortunately, now consisting almost entirely of in-laws; nice people, but of odd and peculiar customs and manners). Sister-in-law does a magnificent job with the bird and trimmings, but bro will provide the final dessert, flan from the family recipe, dissolving into the melting pot.