Obama's big jobs program was announced last night, and the results are in: it's a failure. I mean, it hasn't started yet, but if it did, it would be too small, and it won't pass anyhow, because it's too big.

What does this mean, for you, the (notional) consumer? You're on your own, kid. Stop having wet dreams of suckling upon the government's luscious teat of entitlements. Experts now tell us the odds of a double dip recession are at 50%. Do you like those odds? Do you? No. Not even you, the mewling, pleading, unproductive object of Randian derision, like 50% odds. You want decisiveness. You want to be told just how bad it's going to be. You want a guarantee: the economy is coming to punish you. You've been very, very bad.

And so—due to your pitiful lack of taste for entrepreneurial risk—you act as if another terrifying recession is assured. You abnegate your duties as a consumer. You are "depressed beyond reason or expectation," forcing the Fed chairman to stand up and sternly scold you like a school nurse trying to pep up a suicidal teen with alternating threats and encouraging platitudes. We still have a 50% shot of making it, and already you're all planting survivalist vegetable gardens and putting Christmas presents on layaway like a 1992 Def Comedy Jam punchline. I mean yes, food prices are high these days, but shit. You are not a sub-Saharan African. You are an American. With a television. And an SUV. And EZ access to Cheez. Any time you want.

Your fear-based retrenchment is a curse, you fools. While you're busy outdoing one another in fiscal pusillanimity, you're sending this great nation right back into the trough of that double dip. Self-fulfilling prophecy! Look it up on your precious internet, if you can fit it in between the slavish checking and rechecking of pop culture fan blogs that you call "applying for jobs online!" Now is the time to spend, spend, and spend some more! We must all commit to an orgy of spending together, or surely we shall be committed to a poor ending apart!

The cheez stands alone, America. Join it, won't you?

[Photo: colros/ Flickr]