An express lane at the grocery store checkout is a great idea. It caters to individuals who want to get on with the day. This idea should be expanded to encompass other preferences.

For instance, I would like a checkout stand devoted to people who do not want to engage in small talk. Store clerks are consistently notified of customers’ sleep deprivation and are bombarded with talk of the unbearable climate. The average shopper is quick to reassure the clerk, however, that regardless of these chronic hardships, their day is going swell. (But it’s raining in the Northwest; how could your day possibly be good?) At any rate, it is a futile conversation. Confronted with inquisitions as to how my day was going at the grocer’s last week, I decided to respond to the lad at Fred Meyer in a less conventional manner. I told him I felt indifferent about the rain, and was having a horrible day. Despite my unusual announcements, he asked nonchalantly, “Oh yeah, economy got you down?”

Economy got me down? No, no, I wasn’t even thinking to say something about the economy until popular culture decided it was the new weather. College is expensive and Qdoba did recently raise the price of their burritos, but can’t we talk about something nice?

You and I—we’re rational, articulate, sensible people. We know the economy sucks, but what else is there to say about it to strangers? Insipid and unsavory remarks regarding the state of our nation these days are tossed around like pennies left and right (Although I suppose no one tosses pennies around anymore). The weather is capable of changing, but talk of fiscal America is static, morbid to the greatest denomination and is only declining.

Many curious changes have occurred since our stocks began sinking. Virtually every major business has made an effort to portray itself in a different light. Car advertisements, in example, are great at relaying our top priorities. Months ago, they offered free gas for a year, and years ago they offered cash back bonus gimmicks when we had money to spend. Presently, some automakers—Ford, for instance—are offering to make your car payments for you should you get canned tomorrow. GM is offering three months worth of auto expenses if you get laid off. Hyundai will even take the whole car back.

Of course, other facets of life are adapting to the financial crisis, as well. Anything and everything is being taxed. Even morality is taking a back seat to cost-cutting, ever since states like New Mexico proposed repeals on the death penalty, apparently with partial regard to the high cost of necessary trial implementation.

As such, I do not doubt in the least that the economy is an important topic, nor that many, if not the majority, have suffered from the recession. There are discussions to be had and unprecedented concerns to be dealt with, but complaining about the rut we’re in like a herd of kindergarteners doesn’t get us out of it. At an age so important, it is unfathomable why we spend so much time reiterating and establishing the new cliché nation-defeating prophecy, “Not in this economy!”