IF YOU ARE LIKE ME, you cannot get enough of those articles about how Americans are economizing. For one thing, they contain lots of tips. Cook at home rather than go to restaurants. Why eat Lucky Charms when Generic Puffs are so great? Always buy in bulk.

Now that the federal rebate checks are going out, many people are fantasizing about how to stretch their dollars even further. I know I am. In my head, I have spent that check seven times over. In reality too. Like lots of people we know, my spouse and I ended up owing tax this year. The rebate will restore just part of what we unexpectedly had to shell out.

The nation has been through recessions before. The more responsible news outlets show little charts telling when. But why does this one (which most of us are not technically in yet) feel different? Why does it feel less like a dip in the economic cycle and more like a new way of life — a way that involves expecting less, and finding clever, semi-permanent ways to do without?

A few weeks ago, I walked down the block to see a house in my neighborhood auctioned off. A quirky, falling-down cottage, it had sat empty for a while. Now the bank wanted its money. Three men took turns bidding, scraping their toes in the dirt. Not one would go to $150,000, even though two homely but occupied backyard rental properties were part of the deal.

The bank called off the auction. The sale sign went back up.

For most of us, the foreclosure crisis is something new. But its effects are everywhere. In the nationwide walk-and-talk concerning rebate checks, someone found a woman who said she’d be using hers for moving expenses, since she was being evicted.

Unfortunately, housing is not the only problem area. Health-care and college costs are alarmingly high.

Food and gas prices are spiraling upward, in a double-helix of disaster. With strong growth spurts continuing in China and India, the demand for oil is surging. But the supply is beginning to run out. And switching to ethanol only makes food more expensive. It is not the kind of bind you simply ride out.

Here is what Americans are doing at the day-to-day level: Buying less red meat and more spaghetti. Bypassing designer beers for the cheap stuff. Skipping Starbucks. Renting movies instead of going to the multiplex. Putting off car purchases. Canceling the monthly night out at Denny’s.

Sales of women’s clothing, shoes and furniture are all down since this time last year.

Still, Americans are spenders. Even as the bills mount, they cling to their cable service, cell phones and video games. Big-screen TVs are selling briskly, suggesting that these items may be our ultimate drug of choice. The world may be splintering, but high-def is coming.

The scramble to make ends meet obscures a sobering reality: For most Americans, the days of rising expectations have been over for a while. According to a recent New York Times analysis, in every economic expansion since World War II, median family income has risen. But last year, the apparent end of the most recent expansion, the family sitting plump in the American middle actually made less than in 2000, when the previous expansion halted.

People at the bottom have sometimes been left out of booms, economists say, but never before people in the middle class.

Again and again since the 1970s, Americans have found ways to keep lifting their standard of living. First, women entered the work force, augmenting household income. Then, everybody started working more hours. Finally, Americans hitched their little wagons to the housing bubble, borrowing money pegged to the rising values of their homes.

Now, except for putting more stuff on Craigslist, the middle class is pretty much out of moves.

Economist Robert Reich says the only way to revive our consumption-based economy is to build the wages of the bottom two-thirds of Americans. Others have noted that we need broad investments, in everything from roads and bridges to higher education, to revitalize the country for the long term.

But, far from being roused by such ideas, Americans seem strangely subdued. The air is frowzy with defeat.

In the 1950s, the Soviet launch of Sputnik stirred our competitive juices, unleashing a burst of productivity. But what is to call forth the best in us now? Merely spending more, with no sense of joint purpose, is apt to result in merely spending more.

The other day, our Knight of the Rose Garden opined that the economy would be healed if only we would make his tax cuts for the rich permanent. No wonder his subjects crave big-screen oblivion. How many more tulips will this guy trample before his time is up?

We are a nation that has gotten used to living beyond its means. Now that the check has arrived, will we curl up and watch the stars rumba, or rise to the occasion?

M.J. Andersen is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.